Sleep walking / talking while lucid dreaming?

September 8, 2005 9:59 AM

Sleep walking / talking while lucid dreaming?

I googled for 'lucid dream talk' and i read a passage saying that its possible to command yourself to talk out loud while in a lucid dream. Is this possible? Also is it possible to get yourself to do other physical things like get up and walk around while in a controlled dream state? And if not, does lucid dreaming make it more likely for these sleep anomalies to occur? (I posted on a lucid dreaming forum but no responses so far... maybe someone will be as curious as I am about this...)

posted by GleepGlop to Science & Nature (5 answers total)

Doubtful.

Normal sleep paralysis is thought to be due to mechanisms in the brain stem, particularly the reticular, vestibular, and oculomotor neurons, which prevent bodily movements, block sensory input and provide the forebrain with the internally generated activity that characterises brain activity during REM sleep. This is thought to be necessary to prevent the body from moving in response to dream stimuli. Eyes however are not paralyzed by this system, and this exception was used to prove that lucid dreaming was an objectively verifiable phenomenon.

But possible:

Sleep talking usually occurs during transitory arousals from NREM sleep. It can also occur during REM sleep at which time it represents a motor breakthrough (see sleep paralysis) of dream speech (the words spoken in a dream are uttered out loud). Full consciousness is not achieved and the sleep talker is not aware of his vocal output.

IANAD, but it seems like most sleepwalking and sleeptalking occurs when someone's transitioning from one sleep phase to another, or when someone's partially awakened--times when sleep paralysis isn't in effect. Lucid dreaming only happens deep in the REM phase. I'm skeptical that people can actively cause a "motor breakthrough" of sleep paralysis.
posted by jbrjake at 12:52 PM on September 8, 2005

jbrjake: But lucid dreams can stimulate you into a semi-awake state and become hypnogogic hallucinations, which can be more vivid than dreams, verging on more vivid than reality. In that state semi-awake I'd venture things like sleeptalking are more likely.

Incidentally, the "astral projection" technique people do is getting into that hallucinatory state the other way, by falling asleep while maintaining attention, similar to LaBerge's WILD technique (the sudden sensory deprivation is what causes experiences of leaving the body). I've read about people talking aloud while doing that. So, yeah, it's possible, but not while in a normal REM dream.
posted by abcde at 3:01 PM on September 8, 2005

Response by poster: not while in a normal REM dream: Dion McGregor (tzadik records) thats all i have to say!

i guess its hard to say what is and isnt possible with this 'out there' kind of stuff, but really i just mostly wanted to know if i would be blasting off like dion mcgregor if i start getting worked up in a lucid dream... probably not.
posted by GleepGlop at 3:52 PM on September 8, 2005

Yeah, but he had a condition, I assume.
posted by abcde at 6:59 PM on September 8, 2005

And almost always you can tell if you're in hypnagogic hallucination, it's very tangibly different, and even then it's unlikely you'll start sleeptalking anyway.
posted by abcde at 7:00 PM on September 8, 2005