Mass psychogenic illness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_psychogenic_illness

 

Mass psychogenic illness
Other names	Mass hysteria, epidemic hysteria, mass sociogenic illness
Dancing plagues of the Middle Ages are thought to have been caused by mass hysteria. (Painting by Pieter Brueghel the Younger)
Specialty	Psychiatry, clinical psychology
Symptoms	Headache, dizziness, nausea, abdominal pain, cough, fatigue, sore throat
Duration	For most cases, under 12 hours to days
Risk factors	Childhood or adolescence; female sex (girls/women); intense media coverage, or widespread publicity
Differential diagnosis	Actual diseases (e.g., infectious diseases, environmental toxins or exposures), somatic symptom disorder
Treatment	Usually isolation or separation from perceived threat
Prognosis	Most recover

Mass psychogenic illness (MPI), also called mass sociogenic illness, mass psychogenic disorder, epidemic hysteria or mass hysteria, involves the spread of illness symptoms through a population where there is no infectious agent responsible for contagion. It is the rapid spread of illness signs and symptoms affecting members of a cohesive group, originating from a nervous system disturbance involving excitation, loss, or alteration of function, whereby physical complaints that are exhibited unconsciously have no corresponding organic causes that are known.

Signs and symptoms

Timothy F. Jones of the Tennessee Department of Health compiled the following symptoms based on their commonality in outbreaks occurring in 1980–1990:

Predominant symptoms in nine outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness

Symptom	Patients reporting (%)
Headache	67
Dizziness or light-headedness	46
Nausea	41
Abdominal cramps or pain	39
Cough	31
Fatigue, drowsiness or weakness	31
Sore or burning throat	30
Hyperventilation or difficulty breathing	19
Watery or irritated eyes	13
Chest tightness/chest pain	12
Inability to concentrate/trouble thinking	11
Vomiting	10
Tingling, numbness or paralysis	10
Anxiety or nervousness	8
Diarrhea	7
Trouble with vision	7
Rash	4
Loss of consciousness/syncope	4
Itching	3

Causes and risk factors

MPI is distinct from other types of collective or mass delusions by involving physical symptoms.Qualities of MPI outbreaks often include:

• symptoms that have no plausible organic basis;
• symptoms that are transient and benign;
• symptoms with rapid onset and recovery;
• occurrence in a segregated group;
• the presence of extraordinary anxiety;
• symptoms that are spread via sight, sound or oral communication;
• a spread that moves down the age scale, beginning with older or higher-status people;

British psychiatrist Simon Wessely distinguishes between two forms of MPI:

• Mass anxiety hysteria: "consists of episodes of acute anxiety, occurring mainly in schoolchildren. Prior tension is absent and the rapid spread is by visual contact."
• Mass motor hysteria: "consists of abnormalities in motor behaviour. It occurs in any age group and prior tension is present. Initial cases can be identified and the spread is gradual. ... [T]he outbreak may be prolonged."

While his definition is sometimes adhered to, others contest Wessely's definition and describe outbreaks with qualities of both mass motor hysteria and mass anxiety hysteria.

The DSM-IV-TR does not define a diagnosis for this condition but the text describing conversion disorder states that "In 'epidemic hysteria', shared symptoms develop in a circumscribed group of people following 'exposure' to a common precipitant."

Prevalence and intensity

Cases of MPI frequently involve adolescents and children as the primary affected groups, with females often being disproportionately impacted. The hypothesis that those prone to extraversion or neuroticism, or those with low IQ scores, are more likely to be affected in an outbreak of hysterical epidemic has not been consistently supported by research. Bartholomew and Wessely state that it "seems clear that there is no particular predisposition to mass sociogenic illness and it is a behavioural reaction that anyone can show in the right circumstances."

Intense media coverage seems to exacerbate outbreaks. The illness may also recur after the initial outbreak. John Waller advises that once it is determined that the illness is psychogenic, it should not be given credence by authorities. For example, in the Singapore factory case study, calling in a medicine man to perform an exorcism seemed to perpetuate the outbreak.

History

See also: List of mass panic cases

Medieval period

The earliest studied cases linked with epidemic hysteria are the dancing manias of the Middle Ages, including St. John's dance and tarantism. These were supposed to be associated with spirit possession or the bite of the tarantula. Those with dancing mania would dance in large groups, sometimes for weeks at a time. The dancing was sometimes accompanied by stripping, howling, the making of obscene gestures, or reportedly laughing or crying to the point of death. Dancing mania was widespread over Europe.

Between the 15th and 19th centuries, instances of motor hysteria were common in nunneries. The young women that made up these convents were sometimes forced there by family. Once accepted, they took vows of chastity and poverty. Their lives were highly regimented and often marked by strict disciplinary action. The nuns would exhibit a variety of behaviors, usually attributed to demonic possession. They would often use crude language and exhibit suggestive behaviors.

In the English translation of Hecker's The Epidemics of the Middle Ages (1844), the translator and 18th century epidemiologist Benjamin Guy Babington included a personal note of his in the Hysteria section of The Dancing Mania chapter. Babington's note recalled reading an uncited French medical journal that described a large convent of nuns in France that collectively began to meow like cats one day. The nuns meowed for long periods of time throughout the day, for several hours, until they were beaten with rods to cease the excessive meowing.

Priests were often called in to exorcise demons.

In factories

MPI outbreaks occurred in factories following the industrial revolution (1760–1840) in England, France, Germany, Italy, Russia, the United States and Singapore.

W. H. Phoon, Ministry of Labour in Singapore, gives a case study of six outbreaks of MPI in Singapore factories between 1973 and 1978. They were characterized by (1) hysterical seizures of screaming and general violence, wherein tranquilizers were ineffective (2) trance states, where a worker would claim to be speaking under the influence of a spirit or jinn and (3) frightened spells: some workers complained of unprecedented fear, or of being cold, numb, or dizzy. Outbreaks would subside in about a week. Often a bomoh (medicine man) would be called in to do a ritual exorcism. This technique was not effective and sometimes seemed to exacerbate the MPI outbreak. Females and Malay people were affected disproportionately.

Especially notable is the "June Bug" outbreak: In June 1962, a peak month in factory production, 62 workers at a dressmaking factory in a textile town in the Southern United States experienced symptoms including severe nausea and breaking out on the skin. Most outbreaks occurred during the first shift, where four fifths of the workers were female. Of 62 total outbreaks, 59 were women, some of whom believed they were bitten by bugs from a fabric shipment. Entomologists and others were called in to discover the pathogen, but none was found.

Kerchoff coordinated the interview of affected and unaffected workers at the factory, and summarized his findings:

• Strain – those affected were more likely to work overtime frequently and provided the majority of the family income. Many were married with children.
• Affected persons tended to deny their difficulties. Kerchoff postulates that such were "less likely to cope successfully under conditions of strain."
• Results seemed consistent with a model of social contagion. Groups of affected persons tended to have strong social ties.

Kerchoff linked the rapid rate of contagion with the apparent reasonableness of the bug infestation theory and the credence given to it in accompanying news stories.

In 1974, Stahl and Lebedun described an outbreak of mass sociogenic illness in the data center of a university town in the United States Midwest. Ten of 39 workers smelling an unconfirmed "mystery gas" were rushed to a hospital with symptoms of dizziness, fainting, nausea and vomiting. They reported that most workers were young women, either putting their husbands through school or supplementing the family income. Those affected were found to have high levels of job dissatisfaction. Those with strong social ties tended to have similar reactions to the supposed gas, which only one unaffected woman reported smelling. No gas was detected in tests of the data center.

