Sometimes people know they are dreaming while they sleep. They can sometimes change what happens in the dream. A study at the University of Trento in Italy found that people can practice this skill. The study included 38 university students.
One group trained twice a week for one month. First, they sat quietly and practiced noticing their thoughts. Then they used virtual reality, or VR, to see computer-made worlds. When strange things happened, they asked themselves if they were dreaming. At home, they wrote about their dreams every morning and answered daily questions.
These students had dreams they knew were dreams four times as often as students who only practiced asking that question. Another group asked the question in VR worlds with normal scenes. This group was over eight times less likely to report knowing they were dreaming.
The study was small. Neither comparison group practiced quietly noticing their thoughts, so researchers cannot tell which part of the training helped more. They are now testing the training without that quiet practice. Daniel Morris, a dream researcher outside the study, said knowing you are dreaming may help people change bad dreams into good ones.
