Cerebral specialization during lucid dreaming: A right hemisphere hypothesis.

Abstract

Research has shown that certain individuals are able to carry out prearranged tasks while lucid dreaming, and that these tasks produce physiological effects on the body similar to what is observed during waking. It was hypothesized that the difficulty of performing cerebrally lateralized tasks in a lucid dream would reflect similarities that have been observed between reported experiences of lucid dreaming and the dominant functions of the right hemisphere. Twenty-seven participants rated the difficulty of performing three analogous pairs of left hemisphere (LH) and right hemisphere (RH) tasks, first in a lucid dream, and later in their waking imagination. For two of the task pairs, right-handed participants found the lucid LH task harder than both the lucid RH task and the imagined LH task. For the other task pair, the lucid LH task was easier than the lucid RH task, though still harder than the imagined LH task. Effects were always stronger among right-handed participants. Furthermore, dream reports accounted for the discrepancy between ratings for the task pairs, confirming the right hemisphere dominance hypothesis.

Lucid dreams: their advantage and disadvantage in the frame of search activity concept

“…Bourke and Hannah ( 2014 ) have shown that subjects who have frequent lucid dreams are able to solve more insight problems in wakefulness in comparison to non-lucid dreamers. It corresponds to data (see Holzinger, 2009 ) that lucid dreams are reported by people with strong imagination, as well as to the investigation of Piller ( 2009 ) who showed the right hemisphere dominance during lucid dreams, because the right hemisphere plays an important role in creativity and insight (Rotenberg, 1993 ).…”

Squaring the round: An unusual progressive graphomotor impairment with post‐mortem findings

“…A distributed neural network primarily involving the left frontoparietal region appears to mediate the motor control skills needed for writing, and translation of orthographic information into hand movements is attributed to the superior parietal and frontal premotor regions (Beeson et al, 2003). Recent clinical evidence suggests a role for the cerebellum and the thalamus in the planning and execution of graphomotor output (De Smet et al, 2011;Mari€ en et al, 2007Mari€ en et al, , 2013Vandenborre et al, 2015) where the subcortical system has an indirect but necessary impact on the planning of the temporal (but not the spatial) features of the graphomotor output.…”