In schools

In 1962, the Tanganyika laughter epidemic was an outbreak of laughing attacks, rumored to have occurred in or near the village of Kanshasa on the western coast of Lake Victoria in what is now Tanzania, eventually affecting 14 different schools and over 1,000 people.

On the morning of Thursday 7 October 1965, at a girls' school in Blackburn in England, several girls complained of dizziness. Some fainted. Within a couple of hours, 85 girls from the school were rushed by ambulance to a nearby hospital after fainting. Symptoms included swooning, moaning, chattering of teeth, hyperpnea, and tetany. Moss and McEvedy published their analysis of the event about one year later. Their conclusions follow. Their conclusion about the above-average extraversion and neuroticism of those affected is not necessarily typical of MPI:

• Clinical and laboratory findings were essentially negative.
• Investigations by the public health authorities did not uncover any evidence of pollution of food or air.
• The epidemiology of the outbreak was investigated by means of questionnaires administered to the whole school population. It was established that the outbreaks began among the 14-year-olds, but that the heaviest incidence moved to the youngest age groups.
• By using the Eysenck Personality Inventory, it was established that, in all age groups, the mean E [extraversion] and N [neuroticism] scores of the affected were higher than those of the unaffected.
• The younger girls proved more susceptible, but disturbance was more severe and lasted longer in the older girls.
• It was considered that the epidemic was hysterical, that a previous polio epidemic had rendered the population emotionally vulnerable, and that a three-hour parade, producing 20 faints on the day before the first outbreak, had been the specific trigger.
• The data collected were thought to be incompatible with organic theories and with the compromise theory of an organic nucleus.

In 1974, mass hysteria affected schools in Berry, Alabama, and Miami Beach. In Berry, it took the form of recurring itches. In the episode in Miami Beach initially triggering fears of poison gas. It was traced back to a popular student who happened to be sick with a virus.

In June 1990, thousands were affected by the spread of a supposed illness in a province of Kosovo in March to June 1990, exclusively affecting ethnic Albanians, most of whom were young adolescents. Symptoms included headaches, dizziness, impeded respiration, muscle weakness, burning sensations, cramps, retrosternal/chest pain, dry mouth and nausea. After the illness had subsided, a bipartisan Federal Commission released a document, offering the explanation of psychogenic illness. Radovanovic of the Department of Community Medicine and Behavioural Sciences Faculty of Medicine in Safat, Kuwait, reported:

This document did not satisfy either of the two ethnic groups. Many Albanian doctors believed that what they had witnessed was an unusual epidemic of poisoning. The majority of their Serbian colleagues also ignored any explanation in terms of psychopathology. They suggested that the incident was faked with the intention of showing Serbs in a bad light but that it failed due to poor organization.

Radovanovic stated that this reported instance of mass sociogenic illness was precipitated by the demonstrated volatile and culturally tense situation in the province.

Another possible case occurred in Belgium in June 1999 when people, mainly schoolchildren, became ill after drinking Coca-Cola. In the end, scientists were divided over the scale of the outbreak, whether it fully explains the many different symptoms and the scale to which sociogenic illness affected those involved.

Starting around 2009, a spate of apparent poisonings at girls' schools across Afghanistan began to be reported; symptoms included dizziness, fainting and vomiting. The United Nations, World Health Organization and NATO's International Security Assistance Force carried out investigations of the incidents over multiple years, but never found any evidence of toxins or poisoning in the hundreds of blood, urine and water samples they tested. The conclusion of the investigators was that the girls were experiencing a mass psychogenic illness.

In 2011, a possible outbreak of mass psychogenic illness occurred at Le Roy Junior-Senior High School, in Le Roy, New York, in which multiple students began having symptoms similar to Tourette syndrome. Various health professionals ruled out such factors as Gardasil, drinking water contamination, illegal drugs, carbon monoxide poisoning and various other potential environmental or infectious causes, before diagnosing the students with a conversion disorder and mass psychogenic illness.

In August 2019 the BBC reported that schoolgirls at the Ketereh national secondary school (SMK Ketereh) in Kelantan, Malaysia, started screaming, with some claiming to have seen 'a face of pure evil'. Simon Wessely of King's College Hospital, London, suggested it was a form of 'collective behaviour'. Robert Bartholomew, an American medical sociologist and author, said, "It is no coincidence that Kelantan, the most religiously conservative of all Malaysian states, is also the one most prone to outbreaks." This view is supported by Afiq Noor, an academic, who argues that the stricter implementation of Islamic law in school in states such as Kelantan is linked to the outbreaks. He suggested that the screaming outbreak was caused by the constricted environment. In Malaysian culture, burial sites and trees are common settings for supernatural tales about the spirits of dead infants (toyol), vampiric ghosts (pontianak) and vengeful female spirits (penanggalan). Authorities responded to the Kelantan outbreak by cutting down trees around the school.

Outbreaks of mass psychogenic illness "have been reported in Catholic convents and monasteries across Mexico, Italy and France, in schools in Kosovo and even among cheerleaders in a rural North Carolina town".

Episodes of mass hysteria have been frequent in Nepalese schools, at times even leading to the temporary closure of those schools involved. In 2018, a unique phenomenon of "recurrent epidemic of mass hysteria" was reported from a school of Pyuthan district of western Nepal after a nine-year-old school girl developed crying and shouting episodes. Other children of the same school became affected in rapid succession, resulting in 47 affected students, 37 females, 10 males, in the same day. Since 2016, similar episodes of mass psychogenic illness have been occurring every year at the same school. This is seen as a rather atypical case of recurrent mass hysteria.

In July 2022, reports of up to 15 girls showing unusual symptoms such as screaming, trembling, and banging their heads came up from a government school in Bageshwar, Uttarakhand, India. Mass psychological illness has been suggested as a possible cause.

In late 2022 and early 2023, thousands of students, mostly girls, in numerous schools in Iran were initially believed to have been poisoned in various and undetermined manners by unidentified perpetrators and numerous arrests were made. On 29 April 2023, the Iranian Intelligence Ministry released the findings of a comprehensive investigation which concluded that the reported illnesses were not caused by any toxic substances. Instead they were suggested to have been due to a variety of reasons, including exposure to a variety of non-toxic substances, mass hysteria, and malingering.

In October 2023, over 100 students from the St. Theresa's Eregi Girls' High School in Musoli, Kenya were hospitalized due to rapid and involuntary arm and leg movement, sometimes accompanied by headaches and vertigo. Routine medical tests revealed nothing unusual, and there were no signs of infectious disease as a cause. Ultimately it was decided that the events were caused by "stress due to upcoming exams" and the incident was determined to be an incident of "hysteria".

Due to the determination of collective stress as the cause, medical sociologist Robert Bartholomew favors the neutral term mass psychogenic illness over mass hysteria, as people respond more favorably to a diagnosis of stress induced symptoms than to a diagnosis of mass hysteria. Bartholomew notes such outbreaks are not unusual in schools in the developing world. This is particularly true in schools in which discipline is tight and accompanied with cultural strain between administrators and students. An outbreak can be preceded by months of such tension, which then results in physical symptoms such as seen in Musoli. Far from faking it, "Under such prolonged stress, the nerves and neurons that send messages to the brain become disrupted, resulting in an array of neurological symptoms such as twitching, shaking, convulsions, and trance-like states."

