I am having a researcher
test this out to get some informed feedback.
However this clearly conforms to my conjectures regarding ring stones in
which we expect resonant sources to stimulate the physical mind sufficiently to
allow access to at least the first luminous plane. This has now been described as lucid dreaming
and practice allows the individual to manage the experience.
It is also
clearly invoked when spiritual realms are reached through meditation. Thus it is extremely useful to be able to
investigate on demand.
At least we
now have clear confirmation that we are on the right track here.
Brain
Zaps Can Trigger Lucid Dreams
By Bahar Gholipour, Staff Writer
| May 11, 2014 01:00pm ET
Lucid dreams, in which people are aware of
and can control their dreams, are rare. But now scientists have found they can
induce this weird state of mind in people by zapping their brains with a
specific frequency of electricity.
"I never thought this would work,"
said study researcher Dr. John Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep
researcher at Harvard University. "But it looks like it does."
The results showed that when the inexperienced
dreamers were zapped with a current of 40 Hertz, 77 percent of the time these
participants reported having what were described as lucid
dreams.
"They were really excited," said
study researcher Ursula Voss, of J.W. Goethe-University Frankfurt, who designed
the experiments. "The dream reports were short, but long enough for them
to report, 'Wow, all of the sudden I knew this was a dream, while I was
dreaming.'"
Dream waves
A lucid dream can be thought of as an
overlap between two states of
consciousness — the one that exists in normal dreaming,
and the one during wakefulness, which involves higher levels of awareness and
control.
"If I'm aware, if I'm self-reflective,
if I'm thinking about myself, about my past and future, that's normally a
waking function," Voss said. In lucid dreaming, we transfer elements of
waking consciousness into the dream, she said.
Such overlap is also reflected in the brain
waves that researchers can detect using electroencephalography, or EEG. Normal
dreaming has its own specific brain wave patterns. However, when people have lucid
dreams, they show gamma waves, an activity pattern that is linked to
consciousness but is nearly absent during sleep and normal dreaming. The gamma
activity in the brain of lucid dreamers is especially seen in the brain's frontal
cortex.
In the study, the researchers placed
electrodes on the scalps of 27 participants, who were not lucid dreamers, to
stimulate the frontal cortex, and recreate the gamma wave activity that has
been seen in lucid dreamers.
Over four nights, they applied the 30-second
bolts of electrical currents to the participants' scalps, two minutes after the
participants had entered the dreaming stage of sleep, as shown by their brains'
activity patterns. The frequency of stimulation varied from 2 Hz to 100 Hz, and
sometimes the researchers didn't actually deliver any electrical currents. The
participants were then immediately woken up to report their dreams to an
interviewer who wasn't aware of which stimulation they had received.
The EEG data showed that the brain's gamma
activity increased during stimulation with 40 Hz, and to a lesser degree during
stimulation with 25 Hz; stimulation with other frequencies didn't lead to any
changes in the brain waves, and it didn't increase the likelihood of people
having lucid dreams.
The researchers also found that after
stimulation, if people did experience a lucid dream, the gamma activity
increased even more.
"We were surprised that it's possible
to force the brain to take on a frequency from the outside, and for the brain
to actually vibrate in that frequency and actually show an effect," Voss
said.
Science of consciousness
Lucid dreams represent a unique opportunity
for scientists to observe the brain change from one state of consciousness to
another, and the new results suggest it may have become easier to study such
changes.
"Instead of waiting for things to
happen, you can actually now do experiments, deliver stimulus and see what
happens. It gives you much more classical stimulus-response handle on
consciousness itself. It's amazing," Hobson said.
Beyond advancing the understanding of what
happens during lucid dreams, the new findings may add insight to the broader
research on the nature
of consciousness, and how it comes about.
"It lets us see that consciousness is
clearly a brain function," Hobson said. "We knew that anyway, but the
mechanisms are not clear, and this puts a new spin on it."
Scientists have previously proposed that
gamma waves are related to widespread synchronization of brain activity and an
important aspect of consciousness. The new findings add to the evidence that
gamma activity is related to consciousness, and make it more likely that such
activity is actually causing consciousness, Voss said.
The study is
detailed today (May 11) in the journal Natur
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