Epoch Times...It’s probably fair to assume that at this moment, you are, in fact, awake. You’re reading; you’re scrolling. All waking activities. But let’s say, hypothetically, that as you’re reading this, the floor and everything else beneath you dissolve, leaving your body floating where your chair had been seconds before. No one around you seems to think this is odd; they’re all floating, too.
There are a few options here. One, you can panic, because why is the floor gone? Two, you can roll with it, because cool, gravity’s gone. Or three, you can evaluate your surroundings, realize that neither the floor nor gravity is really going anywhere, and conclude that you must be dreaming.
Research suggests that there may be a benefit to option three: Lucid dreamers, or people with the ability to recognize their dreams as they’re happening, may be better at problem-solving during their waking hours.
In a study recently published in the journal Dreaming, study author Hannah Shaw explains, “It appeared that lucid dreamers showed the ability to see the more remote connections needed to solve [the study] problems.”
Frequent lucid dreamers have been shown to do better at selective attention, decision-making, and processing out-of-context information.
This article was originally published on www.theatlantic.com. Read the complete article here.