Bartholomew observes that school-stress borne illness such as occurred here have not been uncommon in Africa since the 1960s. Some appear to be due to Christian missionary schools largely ignoring local traditions and mythologies. Instead, such schools impart their own mythologies and culture. This may create overwhelming anxiety due to the students being taught one thing at home, such as ancestor worship, which is then forbidden at a Christian mythology based school.

Other such outbreaks have similar tradition-based causes, such as a 1995 outbreak of "bouts of screaming, crying, foaming at the mouth, and partial paralysis" in over 600 girls at an African Muslim school in Northern Nigeria. This outbreak was surmised to be due to expectations of traditional arranged marriage, colliding with modernity's emphasis on romantic love that the students had observed in movies. The difference between these two cases of mass psychogenic illness reinforces that each outbreak needs to be evaluated in the specific circumstances in which it occurred, as such instances are "never spontaneous reactions to stress per se; they are always couched in some unique context."

The 1997 Pokémon incident

On December 16, 1997, the Pokémon anime episode "Dennō Senshi Porygon" (Electric Soldier Porygon) aired on TV Tokyo in Japan at 6:30 PM Japan Standard Time. The episode was watched by approximately 4.6 million households. Twenty minutes into the episode, a scene featured Pikachu using an electrical attack on missiles, resulting in an explosion with rapidly alternating red and blue strobe lights that flashed at approximately 12 Hz for about six seconds, using an anime technique called paka paka.

Japan's Fire Defense Agency reported that 685 children, 310 boys and 375 girls, were taken to hospitals by ambulances, with complaints of blurred vision, headaches, dizziness, nausea, seizures, convulsions, and loss of consciousness. More than 150 were admitted to hospitals, and two remained hospitalized for more than two weeks. The incident, dubbed "Pokémon Shock" (ポケモンショック, Pokémon Shokku) by the Japanese press, resulted in immediate action by authorities. TV Tokyo issued a public apology the following day and suspended the program. Nintendo shares fell nearly 3.2% as news of the incident spread. The Pokémon anime went into a four-month hiatus before returning in April 1998 with significant changes to prevent similar incidents.

While initial reports suggested thousands of children were affected, research by Benjamin Radford and sociologist Robert Bartholomew revealed a more complex picture. Their study, published in the Southern Medical Journal in 2001, found that while some children experienced genuine photosensitive epilepsy seizures, the vast majority of the over 12,000 children who reported symptoms exhibited signs more consistent with mass psychogenic illness. The study noted that many of the reported symptoms such as headaches, dizziness, and nausea were more typical of mass hysteria than of epileptic seizures, and that symptoms typically associated with seizures (drooling, stiffness, tongue biting) were largely absent.

Crucially, the researchers discovered that the timeline of the outbreak did not match what would be expected from photosensitive epilepsy alone. While approximately 600-700 children were affected on the evening of the broadcast, the number of reported cases increased dramatically, by more than 10,000, only after extensive media coverage the following day and discussions among schoolchildren. Some viewers even experienced symptoms while watching news reports that rebroadcast clips of the scene. The characteristic features of the episode were found to be consistent with epidemic hysteria, triggered by sudden anxiety after dramatic mass media reports describing the initial genuine photosensitive-epilepsy seizures.

The incident led to significant changes in Japanese broadcasting standards. New guidelines were implemented including: flashing images should not flicker faster than three times per second for red content or five times per second for other colors; flashing images should not be displayed for more than two seconds total; and stripes, whirls and concentric circles should not take up large portions of the screen. A warning about viewing distance and room lighting was added to the beginning of all Japanese television anime shows. The episode "Dennō Senshi Porygon" has never been rebroadcast anywhere in the world and was removed from rotation. The incident holds the Guinness World Record for "Most Photosensitive Epileptic Seizures Caused by a Television Show".

The Pokémon incident demonstrates how mass psychogenic illness can occur alongside genuine medical events. The initial physical stimulus of the strobe effect causing real seizures in photosensitive individuals triggered a broader wave of psychogenic symptoms through social contagion, amplified by extensive media coverage and public panic. Radford and Bartholomew concluded that while the episode genuinely caused photosensitive-epilepsy seizures in several hundred susceptible children, the majority of the more than 12,000 reported cases represented an outbreak of mass sociogenic illness as one of the largest and best-documented such outbreaks in modern times.

Terrorism and biological warfare

In 2002, Bartholomew and Wessely stated that the "concern that after a chemical, biological or nuclear attack, [is that] public health facilities may be rapidly overwhelmed by the anxious and not just the medical and psychological casualties." Early symptoms of those affected by MPI are difficult to differentiate from those actually exposed to the dangerous agent.

The first Iraqi missile hitting Israel during the Persian Gulf War was believed to contain chemical or biological weapons. Though this was not the case, 40% of those in the vicinity of the blast reported breathing problems.

Following the 2001 anthrax attacks in October 2001, there were over 2,300 false anthrax alarms in the United States. Some reported physical symptoms of what they believed to be anthrax.

In 2001, a man sprayed what was later found to be a window cleaner into a subway station in Maryland. Thirty-five people were treated for nausea, headaches and sore throats.

Havana syndrome

Main article: Havana syndrome

Beginning in 2016, some staff stationed at the US embassy in Cuba reported medical symptoms that initially were attributed to "sonic attacks", and later to other unknown weaponry. The symptoms were dubbed "Havana syndrome" by the media. The following year, some US government employees in China reported similar symptoms. Eventually, similar reports came from US government employees and their families around the globe, including in Washington DC. Due to lack of evidence of actual attack and other factors, some scientists suggested the alleged symptoms were psychogenic in nature.

Seven U.S. intelligence agencies headed by the CIA spent years reviewing thousands of possible cases of Havana syndrome and preparing a report. On 1 March 2023, the House Intelligence Committee released an unclassified version of the report, titled an "Intelligence Community Assessment". Politico summarized the results by saying, "The finding undercuts a years-long narrative, propped up by more than a thousand reports from government employees, that a foreign adversary used pulsed electro-magnetic energy waves to sicken Americans."

A 2023 academic review article stated that the U.S. intelligence community had concluded that Havana Syndrome is "a socially constructed catch-all category for an array of pre-existing health conditions, responses to environmental factors, and stress reactions that were lumped under a single label".

Children in recent refugee families

Refugee children in Sweden have been reported to fall into coma-like states on learning their families will be deported. The condition, known as resignation syndrome (Swedish: uppgivenhetssyndrom), is believed to only exist among the refugee population in Sweden, where it has been prevalent since the early part of the 21st century. Commentators state "a degree of psychological contagion" is inherent to the condition, by which young friends and relatives of the affected individual can also come to have the condition.

In a 130-page report on the condition, commissioned by the government and published in 2006, a team of psychologists, political scientists and sociologists hypothesized that it was a culture-bound syndrome, a psychological illness endemic to a specific society.

This phenomenon has later been called into question, with children witnessing that they were forced, by their parents, to act in a certain way in order to increase chances of being granted residence permits. As evidenced by medical records, healthcare professionals were aware of this scam, and witnessed parents who actively refused aid for their children, but remained silent. Later, Sveriges Television, Sweden's national public television broadcaster, were severely critiqued by investigative journalist Janne Josefsson for failing to uncover the truth.

Society and culture

Social media

After the rise of a popular breakthrough YouTube channel in 2019, where the presenter exhibits extensive Tourette's-like behavior, there was a sharp rise in young people referred to clinics specializing in tics, thought to be related to social contagion spread via the Internet, and also to stress from eco-anxiety and the COVID-19 pandemic.

