There's a Reliable Way to Trigger Lucid Dreams, Scientists Have Found

They are incredible. It is amazing. It was magical. The most amazing thing about lucid dreams is how realistic they seem.

Efforts to get us to experience dreams in our lives have delivered mixed results. One of the most effective ways of inducing dream inducing sleep was found in a study.

Researchers at the University of Wisconsin and the Lucidity Institute in Hawaii wanted to investigate how chemicals called acetylcholinesterase inhibitors might promote lucid dreaming.

The neurotransmitter acetylcholine is thought to help regulate REM sleep, and AChEls help this compound aggregate in the brain, by blocking anidase that inactivates acetylcholine.

A common drug used to treat memory decline in Alzheimer's disease is a fast-acting AChEI with only mild side effects, so researchers recruited 121 participants to see what effect the drug has.

These volunteers were not just everyday people, they were also enthusiasts with an interest in lucid dreams who had trained with the MILD technique.

Things started to happen when this cognitive training was combined with galantamine.

The participants took increasing amounts of the drug over the course of three nights.

Participants woke 4.5 hours after the lights went out, practiced their dream techniques, and took their capsule to sleep.

The higher the dose, the stronger the result as the combination of the two techniques looks to help with dreams.

When taking a placebo, 14 percent of participants reported a dream, but when taking 4 and 8 grams of galantamine, this increased to 27 and 42 percent, respectively.

The combined protocol resulted in a total of 69 out of 121 participants having a dream on at least one night on an active dose of galantamine.

This protocol is one of the most effective methods for inducing dreams known to-date, and holds promise for making dreams available to a wider population.

In addition to helping people enjoy fantastic dreams where they can help control what happens, the research could also help explain the links between dreams and consciousness, and help people to confront their fears.

The new method finally has the success rate we need to be able to properly do research on lucid dreaming, according to Denholm Aspy, a psychologist from the University of Adelaide in Australia.

Nobody should be experimenting with galantamine on their own until we know more about the safety of this technique. Once more research is done, these findings may lead to a world of imaginary fun and adventure.

One of the team, cognitive neuroscientist Benjamin Baird from the University of Wisconsin, said that he could feel the coarse texture and outline of individual bricks as he ran his hand along a brick wall.

It's like going into the Star Trek holodeck, where you can have any experience you want.

The findings were reported in a journal.

The first version of this article was published in August.