Lucid dreaming: not just awareness, but agency

During lucid dreaming (LD), dreamers are aware that they are dreaming and may be able to influence the oneiric content. There has been recent debate about the relative importance of the ability to influence the dream and having agency over the pure awareness of dreaming. To underline this, we examined the associations of lucid dreams without agency (LD−Ag) and lucid dreams with agency (LD + Ag) to sleep and mental health problems and long COVID during the pandemic. We collected data in 16 countries on four continents from May to December 2021 on 10,715 subjects. Logistic regression was performed to predict LD−Ag and LD + Ag, with a sample of 8133 participants. We found that 30% of the participants frequently knew they were dreaming during the pandemic. About half of those (17%) reported that they could influence their dreams. Female gender and anxiety symptoms were negatively associated with LD + Ag. Dream recall, nightmares, insomnia, dream enactment behaviour (DEB), sleep vocalisation, short and long COVID and PTSD were positively associated with LD + Ag. Old age, dream recall, nightmares and anxiety symptoms were positively associated with LD−Ag, while short sleep length, being an evening type, and short COVID were negatively associated with LD−Ag. The different associations for LD−Ag and LD + Ag suggest that they may be distinct sleep states. This is also the first study to show that both COVID-19 and long COVID are associated with LD.