A report published in August 2021 found evidence that social media was the primary vector for transmission of the Tourette's-like behavior and that it predominantly affects adolescent girls, declaring the phenomenon the first recorded instance of mass social media–induced illness (MSMI).

Research

Diagnostic challenges

Besides the difficulties common to all research involving the social sciences, including a lack of opportunity for controlled experiments, MSI or MPI presents special difficulties to researchers in this field. Balaratnasingam and Janca report that the methods for "diagnosis of mass hysteria remain contentious." According to Jones, the effects resulting from MPI "can be difficult to differentiate from [those of] bioterrorism, rapidly spreading infection or acute toxic exposure."

These troubles result from the residual diagnosis of MPI. There is a lack of logic in an argument that proceeds: "There isn't anything, so it must be MPI." It is an example of an argument from ignorance, with ignorance here intended to mean "an absence of contrary evidence". It precludes the notion that an organic factor could have been overlooked (i.e. that there may have been insufficient investigation), or the possibility that the answer may currently be unknown but known at a future point in time. Nevertheless, running an extensive number of tests extends the probability of false positives. Singer, of the Uniformed Schools of Medicine, has summarized the problems with such a diagnosis:

[Y]ou find a group of people getting sick, you investigate, you measure everything you can measure ... and when you still can't find any physical reason, you say "well, there's nothing else here, so let's call it a case of MPI."

Relationship to autism and mirror neurons

Due to the role of the visual and auditory systems in MPI, a link between MPI and mirror neurons has been suggested. In this context, MPI appears as the neurological opposite of autism, caused by an overactive, not underactive, mirror neuron system. This could explain the gender difference bias observed in these two conditions, with autism predominantly affecting males (persons with autism show diminished activity in the mirror neuron system), and MPI predominantly affecting young girls, who appear to have a more sensitive mirror system.

Unconscious mind

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unconscious_mind 

In psychoanalysis and other psychological theories, the unconscious mind (or the unconscious) is the part of the psyche that is not available to introspection. Although these processes exist beneath the surface of conscious awareness, they are thought to exert an effect on conscious thought processes and behavior. The term was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge.

The emergence of the concept of the unconscious in psychology and general culture was mainly due to the work of Austrian neurologist and psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud. In psychoanalytic theory, the unconscious mind consists of ideas and drives that have been subject to the mechanism of repression: anxiety-producing impulses in childhood are barred from consciousness, but do not cease to exist, and exert a constant pressure in the direction of consciousness. However, the content of the unconscious is only knowable to consciousness through its representation in a disguised or distorted form, by way of dreams and neurotic symptoms, as well as in slips of the tongue and jokes. The psychoanalyst seeks to interpret these conscious manifestations in order to understand the nature of the repressed.

The unconscious mind can be seen as the source of dreams and automatic thoughts (those that appear without any apparent cause), the repository of forgotten memories (that may still be accessible to consciousness at some later time), and the locus of implicit knowledge (the things that we have learned so well that we do them without thinking). Phenomena related to semi-consciousness include awakening, implicit memory, subliminal messages, trances, hypnagogia and hypnosis. While sleep, sleepwalking, dreaming, delirium and comas may signal the presence of unconscious processes, these processes are seen as symptoms rather than the unconscious mind itself.

Some critics have doubted the existence of the unconscious altogether.

Historical overview

German

The term "unconscious" (German: unbewusst) was coined by the 18th-century German Romantic philosopher Friedrich Schelling (in his System of Transcendental Idealism, ch. 6, § 3) and later introduced into English by the poet and essayist Samuel Taylor Coleridge (in his Biographia Literaria). Some rare earlier instances of the term "unconsciousness" (Unbewußtseyn) can be found in the work of the 18th-century German physician and philosopher Ernst Platner.

Vedas

Influences on thinking that originate from outside an individual's consciousness were reflected in the ancient ideas of temptation, divine inspiration, and the predominant role of the gods in affecting motives and actions. The idea of internalised unconscious processes in the mind was present in antiquity, and has been explored across a wide variety of cultures. Unconscious aspects of mentality were referred to between 2,500 and 600 BC in the Hindu texts known as the Vedas, found today in Ayurvedic medicine.

Paracelsus

Paracelsus is credited as the first to make mention of an unconscious aspect of cognition in his work Von den Krankheiten (translates as "About illnesses", 1567), and his clinical methodology created a cogent system that is regarded by some as the beginning of modern scientific psychology.

Shakespeare

William Shakespeare explored the role of the unconscious in many of his plays, without naming it as such.

Philosophy

In his work Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, philosopher Immanuel Kant was one of the first to discuss the subject of unconscious ideas.

Western philosophers such as Arthur Schopenhauer, Baruch Spinoza, Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz, Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Robert Eduard von Hartmann, Carl Gustav Carus, Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche and Thomas Carlyle used the word unconscious.

In 1880 at the University of Paris, Edmond Colsenet defended a philosophy thesis (PhD) on the unconscious. Élie Rabier and Alfred Fouillée performed syntheses of the unconscious "at a time when Freud was not interested in the concept".

Psychology

Nineteenth century

According to historian of psychology Mark Altschule, "It is difficult—or perhaps impossible—to find a nineteenth-century psychologist or psychiatrist who did not recognize unconscious cerebration as not only real but of the highest importance." In 1890, when psychoanalysis was still unheard of, William James, in his monumental treatise on psychology (The Principles of Psychology), examined the way Schopenhauer, von Hartmann, Janet, Binet and others had used the term 'unconscious' and 'subconscious.'" German psychologists, Gustav Fechner and Wilhelm Wundt, had begun to use the term in their experimental psychology, in the context of manifold, jumbled sense data that the mind organizes at an unconscious level before revealing it as a cogent totality in conscious form." Eduard von Hartmann published a book dedicated to the topic, Philosophy of the Unconscious, in 1869.

Freud

The iceberg metaphor proposed by G. T. Fechner is often used to provide a visual representation of Freud's theory that most of the human mind operates unconsciously.

Sigmund Freud and his followers developed an account of the unconscious mind. He worked with the unconscious mind to develop an explanation for mental illness.

For Freud, the unconscious is not merely that which is not conscious. He refers to that as the descriptive unconscious and it is only the starting postulate for real investigation into the psyche. He further distinguishes the unconscious from the pre-conscious: the pre-conscious is merely latent – thoughts, memories, etc. that are not present to consciousness but are capable of becoming so; the unconscious consists of psychic material that is made completely inaccessible to consciousness by the act of repression. The distinctions and inter-relationships between these three regions of the psyche—the conscious, the pre-conscious, and the unconscious—form what Freud calls the topographical model of the psyche. He later sought to respond to the perceived ambiguity of the term "unconscious" by developing what he called the structural model of the psyche, in which unconscious processes were described in terms of the id and the superego in their relation to the ego.

In the psychoanalytic view, unconscious mental processes can only be recognized through analysis of their effects in consciousness. Unconscious thoughts are not directly accessible to ordinary introspection, but they are capable of partially evading the censorship mechanism of repression in a disguised form, manifesting, for example, as dream elements or neurotic symptoms. Such symptoms are supposed to be capable of being "interpreted" during psychoanalysis, with the help of methods such as free association, dream analysis, and analysis of verbal slips and other unintentional manifestations in conscious life.

