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Te AAPTOVER EP ARSERSS CONROS IN BucAlardaDPI6-00789R003100140001-2 DRAFT ll. BACKGROUND SEES Dreams involving putative anomalous cognition (AC) have been part of every human culture from the times of ancient Greece to the present. The first serious attempt, however, to examine AC in dreams under controlled conditions began under the direction of Montague Ullman, MD in 1962 at the Com- munity Mental Health Center of the Maimonides Medical Center in Brooklyn, New York. The re- search of AC in dreams continued until 1972 where the dream protocol was abandoned in favor of a simpler and more rapid approach to the study of AC. Child has summarized and critiqued this body of research in the American Psychologist." In these studies, individuals were asked to sleep in a laboratory and be monitored for brain activity and eye movement. From these records, it was possible to tell when they were dreaming. Upon the onset of rapid eye movement (REM), an experimenter notified a sender, who was isolated in a remote laborato- ry, to begin attending to a randomly selected target. At the end of the REM period, the dreamer was awakened and asked to report the dream content. This procedure was repeated throughout the night using the same target material for each separate dream (e.g., up to ten). The assessment of the AC content was accomplished through independent judges. As described by Child, significant evidence for AC was observed under a variety of conditions. The dreamers in these studies, however, were not necessarily focused upon the AC task. They slept as usual and, when asked, reported their dream content. In our pilot study we will focus the dreamer ex- plicitly on the AC task using the methods of lucid dreaming. A lucid dream is one during which the sleeper becomes conscious aware that the experience is a dream as opposed to the waking state. LaBerge et al. (1981) have found that it is possible for dreamers to know when they dreaming and to signal the waking world, through predetermined eye movements, indicating their awareness.2 Using this ability, LaBerge et al. (1986 and 1988) conducted a number of psychophy- siological studies to determine the differences between waking and dreaming from that prospective.>4 They found that dreaming is similar to the waking state. Motor action is mostly inhibited from the brain stem downward; however, the cerebral cortex appears not to “know” this. In this preliminary pilot study, we will use the skills developed by LaBerge to teach individuals to lucid dream. Differing from the earlier AC dream studies, our dreamers will be instructed to adopt a proac- tive attitude to seek out and remember the AC target. In this way, we will determine the degree to which lucid dreaming can facilitate the reception of AC material. ee * References may be found at the end of the document and are included in their entirety in the Appendix. y ty Pp Approved For Release 2900/08/08: ClApROFP6-00789R003100140001-2