Does Doing Things In Dreams Help Make You Better At It In Real Life?

Pretty much all in the title...

I've had a few lucid dreams which in them I was singing, but after them dreams each time I've noticed how I've got better after each dream.
Don't get me wrong I'm not a great singer but every time after a singing dream I can tell I've got better...

Is this a known dream fact or anything?

Thank you

It depends on the activity, but for 99% of things I would have to say yes.

However I read something somewhere if you lucid dream you dont enter R.E..M. due to your brain being active or something, but don't quote. Me on that.

But yes, think about it... If I want to practice positions on a guitar, I could learn the fretboard in my dreams, and that knowledge would carry over into my waking state!

a reply to: BloodSister
For some things, yes it does, but not for the reasons you may be thinking.
Its not because you're “practicing” in your sleep, but rather because your growing new neural pathways relating to what you're dreaming about. So for example, if you start playing a new computer game, your brain might insert aspects of that game into your dreams as the new pathways grow while you sleep. Essentially your brain “grows” to learn how to play the game better the next time you are playing it. This is why your dreams contain aspects of things you have recently done or learned about. REM is when the brain flushes the short term memory, selects important aspects of it, and grows new permanent memory paths relating to those short term memories.

It will not help you get better at everything though, some things are talent based, and though you may get better with experience, you will not develop a talent you don't already have. For example dreaming that you are a great ball player, might help you better learn the skills of an experienced player, but it s not going to magically give someone with no athletic talent the ability to play like a pro.

No, not for me anyway.

In my dreams I am great with numbers and I understand physics (or think I do) and can calculate all sorts of problems but in reality I wake up and go "huh". It all makes sense in my dreams but outside them, I got nothing except basic math skills.

Start a dream journal if you don't all ready have one. If you lucid dream a lot then you should be able to recall a good portion of it.

If you have the determination, which is tough because most of the time you just want to fall back asleep into it, write down everything immediately and with as much detail as possible. Describe every little detail you can think of. The more you do this you will begin to develop triggers and cues that you brain will subconsciously recognize before or during you begin to lucid dream.

Some lucid dreams I have feel like some serious virtual reality. I've gotten really good falling back asleep into the same dream, by adjusting my snooze alarm to wake me up 2 times before my actual alarm goes off. This works to quickly add stimulation to your brain while maintaining a close gap between deep r.e.m. sleep.

Another theory suggests that monoamine shutdown is required so that the monoamine receptors in the brain can recover to regain full sensitivity. Indeed, if REM sleep is repeatedly interrupted, the person will compensate for it with longer REM sleep, "rebound sleep", at the next opportunity

The alarm is set for intervals of 28min, just enough time fall back asleep and feel like I took a vacation.

Memory-related theories

According to one theory, certain memories are consolidated during REM sleep. Numerous studies have suggested that REM sleep is important for consolidation of procedural memory and spatial memory. (Slow-wave sleep, part of non-REM sleep, appears to be important for declarative memory.) A recent study shows that artificial enhancement of the non-REM sleep improves the next-day recall of memorized pairs of words. Tucker et al. demonstrated that a daytime nap containing solely non-REM sleep enhances declarative memory but not procedural memory. Monoamine oxidase (MAO) inhibitors and tricyclic antidepressants can suppress REM sleep and these drugs show no evidence of impairing memory. Some studies show MAO inhibitors improve memory. Moreover, one case study of an individual who had little or no REM sleep due to a shrapnel injury to the brainstem did not find the individual's memory to be impaired. (For a more detailed critique on the link between sleep and memory.

If a simulation could teach astronauts how to land on the moon, then why not a simulation in your mind? The theories have change over time. I just don't like it developed as a control mechanism rather than a release mechanism. Imagine an implant that could be hijacked at forces you to relive a traumatic event while you panic in fear. Real Professor X kind of stuff.

Intimately related to views on REM function in memory consolidation, Mitchison and Crick have proposed that by virtue of its inherent spontaneous activity, the function of REM sleep "is to remove certain undesirable modes of interaction in networks of cells in the cerebral cortex", which process they characterize as "unlearning". As a result, those memories which are relevant (whose underlying neuronal substrate is strong enough to withstand such spontaneous, chaotic activation), are further strengthened, whilst weaker, transient, "noise" memory traces disintegrate.