Jung

Main articles: Carl Jung and Collective unconscious

Carl Gustav Jung agreed with Freud that the unconscious is a determinant of personality, but he proposed that the unconscious be divided into two layers: the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious. The personal unconscious is a reservoir of material that was once conscious but has been forgotten or suppressed, much like Freud's notion. The collective unconscious, however, is the deepest level of the psyche, containing the accumulation of inherited psychic structures and archetypal experiences. Archetypes are not memories but energy centers or psychological functions that are apparent in the culture's use of symbols. The collective unconscious is therefore said to be inherited and to contain material of an entire species rather than of an individual. The collective unconscious is, according to Jung, "[the] whole spiritual heritage of mankind's evolution, born anew in the brain structure of every individual".

In addition to the structure of the unconscious, Jung differed from Freud in that he did not believe that sexuality was at the base of all unconscious thoughts.

Dreams

Freud

The purpose of dreams, according to Freud, is to fulfill repressed wishes while simultaneously allowing the dreamer to remain asleep. The dream is a disguised fulfillment of the wish because the unconscious desire in its raw form would disturb the sleeper and can only avoid censorship by associating itself with elements that are not subject to repression. Thus, Freud distinguished between the manifest content and latent content of the dream. The manifest content consists of the plot and elements of a dream as they appear to consciousness, particularly upon waking, as the dream is recalled. The latent content refers to the hidden or disguised meaning of the events and elements of the dream. It represents the unconscious psychic realities of the dreamer's current issues and childhood conflicts, the nature of which the analyst is seeking to understand through interpretation of the manifest content.

In Freud's theory, dreams are instigated by the events and thoughts of everyday life. In what he called the "dream-work", these events and thoughts, governed by the rules of language and the reality principle, become subject to the "primary process" of unconscious thought, which is governed by the pleasure principle, wish gratification, and the repressed sexual scenarios of childhood. The dream-work involves disguising these unconscious desires to preserve sleep. This process occurs primarily by means of what Freud called condensation and displacement. Condensation is the focusing of the energy of several ideas into one, and displacement is the surrender of one idea's energy to another, more trivial representative. The manifest content is thus thought to be a highly significant simplification of the latent content, capable of being deciphered in the analytic process, potentially allowing conscious insight into unconscious mental activity.

Neurobiological theory of dreams

Allan Hobson and colleagues developed what they called the activation-synthesis hypothesis, which proposes that dreams are simply the side effects of the neural activity in the brain that produces beta brain waves during REM sleep, which are associated with wakefulness. According to this hypothesis, neurons fire periodically during sleep in the lower brain levels and thus send random signals to the cortex. The cortex then synthesizes a dream in response to these signals, trying to make sense of why the brain is sending them. However, the hypothesis does not state that dreams are meaningless; it just downplays the role that emotional factors play in determining dreams.

Contemporary cognitive psychology

Research

There is an extensive body of research in contemporary cognitive psychology devoted to mental activity that is not mediated by conscious awareness. Most of this research on unconscious processes has been done in the academic tradition of the information processing paradigm. The cognitive tradition of research into unconscious processes does not rely on the clinical observations and theoretical bases of the psychoanalytic tradition; instead it is mostly data driven. Cognitive research reveals that individuals automatically register and acquire more information than they are consciously aware of or can consciously remember and report.

Much research has focused on the differences between conscious and unconscious perception. There is evidence that whether something is consciously perceived depends both on the incoming stimulus (bottom up strength) and on top-down mechanisms like attention. Recent research indicates that some unconsciously perceived information can become consciously accessible if there is cumulative evidence. Similarly, content that would normally be conscious can become unconscious through inattention (e.g. in the attentional blink) or through distracting stimuli like visual masking.

Unconscious processing of information about frequency

An extensive line of research conducted by Hasher and Zacks has demonstrated that individuals register information about the frequency of events automatically (outside conscious awareness and without engaging conscious information processing resources). Moreover, perceivers do this unintentionally, truly "automatically", regardless of the instructions they receive, and regardless of the information processing goals they have. The ability to unconsciously and relatively accurately tally the frequency of events appears to have little or no relation to the individual's age, education, intelligence, or personality. Thus it may represent one of the fundamental building blocks of human orientation in the environment and possibly the acquisition of procedural knowledge and experience, in general.

Criticism of the Freudian concept

The notion that the unconscious mind exists at all has been disputed.

Franz Brentano rejected the concept of the unconscious in his 1874 book Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint, although his rejection followed largely from his definitions of consciousness and unconsciousness.

Jean-Paul Sartre offers a critique of Freud's theory of the unconscious in Being and Nothingness, based on the claim that consciousness is essentially self-conscious. Sartre also argues that Freud's theory of repression is internally flawed. Philosopher Thomas Baldwin argues that Sartre's argument is based on a misunderstanding of Freud.

Erich Fromm contends that "The term 'the unconscious' is actually a mystification (even though one might use it for reasons of convenience, as I am guilty of doing in these pages). There is no such thing as the unconscious; there are only experiences of which we are aware, and others of which we are not aware, that is, of which we are unconscious. If I hate a man because I am afraid of him, and if I am aware of my hate but not of my fear, we may say that my hate is conscious and that my fear is unconscious; still my fear does not lie in that mysterious place: 'the' unconscious."

John Searle has offered a critique of the Freudian unconscious. He argues that the Freudian cases of shallow, consciously held mental states would be best characterized as 'repressed consciousness,' while the idea of more deeply unconscious mental states is more problematic. He contends that the very notion of a collection of "thoughts" that exist in a privileged region of the mind such that they are in principle never accessible to conscious awareness, is incoherent. This is not to imply that there are not "nonconscious" processes that form the basis of much of conscious life. Rather, Searle simply claims that to posit the existence of something that is like a "thought" in every way except for the fact that no one can ever be aware of it (can never, indeed, "think" it) is an incoherent concept. To speak of "something" as a "thought" either implies that it is being thought by a thinker or that it could be thought by a thinker. Processes that are not causally related to the phenomenon called thinking are more appropriately called the nonconscious processes of the brain.

Other critics of the Freudian unconscious include David Stannard, Richard Webster, Ethan Watters, Richard Ofshe, and Eric Thomas Weber.

Some scientific researchers proposed the existence of unconscious mechanisms that are very different from the Freudian ones. They speak of a "cognitive unconscious" (John Kihlstrom), an "adaptive unconscious" (Timothy Wilson), or a "dumb unconscious" (Loftus and Klinger), which executes automatic processes but lacks the complex mechanisms of repression and symbolic return of the repressed, and the "deep unconscious system" of Robert Langs.

In modern cognitive psychology, many researchers have sought to strip the notion of the unconscious from its Freudian heritage, and alternative terms such as "implicit" or "automatic" have been used. These traditions emphasize the degree to which cognitive processing happens outside the scope of cognitive awareness, and show that things we are unaware of can nonetheless influence other cognitive processes as well as behavior. Active research traditions related to the unconscious include implicit memory (for example, priming), and Pawel Lewicki's nonconscious acquisition of knowledge.

Molecular modelling

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Molecular_modelling

Modeling of ionic liquid

Molecular modelling encompasses all methods, theoretical and computational, used to model or mimic the behaviour of molecules. The methods are used in the fields of computational chemistry, drug design, computational biology and materials science to study molecular systems ranging from small chemical systems to large biological molecules and material assemblies. The simplest calculations can be performed by hand, but inevitably computers are required to perform molecular modelling of any reasonably sized system. The common feature of molecular modelling methods is the atomistic level description of the molecular systems. This may include treating atoms as the smallest individual unit (a molecular mechanics approach), or explicitly modelling protons and neutrons with its quarks, anti-quarks and gluons and electrons with its photons (a quantum chemistry approach).

