LUCID DREAMING
With opulent imagery, this film documents the latest research into the dream state abilities of our brain and the advances being made by science into the last refuges of the (supposed) unconscious.
According to Sigmund Freud dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious”. Neuroscientists, on the other hand, maintained that dreams are nothing but the “waste products” of neuronal activity. The scientific study of dreams is experiencing a new boom, across all research disciplines. One of the reasons for this is the newly discovered abilities of lucid dreamers. They are masters of a paradox: while asleep they are partially awake and fully aware that they are dreaming and can thus create their own dream world. They become directors of their own dreams. The international scientific world of sleep, dream and consciousness research is hugely interested in lucid dreamers. Because those who are aware of their dreaming can even relay what they are dreaming via eye movements. This method was developed in the late ‘70s at Stanford University in California and it is still revolutionary today. Scientists at the Max Planck Institute in Munich have for the first time succeeded in tracing the contents of the dream in the brain, locating them and to some extent representing them.