Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

journals.plos.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 231 posts

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#31

Post by cassowary37 »

Missing a key analysis - note this sentence: "Side effects were more commonly reported for both the 4 mg dose (p = 0.039) and 8 mg dose (p = 0.057) compared to placebo"

It's highly likely that participants were unblinded by side effects, a common problem in many placebo-controlled trials that is rarely addressed. If you're a lucid dreamer, and interested enough to participate in a clinical trial, you might be more apt to report the outcome of interest during active drug (= side effect) periods. Note that this need not be a conscious decision, just an unconscious bias.

Many RCT's include some language about asking participants to guess treatment assignment - but this result is rarely reported...

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#32

Post by tekromancr »

I've lucid dreamed a few times, and every time I am able to summon a "debug menu". Sort of a drop-down menu with all of the dream parameters. I can never think of anything more interesting to try than Physics>Gravity>moon.

I turned off collisions once, and spent like twenty minutes just putting my hands through walls and giggling.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#33

Post by always_good »

mrspeaker wrote: post #24
always_good wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's the difference between that and merely dreaming that you are? Don't you feel like you have control and are making decisions in every dream that you have? Is it really that interesting if you happen to dream that you're controlling a dream vs dreaming that you're controlling your flight around the world or whatever nonsense we dream about?

I'd say you likely haven't lucid dreamed, because it's a you-really-know-it feeling. You realize you are dreaming "Oh, I'm dreaming right now. I'm lying in my bed, and dreaming this place", and you can decide to do things - but you also have to be careful not to become too lucid and wake yourself up (usually I do this by calming myself down) and not to fall into a "real" dream (I find that spinning in circles makes y…

I had a dream where I was in my bedroom and noticed that it was arranged in an old way that I had since rearranged a month ago. I suggested to myself that I was in a dream and tried to wake myself up. I woke up into yet another dream where the room was in its current arrangement. I woke up shortly after for real this time, into reality.

I woke up to the sun beaming through the window into my eyes. Maybe I was more lucid/aware than usual for that reason.

But I have no way of knowing whether the control/awareness I had in that dream was any different than the illusion of control/awareness and decision-making I have in any other dream.

It seems like quite a leap to assume I was in control just because I dreamed I was.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#34

Post by defertoreptar »

always_good wrote: post #20
atentaten wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you know you're dreaming and can control it, then it is lucid dreaming.

But what's the difference between that and merely dreaming that you are? Don't you feel like you have control and are making decisions in every dream that you have? Is it really that interesting if you happen to dream that you're controlling a dream vs dreaming that you're controlling your flight around the world or whatever nonsense we dream about?

I know what you mean. I want to say I've had both types of dreams, but as you're pointing out, how could I know for sure?

I will say that when I'm having a genuine lucid dream, after I wake up, I know without a doubt it was a lucid dream. With regular dreams, I look back on them and don't exactly identify with my "dream self." That guy didn't realize how absurd the scenario was. He resembles me, but he wasn't me.

With a genuine lucid dream, I look back at the dreamer and can say, "yeah that was 100% me." Also, I find that becoming lucid always sort of pulls the dream into a more realistic scenario. It goes from chaotic and weird to just plain normal life (only, the rules have changed now).

So I guess what leads me to believe that I've had these "pseudo lucid dreams" is that I look back on them after waking and don't identify with the dreamer the same way I do with a genuine lucid dream. It feels more like I was watching someone else, like a recording, than as though it was a real firsthand experience

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#35

Post by drivingmenuts »

AnthonBerg wrote: post #16
wil421 wrote: post #12

Has anyone taken Chantix to quit smoking? I did about 10 years ago and it gave me the craziest most vivid dreams and nightmares.

Yes. I dreamt I was sending psychic messages out of a dream, and woke up, and sent an SMS to apologise for the psychic message, and woke up again. So attempting to communicate out of dream layers two dreams deep. Woke up to what I believe is reality. Am there still.

If it's the one you have to pay bills in, it's reality.

Or Hell.