Molecular mechanics

The backbone dihedral angles are included in the molecular model of a protein.

Molecular mechanics is one aspect of molecular modelling, as it involves the use of classical mechanics (Newtonian mechanics) to describe the physical basis behind the models. Molecular models typically describe atoms (nucleus and electrons collectively) as point charges with an associated mass. The interactions between neighbouring atoms are described by spring-like interactions (representing chemical bonds) and Van der Waals forces. The Lennard-Jones potential is commonly used to describe the latter. The electrostatic interactions are computed based on Coulomb's law. Atoms are assigned coordinates in Cartesian space or in internal coordinates, and can also be assigned velocities in dynamical simulations. The atomic velocities are related to the temperature of the system, a macroscopic quantity. The collective mathematical expression is termed a potential function and is related to the system internal energy (U), a thermodynamic quantity equal to the sum of potential and kinetic energies. Methods which minimize the potential energy are termed energy minimization methods (e.g., steepest descent and conjugate gradient), while methods that model the behaviour of the system with propagation of time are termed molecular dynamics.

${\displaystyle E=E_{\text{bonds}}+E_{\text{angle}}+E_{\text{dihedral}}+E_{\text{non-bonded}}}$

${\displaystyle E_{\text{non-bonded}}=E_{\text{electrostatic}}+E_{\text{van der Waals}}}$

This function, referred to as a potential function, computes the molecular potential energy as a sum of energy terms that describe the deviation of bond lengths, bond angles and torsion angles away from equilibrium values, plus terms for non-bonded pairs of atoms describing van der Waals and electrostatic interactions. The set of parameters consisting of equilibrium bond lengths, bond angles, partial charge values, force constants and van der Waals parameters are collectively termed a force field. Different implementations of molecular mechanics use different mathematical expressions and different parameters for the potential function. The common force fields in use today have been developed by using chemical theory, experimental reference data, and high level quantum calculations. The method, termed energy minimization, is used to find positions of zero gradient for all atoms, in other words, a local energy minimum. Lower energy states are more stable and are commonly investigated because of their role in chemical and biological processes. A molecular dynamics simulation, on the other hand, computes the behaviour of a system as a function of time. It involves solving Newton's laws of motion, principally the second law, ${\displaystyle \mathbf{F}=m\mathbf{a}}$. Integration of Newton's laws of motion, using different integration algorithms, leads to atomic trajectories in space and time. The force on an atom is defined as the negative gradient of the potential energy function. The energy minimization method is useful to obtain a static picture for comparing between states of similar systems, while molecular dynamics provides information about the dynamic processes with the intrinsic inclusion of temperature effects.

Variables

Molecules can be modelled either in vacuum, or in the presence of a solvent such as water. Simulations of systems in vacuum are referred to as gas-phase simulations, while those that include the presence of solvent molecules are referred to as explicit solvent simulations. In another type of simulation, the effect of solvent is estimated using an empirical mathematical expression; these are termed implicit solvation simulations.

Coordinate representations

Most force fields are distance-dependent, making the most convenient expression for these Cartesian coordinates. Yet the comparatively rigid nature of bonds which occur between specific atoms, and in essence, defines what is meant by the designation molecule, make an internal coordinate system the most logical representation. In some fields the IC representation (bond length, angle between bonds, and twist angle of the bond as shown in the figure) is termed the Z-matrix or torsion angle representation. Unfortunately, continuous motions in Cartesian space often require discontinuous angular branches in internal coordinates, making it relatively hard to work with force fields in the internal coordinate representation, and conversely a simple displacement of an atom in Cartesian space may not be a straight line trajectory due to the prohibitions of the interconnected bonds. Thus, it is very common for computational optimizing programs to flip back and forth between representations during their iterations. This can dominate the calculation time of the potential itself and in long chain molecules introduce cumulative numerical inaccuracy. While all conversion algorithms produce mathematically identical results, they differ in speed and numerical accuracy. Currently, the fastest and most accurate torsion to Cartesian conversion is the Natural Extension Reference Frame (NERF) method.

Applications

Molecular modelling methods are used routinely to investigate the structure, dynamics, surface properties, and thermodynamics of inorganic, biological, and polymeric systems. A large number of molecular models of force field are today readily available in databases. The types of biological activity that have been investigated using molecular modelling include protein folding, enzyme catalysis, protein stability, conformational changes associated with biomolecular function, and molecular recognition of proteins, DNA, and membrane complexes.

Lucid dream

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucid_dream

In the psychology subfield of oneirology, a lucid dream is a type of dream wherein the dreamer knows that they are dreaming while in their dream. The capacity to have and sustain lucid dreams is a trainable cognitive skill. During a lucid dream, the dreamer may gain some amount of volitional control over the dream characters, narrative, or environment, although this control of dream content is not the salient feature of lucid dreaming. An important distinction is that lucid dreaming is a distinct type of dream from other types of dreams such as prelucid dreams and vivid dreams, although prelucid dreams are a precursor to lucid dreams, and lucid dreams are often accompanied with enhanced dream vividness. Lucid dreams are also a distinct state from other lucid boundary sleep states such as lucid hypnagogia or lucid hypnopompia.

In formal psychology, lucid dreaming has been studied and reported for many years. Prominent figures from ancient to modern times have been fascinated by lucid dreams and have sought ways to better understand their causes and purpose. Many different theories have emerged as a result of scientific research on the subject. Further developments in psychological research have pointed to ways in which this form of dreaming may be utilized as a therapeutic technique.

The term lucid dream was coined by Dutch author and psychiatrist Frederik van Eeden in his 1913 article A Study of Dreams, though descriptions of dreamers being aware that they are dreaming predate the article. Psychologist Stephen LaBerge is widely considered the progenitor and leading pioneer of modern lucid dreaming research. He is the founder of the Lucidity Institute at Stanford University.

Definition

Paul Tholey laid the epistemological basis for the research of lucid dreams, proposing seven different conditions of clarity that a dream must fulfill to be defined as a lucid dream:

1. Awareness of the dream state (orientation)
2. Awareness of the capacity to make decisions
3. Awareness of memory functions
4. Awareness of self
5. Awareness of the dream environment
6. Awareness of the meaning of the dream
7. Awareness of concentration and focus (the subjective clarity of that state)

Later, in 1992, a study by Deirdre Barrett examined whether lucid dreams contained four "corollaries" of lucidity:

1. The dreamer is aware that they are dreaming
2. They are aware that actions will not carry over after waking
3. Physical laws need not apply in the dream
4. The dreamer has a clear memory of the waking world

Barrett found that less than a quarter of lucidity accounts exhibited all four.

Subsequently, Stephen LaBerge studied the prevalence among lucid dreams of the ability to control the dream scenario, and found that while dream control and dream awareness are correlated, neither requires the other. LaBerge found dreams that exhibit one clearly without the capacity for the other. He also found dreams where, although the dreamer is lucid and aware they could exercise control, they choose simply to observe.

History

Eastern

The practice of lucid dreaming is central to both the ancient Indian Hindu practice of Yoga nidra and the Tibetan Buddhist practice of dream Yoga. The cultivation of such awareness was a common practice among early Buddhists.

