Explorers of the Mind: The Unknown World of Lucid Dreaming

According to Sigmund Freud, “the interpreation of dreams is the royal road to a knowledge of the unconscious”. Neuroscientists, on the other hand, have long claimed that dreams are merely the by-product of neural activity. Dream research is currently experiencing a new boom across a wide range of disciplines.

One reason for this renewed interest is the newly discovered abilities of so-called lucid dreamers, which show that the nocturnal movies we all experience are closely interwoven with our waking consciousness. Lucid dreamers, also known as “oneironauts”, have mastered the paradox of being conscious while sleeping. This allows them to create their own dream world. In other words, they become the main actors and directors of their dreams.

Once relegated to the realm of myth, lucid dreaming is fast becoming the next big thing in the world of science, attracting attention from sleep experts, dream specialists and consciousness researchers alike. This newfound legitimacy of the phenomenon as a subject of study lies in the fact that those who are aware of their dreams can convey this via eye movements, i.e., send messages from the land of dreams to the outside world without waking up. The method by which this was established was developed back in the late 1970s at Stanford University in California by Stephen LaBerge, still the undisputed expert in lucid dream research.

This discovery remains revolutionary in the field of dream research. This is evident, for instance, in the latest foray into the world of dreams by scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. With the help of lucid dreamers, scientists have for the very first time been able to locate dream content in the brain and map it with some success.

Will the fantasy of the dream recorder soon become reality?

With opulent images, Explorers of the Mind: The Unknown World of Lucid Dreaming documents the latest research into the activities and abilities of our brain while we dream and the advance of science into the last refuges of the (supposedly) unconscious.

First broadcast: January 2, 2014, on arte

World Sales

New Docs, Elina Kewitz
+49 (0)221 16819743
elina.kewitz@newdocs.de
www.newdocs.de