[Although it only involved four participants, an intriguing new research report in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness suggests that presence-evoking virtual reality (in which a user is aware that they’re only using technology but can still influence the course of and be profoundly influenced by the experience) can enhance lucid dreaming (in which a sleeping person is aware that they’re only dreaming but can influence the course of and be profoundly influenced by the dreaming experience). As the authors put it in their abstract, VR may “allow for even more expansive explorations of immersive multisensory experience” in lucid dreaming. The research is described in the story below from IFLScience; a March 2025 story from Hackaday describes a related research project. The citations and abstracts from both studies follow below. –Matthew]

Scientists Used Virtual Reality To Alter People’s Lucid Dreams In Mindboggling Feat

Sleepers reported a sense of awe and a loss of self.

By Benjamin Taub, freelance writer
Edited by Johannes Van Zijl

Researchers have successfully induced lucid dreams involving feelings of compassion and a sense of ego-loss in four participants. The feat was achieved by exposing the quartet to a specially designed virtual reality experience in the hours before bedtime, illustrating the potential of VR to influence subconscious processes and generate lasting psychological changes.

“By bridging the realms of virtual waking and dreaming states, this study opens new avenues for understanding how combining immersive technologies and sleep-engineering technologies might be leveraged for therapeutic and personal growth in waking life,” write the researchers in a new study.

To conduct their unique experiment, the team recruited four people who claimed to have regular lucid dreams, in which a sleeper becomes aware that they are dreaming and can often control elements of the dreamscape. Using virtual reality headsets, the participants were introduced to a program called Ripple, which aimed to generate feelings of awe, oneness and the loss of self – also known as ego-attenuation.

Previous studies have demonstrated that similar VR programs can trigger mystical experiences and ego-dissolution to the same extent as psychedelic drugs. In the case of Ripple, users saw themselves as a glowing sphere of light which then moved in synchrony with other people’s “energetic bodies”, before merging with them to produce a sense of oneness between participants and facilitators.

After an initial introduction to the experience, the volunteers were asked to return to the lab a week later for a second session, this time bringing their pyjamas. Three hours before going to bed, the VR headsets were fired up and participants re-entered the world of Ripple, before the researchers monitored their sleep using electroencephalography (EEG).

When brain activity readings indicated that the slumbering subjects had entered REM sleep, the researchers quietly played sounds from Ripple in an attempt to trigger lucid dreams resembling the VR. “Three participants experienced lucid dreams about Ripple that night, and all four reported dreams containing elements of Ripple,” they write.

Follow-up interviews then confirmed that the emotional and psychological effects of Ripple were recapitulated in these lucid dreams and even spilled over into waking life. For instance, the study authors explain that “Participant 4 reported a profound experience of interconnectedness and ego-dissolution,” while “participants 2 and 3 reported heightened waking sensory perception, such as touch and smell, for several days.”

Despite the small scale of the study, the researchers conclude that their results “underscore a way to expand VR’s benefits via VR-based dreaming.”

“This study opens the door for future research to now test the degree to which lucid dreaming combined with VR can benefit psychological well-being,” they write. “In particular, we envision many ways for dream content to synchronize with ego-attenuation and the perpetuation of awe in VR environments.”

The study has been published in the journal Neuroscience of Consciousness.

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[From Neuroscience of Consciousness]

Morris, D. J. et al. (2025). Lucid dreaming of a prior virtual-reality experience with ego-transcendent qualities: A proof-of-concept study. Neuroscience of Consciousness, 2025(1), niaf017. https://doi.org/10.1093/nc/niaf017

ABSTRACT: The immersive environments of virtual reality (VR) have potential to engender a vast range of experiences. Although participants recognize these experiences as artificial, the consequences can still be profound. Compared to VR, lucid dreams—characterized by awareness that one is dreaming—potentially allow for even more expansive explorations of immersive multisensory experience. Furthermore, lucid dreaming could conceivably enhance the impact of a prior VR experience, producing more profound effects than the VR experience alone. As an initial step along those lines, we attempted to induce lucid dreams about a VR experience called Ripple, with the goal of documenting the impact of the combination. In prior research, Ripple by itself was shown to reduce self-other boundaries and enhance interconnectedness. We recruited four frequent lucid dreamers to experience Ripple on two occasions, followed by an overnight session with sounds from Ripple presented quietly during polysomnographically verified rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. Three participants experienced lucid dreams about Ripple that night, and all four reported dreams containing elements of Ripple. The lucid dreams were validated in real time by physiological signals from the dreamers to indicate their concurrent experience of lucidity in the dream, followed by signals of dreaming about the VR experience. On this basis, we can confirm that it was possible in these circumstances for people to have lucid dreams recapitulating elements of the prior VR experience. Our findings also showcase how the synergistic combination of VR and lucid dreaming could be strongly beneficial.

[From Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B]

Jarrod, G. et al. (2021). Virtual reality training of lucid dreaming. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 376:20190697. http://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0697

ABSTRACT: Metacognitive reflections on one’s current state of mind are largely absent during dreaming. Lucid dreaming as the exception to this rule is a rare phenomenon; however, its occurrence can be facilitated through cognitive training. A central idea of respective training strategies is to regularly question one’s phenomenal experience: is the currently experienced world real, or just a dream? Here, we tested if such lucid dreaming training can be enhanced with dream-like virtual reality (VR): over the course of four weeks, volunteers underwent lucid dreaming training in VR scenarios comprising dream-like elements, classical lucid dreaming training or no training. We found that VR-assisted training led to significantly stronger increases in lucid dreaming compared to the no-training condition. Eye signal-verified lucid dreams during polysomnography supported behavioural results. We discuss the potential mechanisms underlying these findings, in particular the role of synthetic dream-like experiences, incorporation of VR content in dream imagery serving as memory cues, and extended dissociative effects of VR session on subsequent experiences that might amplify lucid dreaming training during wakefulness.

This article is part of the theme issue ‘Offline perception: voluntary and spontaneous perceptual experiences without matching external stimulation’.