I don't know if that last line is a good thing or bad thing. There's been lots of talk about memory manipulation recently. Get in line for your bios vaccine!

originally posted by: BloodSister
I've had a few lucid dreams which in them I was singing, but after them dreams each time I've noticed how I've got better after each dream. [...] Is this a known dream fact or anything?

There have been a number of studies done that prove that simply by thinking of something, imagining and concentrating on something and going over it in your head, makes you slightly better at that thing when you do it in real life. Even something as physical as shooting a basketball. Players improved when they imagined playing and getting better, more than players who didn't take that time to visualize shooting baskets.

Of course, neither of them improved as much as the players who actually physically practiced in real life. But there was some small bit of improvement.

I don't know if that is true, but it is plausible, as here is what I have found. If I actually do my best to visualize doing something before I do it, it seems like it always goes incredibly smoothly, whatever the thing is at that time. Now I don't know if this visualization has anything to do with it, but I would guess that it does.

So if your mind is experiencing something, regardless of whether you are asleep or awake, I suppose that theoretically it could make you better at doing something. Here is why I do the visualization thing: doing this helps me to see any potential hazards, things going wrong, etc, and allows me to develop contingencies for them. I do it with all kinds of stuff. Just basic, everyday stuff as well.

This could also be done to increase confidence, at least from what I have experienced, because the more prepared you are for anything, the more confident you could potentially be. Most people are more confident when better prepared. Even visualization does not mean that things won't fall apart when they go awry, but I still find it works for me. Perhaps that has something to do with creating your own reality, which I have heard some mention before.

The only reason that I could think of that may make this impossible is that your conscious and subconscious minds do not work in the same way. Or they do not "think" in the same way. And I don't think dreams are considered conscious thought, so learning something through dreams may not be feasible. I am not really sure either way.

Brain Zaps Can Trigger Lucid Dreams

Lucid dreams, in which people are aware of and can control their dreams, are rare. But now scientists have found they can induce this weird state of mind in people by zapping their brains with a specific frequency of electricity.

"I never thought this would work," said study researcher Dr. John Allan Hobson, a psychiatrist and longtime sleep researcher at Harvard University. "But it looks like it does."

The results showed that when the inexperienced dreamers were zapped with a current of 40 Hertz, 77 percent of the time these participants reported having what were described as lucid dreams.

Don't try this at home kids!

Over four nights, they applied the 30-second bolts of electrical currents to the participants' scalps, two minutes after the participants had entered the dreaming stage of sleep, as shown by their brains' activity patterns. The frequency of stimulation varied from 2 Hz to 100 Hz, and sometimes the researchers didn't actually deliver any electrical currents. The participants were then immediately woken up to report their dreams to an interviewer who wasn't aware of which stimulation they had received.

Where do I sign up?

Sports psychologists have long used visualization to improve athletic performance-- especially in golf. Golf is 99% mentel, and will make you totally mental.

Visualization helped my game a lot. Envision the perfect shot each time, then turn off your brain and do it. (The trick, of course, is getting out of your own head... much easier said than done). The funny thing is, when I played my best rounds, it always felt a bit dream lke in a sense...

I imagine, if you had the perfect lucid dream of the perfect round... and could wake up and walk on to the course in that "zenlike" state... the crowd is silent as this, once humble greens keeper... is about to become the Master's Champion...

a reply to: BloodSister

I'd say they do.
My experience on the subject is that when I play a lot of Chess, Backgammon or Go, I will have dreams where all I see is the board and pieces and play whole games out in my dreams. I tend to have small to large breakthroughs in my understanding of these games following the dreams.

The last dream I had of this type was last night. I found a unusual folding board game that resembles Mancala at a local thrift store the other day. I had to do a little online sleuthing to figure out it's call Bao Zanzibar . Anyways, last night I found an online version that teaches you how to play and you can play against AI. I played around ten games to get the rules down. Then I went to sleep. I spent all last night playing the game in my dream. The really interesting thing for me to note about the dream was that the board I picked up was the same exact one in my dream.