Western

Early references to the phenomenon are also found in ancient Greek writing. For example, the philosopher Aristotle wrote: "often when one is asleep, there is something in consciousness which declares that what then presents itself is but a dream." Meanwhile, the physician Galen of Pergamon used lucid dreams as a form of therapy. In addition, a letter written by Saint Augustine of Hippo in AD 415 tells the story of a dreamer, Doctor Gennadius, and refers to lucid dreaming.

Philosopher and physician Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) was fascinated by dreams and described his own ability to lucid dream in his Religio Medici, stating: "...yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests and laugh my self awake at the conceits thereof."

Samuel Pepys, in his diary entry for 15 August 1665, records a dream, stating: "I had my Lady Castlemayne in my arms and was admitted to use all the dalliance I desired with her, and then dreamt that this could not be awake, but that it was only a dream."

Frederik van Eeden (left) and Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys (right), early researchers of lucid dreaming

In 1867, the French sinologist Marie-Jean-Léon, Marquis d'Hervey de Saint Denys anonymously published Les Rêves et Les Moyens de Les Diriger; Observations Pratiques ("Dreams and the ways to direct them; practical observations"), in which he describes his own experiences of lucid dreaming, and proposes that it is possible for anyone to learn to dream consciously.

In 1913, Dutch psychiatrist and writer Frederik (Willem) van Eeden (1860–1932) coined the term "lucid dream" in an article entitled "A Study of Dreams".

Some have suggested that the term is a misnomer because Van Eeden was referring to a phenomenon more specific than a lucid dream. Van Eeden intended the term lucid to denote "having insight", as in the phrase a lucid interval applied to someone in temporary remission from a psychosis, rather than as a reference to the perceptual quality of the experience, which may or may not be clear and vivid.

Skill mastery

Clinical psychologist Kristen LaMarca outlined four stages towards mastering the skill of using lucid dreaming:

Lucid Dreaming Skill Levels

Stage	Title	Description	Rarity
1	Beginner	The practitioner may have no recollection of ever having a lucid dream, and perhaps has at most experienced only brief moments of lucidity.	Common
2	Experienced	An experienced lucid dreaming practitioner wields an increased ability of dream control and capacity to execute pre-intended actions. However, there are still aspects of lucid dream practice about employing lucidity productively that are yet to be honed. One's understanding of accessing and maintaining dream lucidity deepens as one has more lucid dreams.	Less common
3	Proficient	A proficient lucid dreamer is marked by a deliberate ability to accomplish intended actions in lucid dreams, along with knowledge of the best actions for given dream scenarios. The proficient lucid dream practitioner's practice is well-planned, drawing upon a broad skill set facilitating flexible oneironautic exploration, which can include contemplative practices or athletic motor skill training. This level of skill adequacy is not necessary to develop a fulfilling lucid dream practice.	Uncommon
4	Expert	Expertise in lucid dream skill is accompanied by normalization of greater intensity of lucidity during lucid dreams. LaMarca writes that the expert's practice is "characterized by at least a decade of intense dedication, long training hours, and mentorship by other more advanced experts." Spiritual figures, such Tibetan Buddhist masters, tend to display the highest order of mastery.	Extremely rare

Progression along the skill levels is akin to a maturity in the development of the practitioner's discipline, methodology and application.

Cognitive science

In 1968, Celia Green analyzed the main characteristics of such dreams, reviewing previously published literature on the subject and incorporating new data from participants of her own. She concluded that lucid dreams were a category of experience quite distinct from ordinary dreams and said they were associated with rapid eye movement sleep (REM sleep). Green was also the first to link lucid dreams to the phenomenon of false awakenings, which has since been corroborated by more recent studies.

In 1973, the National Institute of Mental Health reported that researchers at the University of California, San Francisco, were able to train sleeping subjects to recognize they were in REM dreaming and indicate this by pressing micro switches on their thumbs. Using tones and mild shocks as cues, the experiments showed that the subjects were able to signal knowledge of their various sleep stages, including dreaming.

In 1975, Dr. Keith Hearne had the idea to exploit the nature of rapid eye movements (REM) to allow a dreamer to send a message directly from dreams to the waking world. Working with an experienced lucid dreamer (Alan Worsley), he eventually succeeded in recording (via the use of an electrooculogram or EOG) a pre-defined set of eye movements signaled from within Worsley's lucid dream. This occurred at around 8 am on the morning of April 12, 1975. Hearne's EOG experiment was formally recognized through publication in the journal for The Society for Psychical Research. Lucid dreaming was subsequently researched by asking dreamers to perform pre-determined physical responses while experiencing a dream, including eye movement signals.

In 1980, Stephen LaBerge at Stanford University developed such techniques as part of his doctoral dissertation. In 1985, LaBerge performed a pilot study that showed that time perception while counting during a lucid dream is about the same as during waking life. Lucid dreamers counted out ten seconds while dreaming, signaling the start and the end of the count with a pre-arranged eye signal measured with electrooculogram recording. LaBerge's results were confirmed by German researchers D. Erlacher and M. Schredl in 2004. However, these findings also demonstrate that motor activities, like performing squats, require more time in lucid dreams than in wakefulness.

In a further study by Stephen LaBerge, four subjects were compared, either singing or counting while dreaming. LaBerge found that the right hemisphere was more active during singing and the left hemisphere was more active during counting.

Neuroscientist J. Allan Hobson has hypothesized what might be occurring in the brain while lucid. The first step to lucid dreaming is recognizing that one is dreaming. This recognition might occur in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, which is one of the few areas deactivated during REM sleep and where working memory occurs. Once this area is activated and the recognition of dreaming occurs, the dreamer must be cautious to let the dream continue, but be conscious enough to remember that it is a dream. While maintaining this balance, the amygdala and parahippocampal cortex might be less intensely activated. To continue the intensity of the dream hallucinations, it is expected the pons and the parieto-occipital junction stay active.

Using electroencephalography (EEG) and other polysomnographical measurements, LaBerge and others have shown that lucid dreams begin in the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep. LaBerge also proposes that there are higher amounts of beta-1 frequency band (13–19 Hz) brain wave activity experienced by lucid dreamers, hence there is an increased amount of activity in the parietal lobes making lucid dreaming a conscious process.

Paul Tholey, a German Gestalt psychologist and a professor of psychology and sports science, originally studied dreams in order to resolve the question of whether one dreams in colour or black and white. In his phenomenological research, he outlined an epistemological frame using critical realism. Tholey instructed his subjects to continuously suspect waking life to be a dream, in order that such a habit would manifest itself during dreams. He called this technique for inducing lucid dreams the Reflexionstechnik (reflection technique). Subjects learned to have such lucid dreams; they observed their dream content and reported it soon after awakening. Tholey could examine the cognitive abilities of dream figures. Nine trained lucid dreamers were directed to set other dream figures arithmetic and verbal tasks during lucid dreaming. Dream figures who agreed to perform the tasks proved more successful in verbal than in arithmetic tasks. Tholey discussed his scientific results with Stephen LaBerge, who has a similar approach.

A study was conducted by Stephen LaBerge and other scientists to see if it were possible to attain the ability to lucid dream through a drug. In 2018, galantamine was given to 121 patients in a double-blind, placebo-controlled trial, the only one of its kind. Some participants found as much as a 42 percent increase in their ability to lucid dream, compared to self-reports from the past six months, and ten people experienced a lucid dream for the first time. It is theorized that galantamine allows acetylcholine to build up, leading to greater recollection and awareness during dreaming.

