Sleep and Consciousness
Lucid Dreaming Is REMing at It's Best
Figure 5 summarizes some of the biological activity associated with lucid dreaming. On the left is the REM episode prior to the eye movement signal. While on the right are the same physiological variables after the eye movement signal. You can see that across the board there is an increase in activity immediately after the signal. For instance, REM density, the number of eye movements per unit of time, goes up. This may be a rough estimate of the efficiency of REM sleep in doing its task. Specifically the more eye movements in a shorter period of time can be interpreted as indicating that the brain is doing more efficiently what it is supposed to do in REM sleep.
Also evident in Figure 5 is the increase in respiration rate, heart rate, and skin potential. If you think about these findings in the context of what I have just told you about REM sleep and it's hyper effect on many bodily functions, in lucid REM there is another significant jump in heart rate, respiration and skin potential. One might say that lucid REM is more of whatever REMing is about.
Not shown in this figure is data regarding the paralysis associated with REM. Remember you're paralyzed in REM. One of the measures of paralysis is the Hoffman or H-reflex, a spinal reflex. It turns out that in lucid REM, you're significantly more paralyzed than in ordinary REM. Paralyzed isn't just an on - off mechanism. There's varying degrees of cataplexy. Thus whatever REM sleep is about relative to NREM, lucid REM is more of it. REM sleep is about dreaming, which is a unique form of mentation in sleep. Lucid REM sleep is more of that.