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Cognitive neuroscience framework of conscious dreaming: dream lucidity applications and novel induction protocols

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Maciejewicz, Berenika (2025) Cognitive neuroscience framework of conscious dreaming: dream lucidity applications and novel induction protocols. Doctoral thesis, London Metropolitan University.

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Abstract

Undertaken research consists of 9 peer-reviewed, publicly-accessible and published scientific articles. To contextualize the selected outputs as a coherent body of work, the aim and the body of this research portfolio can be demonstrated as a three-fold methodological approach. To investigate the phenomenon of conscious dreaming, produced research explores three key questions, the “what”, the “how”, and the “why”.

First, in the pursuit of the “what”, the research aims to originally contribute to the conceptual and methodological definitions to forward our understanding of what conscious dreaming and dream lucidity is, also by exploring the phenomenon of consciousness itself from the philosophical, psychological and biomedical points of view.

Secondly, the “how” question is studied, where this research portfolio explores various dream lucidity induction methods and contributes the original work by measuring and contrasting efficacy of selected techniques that bring about self-awareness states during sleep. Here, the author also developed, implemented, analyzed and tested their own, proprietary dream lucidity induction protocols. To highlight the contributions to this multifactorial and newly emerging field of study, the originally created protocols were also contrasted for effectiveness against other tested methods.

Thirdly, the research explores the “why” question, by evaluating the importance of clinical and non-clinical applications that can stem from our better understanding of the mechanisms of conscious dreams, pointing as to why the research in this multidisciplinary, young field is important and why it can be impactful. Both therapeutic and non-therapeutic implications and applications of the findings are investigated.

In this context, these three perspectives, the “what”, the “why” and the “how”, together form a coherent, narrative body of research work with the unifying theme of cognitive neuroscience of dream consciousness, highlighting both its implications and applications, as well as induction protocols.

Dream lucidity occurrences are rare. The shortage of standardized and dependable lucid dream induction methods is one of the major barriers to further study the clinical and non-clinical applications of dream consciousness. Although the neuroscientific interest in dream lucidity has increased in the recent decades, many of the current induction approaches appear to not be replicable reliably. Thus, in this study, a novel induction protocol was designed by the author, combining a new reality check method with dream recall amplification. The proprietary protocol was evaluated for effectiveness in triggering lucidity and contrasted against two other established strategies. The results provided new data demonstrating that the novel method performed better than the other two investigated strategies, originally contributing to the conceptual and methodological mechanisms that influence self-awareness occurrences during sleep.

Lucid dreams are a promising area of study as they might make contributions to our understanding of altered states of consciousness, which could in turn have clinical applications to better evaluate conditions like anesthesia awareness, locked-in syndrome, coma or various disorders of consciousness. Findings from conscious dream research might prove therapeutically useful for neuroimaging methods to better detect various degrees of awareness states. Applications in treatment of nightmares or in sports performance studies were also proposed. The development of more reliable and efficient dream consciousness induction methods could also be a step forward to help broaden our understanding of the phenomenon of emergence of self-awareness. Given the wide variety of clinical and non-clinical applications of dream lucidity, further research into induction protocols remains important.

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