Two-way communication

Graphical abstract of "Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep"

Teams of cognitive scientists have established real-time two-way communication with people undergoing a lucid dream. During dreaming, they were able to consciously communicate with experimenters via eye movements or facial/speech muscle signals and comprehend complex questions and use working memory. Such interactive lucid dreaming could be a new approach for the scientific exploration of the dream state and could have applications for learning and creativity.

Alternative theories

Other researchers suggest that lucid dreaming is not a state of sleep, but of brief wakefulness, or "micro-awakening". Experiments by Stephen LaBerge used "perception of the outside world" as a criterion for wakefulness while studying lucid dreamers, and their sleep state was corroborated with physiological measurements. LaBerge's subjects experienced their lucid dream while in a state of REM, which critics felt may mean that the subjects are fully awake. J. Allen Hobson responded that lucid dreaming must be a state of both waking and dreaming.

Philosopher Norman Malcolm was a proponent of dream skepticism. He has argued against the possibility of checking the accuracy of dream reports, pointing out that "the only criterion of the truth of a statement that someone has had a certain dream is, essentially, his saying so." Yet dream reports are not the only evidence that some inner drama is being played out during REM sleep. Electromyography on speech and body muscles has demonstrated the sleeping body covertly walking, gesturing and talking while in REM.

Prevalence and frequency

In 2016, a meta-analytic study by David Saunders and colleagues on 34 lucid dreaming studies, taken from a period of 50 years, demonstrated that 55% of a pooled sample of 24,282 people claimed to have experienced lucid dreams at least once or more in their lifetime. Furthermore, for those that stated they did experience lucid dreams, approximately 23% reported to experience them on a regular basis, as often as once a month or more. In a 2004 study on lucid dream frequency and personality, a moderate correlation between nightmare frequency and frequency of lucid dreaming was demonstrated. Some lucid dreamers also reported that nightmares are a trigger for dream lucidity. Previous studies have reported that lucid dreaming is more common among adolescents than adults.

A 2015 study by Julian Mutz and Amir-Homayoun Javadi showed that people who had practiced meditation for a long time tended to have more lucid dreams. The authors claimed that "Lucid dreaming is a hybrid state of consciousness with features of both waking and dreaming" in a review they published in Neuroscience of Consciousness in 2017.

Mutz and Javadi found that during lucid dreaming, there is an increase in activity of the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, the bilateral frontopolar prefrontal cortex, the precuneus, the inferior parietal lobules, and the supramarginal gyrus. All are brain functions related to higher cognitive functions, including working memory, planning, and self-consciousness. The researchers also found that during a lucid dream, "levels of self-determination" were similar to those that people experienced during states of wakefulness. They also found that lucid dreamers can only control limited aspects of their dream at once.

Mutz and Javadi also have stated that by studying lucid dreaming further, scientists could learn more about various types of consciousness, which happen to be less easy to separate and research at other times.

Techniques

This section needs expansion. You can help by adding missing information. (June 2026)

A 2022 meta-analysis of studies on lucid dream induction techniques identified 14 techniques and classified them as cognitive techniques, external stimuli, substance intervention, and cortical stimulation.

Suggested applications

Treating nightmares

It has been suggested that those who suffer from nightmares could benefit from the ability to be aware they are indeed dreaming. A pilot study performed in 2006 showed that lucid dreaming therapy treatment was successful in reducing nightmare frequency. This treatment consisted of exposure to the idea, mastery of the technique, and lucidity exercises. It was not clear what aspects of the treatment were responsible for the success of overcoming nightmares, though the treatment as a whole was said to be successful.

Australian psychologist Milan Colic has explored the application of principles from narrative therapy to clients' lucid dreams, to reduce the impact not only of nightmares during sleep but also depression, self-mutilation, and other problems in waking life. Colic found that therapeutic conversations could reduce the distressing content of dreams, while understandings about life—and even characters—from lucid dreams could be applied to their lives with marked therapeutic benefits.

Psychotherapists have applied lucid dreaming as a part of therapy. Studies have shown that, by inducing a lucid dream, recurrent nightmares can be alleviated. It is unclear whether this alleviation is due to lucidity or the ability to alter the dream itself. A 2006 study performed by Victor Spoormaker and Van den Bout evaluated the validity of lucid dreaming treatment (LDT) in chronic nightmare sufferers. LDT is composed of exposure, mastery and lucidity exercises. Results of lucid dreaming treatment revealed that the nightmare frequency of the treatment groups had decreased. In another study, Spoormaker, Van den Bout, and Meijer (2003) investigated lucid dreaming treatment for nightmares by testing eight subjects who received a one-hour individual session, which consisted of lucid dreaming exercises. The results of the study revealed that the nightmare frequency had decreased and the sleep quality had slightly increased.

Holzinger, Klösch, and Saletu managed a psychotherapy study under the working name of 'Cognition during dreaming—a therapeutic intervention in nightmares', which included 40 subjects, men and women, 18–50 years old, whose life quality was significantly altered by nightmares. The test subjects were administered Gestalt group therapy, and 24 of them were also taught to enter the state of lucid dreaming by Holzinger. This was purposefully taught in order to change the course of their nightmares. The subjects then reported the diminishment of their nightmare prevalence from 2–3 times a week to 2–3 times per month.

Creativity

In her book The Committee of Sleep, Deirdre Barrett describes how some experienced lucid dreamers have learned to remember specific practical goals such as artists looking for inspiration seeking a show of their own work once they become lucid or computer programmers looking for a screen with their desired code. However, most of these dreamers had many experiences of failing to recall waking objectives before gaining this level of control.

Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming by Stephen LaBerge and Howard Rheingold (1990) discusses creativity within dreams and lucid dreams, including testimonials from a number of people who claim they have used the practice of lucid dreaming to help them solve a number of creative issues, from an aspiring parent thinking of potential baby names to a surgeon practicing surgical techniques. The authors discuss how creativity in dreams could stem from "conscious access to the contents of our unconscious minds"; access to "tacit knowledge"—the things we know but can't explain, or things we know but are unaware that we know.

The Dreams Behind the Music book by Craig Webb (2016) details lucid dreams of a number of musical artists, including how they are able not just to hear, but also compose, mix, arrange, practice, and perform music while conscious within their dreams.

Risks

Though lucid dreaming can be beneficial to a number of aspects of life, some risks have been suggested. Those struggling with certain mental illnesses could find it hard to tell the difference between reality and the lucid dream (psychosis).

A very small percentage of people may experience sleep paralysis, which can sometimes be confused with lucid dreaming. Although from the outside, both seem to be quite similar, there are a few distinct differences that can help differentiate them. A person usually experiences sleep paralysis when they partially wake up in REM atonia, a state in which said person is partially paralyzed and cannot move their limbs. When in sleep paralysis, people may also experience hallucinations. Although said hallucinations cannot cause physical damage, they may still be frightening. There are three common types of hallucinations: an intruder in the same room, a crushing feeling on one's chest or back, and a feeling of flying or levitating. About 7.6% of the general population have experienced sleep paralysis at least once. Exiting sleep paralysis to a waking state can be achieved by intently focusing on a part of the body, such as a finger, and wiggling it, then continuing the action of moving to the hand, the arm, and so on, until the person is fully awake.

Long-term risks with lucid dreaming have not been extensively studied, although many people have reported lucid dreaming for many years without any adverse effects. In 2018, researchers at the Wisconsin Institute for Sleep and Consciousness conducted a study that concluded individuals who lucid dream more frequently have a more active and well-connected prefrontal cortex.