Four independent laboratories, including teams at Northwestern University and Sorbonne University, tried something different: asking people questions while they were still asleep and dreaming, and watching for a reply in real time.
Working with 36 people, from novices to frequent lucid dreamers, researchers used flashing lights, spoken words, or taps to deliver simple math and yes-or-no questions during REM sleep, and had dreamers answer using pre-agreed patterns of eye movements or facial muscle twitches that showed up on recording equipment.
Dreamers answered correctly on 29 separate occasions across six of the people tested, sometimes incorporating the question itself into the dream's storyline before responding. The method lets researchers study a dream as it happens rather than relying on recollection after waking, though it depends on the sleeper having a lucid dream, and most attempts still failed to get a clear answer back.
Read the original study
Konkoly et al., Current Biology, 2021 · doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.026
A question asked mid-dream, and an answer sent back.
Source
- Konkoly, K. R., Appel, K., Chabani, E., Mangiaruga, A., Gott, J., Mallett, R., Caughran, B., Witkowski, S., Whitmore, N. W., Mazurek, C. Y., Berent, J. B., Weber, F. D., Türker, B., Leu-Semenescu, S., Maranci, J.-B., Pipa, G., Arnulf, I., Oudiette, D., Dresler, M., & Paller, K. A. (2021). Real-time dialogue between experimenters and dreamers during REM sleep. Current Biology, 31(7), 1417–1427.e6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2021.01.026