Same same.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#36

Post by ada1981 »

tekromancr wrote: post #32

I've lucid dreamed a few times, and every time I am able to summon a "debug menu". Sort of a drop-down menu with all of the dream parameters. I can never think of anything more interesting to try than Physics>Gravity>moon. I turned off collisions once, and spent like twenty minutes just putting my hands through walls and giggling.

Neat!

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#37

Post by bloomthrowaway »

JimboOmega wrote: post #29
bloomthrowaway wrote: post #23

Just throwing this out there. I've had hundreds of lucid dreams and it's the most amazing experiences I've have in my life. It takes practice to 1) figure out you're dreaming with some level of reliability 2) learn to take control 3) train yourself not to get too excited so you don't wake yourself almost immediately. I believe the first step is to train yourself to recognize a dream. It becomes easier once you've don…

> even pain Lucid or not, I realized a while ago that I don't experience physical pain in my dreams. I have started to wonder if this was a general experience. Experiences I'd expect to be painful (like getting shot or carried away by a wall of fire) simply startle me awake. It's interesting to hear you do feel that. I've experienced all kinds of things emotionally - embarrassment, fear, anxiety. But never physical p…

It's not pleasant. Sometimes intense enough that I'm in a state of shock through much of the next day. Most of the pain I remember has been in the form of lucid nightmares. Usually snake bites, gun shots, knives, etc. Almost never from environmental realities like hot surfaces, crashes, or falls.

Self-aware nightmares are way more terrifying than the regular variety, a lucid dream where I sometimes can't take control. I usually try to wake myself immediately, but sometimes this leads to repeated false awakenings. The worst I remember is 5 false awakenings before waking up for real.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#38

Post by politician »

jerf wrote: post #19
rangibaby wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This gels with my experience. I noticed I was dreaming and tried flying. It worked for a second, until “god” decided it wasn’t possible and I was pulled back to the ground by an invisible, irresistible force (EDIT: I think it’s called gravity?!). Trying to fight it just woke me up. The poor rendering of places I’m not meant to go to is something I noticed when I gained control of a dream and tried going into a random…

"I noticed I was dreaming and tried flying. It worked for a second until I was pulled back to the ground by an invisible, irresistible force. Trying to fight it just woke me up." This may be a Can't Unread sort of thing for some people, but... flying in my dreams is now a source of frustration for me since I noticed that no matter how "high" I fly, there is always something on the horizon higher than me. If I fly ove…

When I was younger, flying was hard because I'd inevitably crash the experience by looking down. However, after spending a lot of time staring out of windows on planes I discovered that I could actually now "look down" in dreams and not crash.

Reflecting on your comment about there always being something on the horizon, I realized that I've always imagined being surrounded by a fairly sparse cloud layer while "in flight".

So my two pieces of advice are: (1) Build up your neural network's ability to support large scenes by observing large scenes, and (2) consider things that would be reasonable to find around you while in flight (clouds, planes, other flying people, birds, etc) and actively try to find "yet larger buildings" as unreasonable.

Staying in a lucid dreaming state, for me, seems to be more about knowing when the density of ambient "plausible reality" drops too low and steering (or snapping) yourself away from those areas.

Re: Pre-sleep treatment with galantamine stimulates lucid dreaming

#39

Post by always_good »

defertoreptar wrote: post #34
always_good wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But what's the difference between that and merely dreaming that you are? Don't you feel like you have control and are making decisions in every dream that you have? Is it really that interesting if you happen to dream that you're controlling a dream vs dreaming that you're controlling your flight around the world or whatever nonsense we dream about?

I know what you mean. I want to say I've had both types of dreams, but as you're pointing out, how could I know for sure? I will say that when I'm having a genuine lucid dream, after I wake up, I know without a doubt it was a lucid dream. With regular dreams, I look back on them and don't exactly identify with my "dream self." That guy didn't realize how absurd the scenario was. He resembles me, but he wasn't me. Wit…

I wonder how lucid dreaming compares to a phenomenon where (A) we dream that we know we are dreaming and (B) it happens to line up with reality enough that we are convinced we had control.

Maybe philosophically there is no difference. But it would certainly dispel a lot of the folk magic around lucid dreaming.

Post reply on HN