ReviewNeuroscience and biobehavioral reviews2019
The cognitive neuroscience of lucid dreaming.
Review in Neuroscience and biobehavioral reviews, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 69 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
69 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 191 citations in OpenAlex.
- Influencing dreams through sensory stimulation: A systematic review.Sleep medicine reviews · 2024Pooled it
- Detecting EEG index of arousal in sleeping patients with unresponsive wakefulness syndrome.iScience · 2026Article
- Lucid Dreaming Frequency Associated With Grey-White Matter Networks: An Exploratory Multimodal MRI Study.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- EEG Brain Rhythms During Resting-State Wakefulness and Sleep in Elderly Expert Meditators.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Lucid Dreaming: Not Just Awareness, but Agency.Journal of sleep research · 2026Article
- Inducing Lucid Dreaming Based on a Contemplative Practice of Compassion.Brain sciences · 2026Article
- How sleeping minds decide: State-specific reconfigurations of lexical decision-making.PLoS computational biology · 2026Article
- Using Real-time Reporting to Investigate Visual Experiences in Dreams.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2026Article
- Creative problem-solving after experimentally provoking dreams of unsolved puzzles during REM sleep.Neuroscience of consciousness · 2026Article
- Bodily stimulation during rapid eye movement sleep: effects of muscle and vestibular cueing on lucid dreaming.Sleep advances : a journal of the Sleep Research Society · 2026Article
- Are We Asking the Right Questions? Sex Specificity of Dream Characteristics in Probable Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Behavior Disorder.Movement disorders clinical practice · 2025Article
- Sleep neuroimaging: Review and future directions.Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- The Future of Parasomnias.Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- Sleep and Dreams as Reflected by Science Fiction Literature and Films-Anything to Learn From?Journal of sleep research · 2025Review
- Exploratory study of non-ordinary states of consciousness during sleep show distinct electrophysiological features from wakefulness and canonical sleep stages.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- A dream EEG and mentation database.Nature communications · 2025Article
- The association between dream activity and alexithymia during pregnancy: A cross-sectional study in a sample of pregnant women.Journal of sleep research · 2025Article
- Dream and its interpretation: scientific perspective.Internal and emergency medicine · 2025Review
- Electrophysiological Correlates of Lucid Dreaming: Sensor and Source Level Signatures.The Journal of neuroscience : the official journal of the Society for Neuroscience · 2025Article
- Heartbeat-related activity in the anterior thalamus differs between phasic and tonic REM sleep.The Journal of physiology · 2025Article
9 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Lucid dreaming refers to the phenomenon of becoming aware of the fact that one is dreaming during ongoing sleep. Despite having been physiologically validated for decades, the neurobiology of lucid dreaming is still incompletely characterized. Here we review the neuroscientific literature on lucid dreaming, including electroencephalographic, neuroimaging, brain lesion, pharmacological and brain stimulation studies. Electroencephalographic studies of lucid dreaming are mostly underpowered and show mixed results. Neuroimaging data is scant but preliminary results suggest that prefrontal and parietal regions are involved in lucid dreaming. A focus of research is also to develop methods to induce lucid dreams. Combining training in mental set with cholinergic stimulation has shown promising results, while it remains unclear whether electrical brain stimulation could be used to induce lucid dreams. Finally, we discuss strategies to measure lucid dreaming, including best-practice procedures for the sleep laboratory. Lucid dreaming has clinical and scientific applications, and shows emerging potential as a methodology in the cognitive neuroscience of consciousness. Further research with larger sample sizes and refined methodology is needed.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.