Genetic predisosition for LDs

Just this weekend I was at my parents house and I brought up LDs. I had mentioned that I used to have them when I was younger, but now I have them almost every night. My mom and both my sisters responded that when they were younger they had lucid dreams too. They commented that they had flown in their dreams etc, but as they got older it stopped happening.

Like I said, the same exact scenario happened to me, except I got back into intentionally lucid dreaming. I have only been doing it for the past six months, but it seems it may have been an easier journey into lucidity than most people have. Could there be a link with genetically inclinded lucid dreamers?

Another interesting note… my mom and little sisters told me a story about my little sister when she was about 6. We had moved into a new house and my sister seemed to not be handling it well. She started having bed wetting problems and other signs of stress, but the more interesting thing is that she would often have full blown hallucinations while in the car. She told me about one time she was riding in the car with my mom and she looked in the rearview mirror and saw giant dinosaurs chasing after the car. My mom confirmed the story and said that she had been terrified. Clearly she entered some kind of meditative/dream state, because the problem stopped after she adjusted, but I just thought thiis was awesome and worth noting, even if it didn’t have a topic of its own.

thats pretty cool. not like my family.

Impressive experience! Yes it seems like this powerful hallucination is a reaction to her problems of adjusting to the new environment. Perhaps she really entered a dreamstate… difficult to say.

About the topic, personally I don’t believe LDing is linked to genetics. I can only relate to my own situation: no one in my family is interested in dreaming. I think practically everyone has the talents to cultivate LDing, but with some people it goes faster to develop the skills (such as in your case apparently). That’s the case with everything. Most people however stay unaware of its existence. Only those who are lucky enough to hear about LDing and search deeper, might become interested in it. The fact that some family members of yours were also a bit interested in dreams might very well be coincidence. Imo

Maybe your family just has more of an open mind about things than most, or maybe they’re just more positive about doing things in general. I believe (with not a scrap of evidence to support it) that genetics doesn’t play a very big role in it, save physiological conditions (e.g., a family with a history of depression might find it harder than one without), but that it’s more about frame of mind. But maybe, who knows.

I agree with Vae Victus. Genetics doesn’t seem to play a role, but I do think people who grow up in families that are open-minded and into spiritual things have a better chance at being accustomed to lucid dreaming. In my own family, there are at least five people who are familiar with and are capable of LDing. Reading seems to help too. Families that are avid readers (with eclectic taste) are more likely to learn about different topics–LDing included. I consider myself lucky. There are so many cool things I wouldn’t know about if I didn’t have such a spiritual family. (And thank God for my mom’s handful of book clubs she belongs to!)

I highly doubt LDing is directly related to genes. Perhaps, however, there is something about sleep cycles (maybe longer REM sleep than average) which causes this.

By the way, 60% of people say they had LDs in their childhood. I don’t think your family is particularly significant evidence for a link.

Sure, “60% of people have had LDs in their childhood,” but that doesn’t account for those who are STILL interested in LDing. Having a family “into that kind of stuff” is helpful in prolonging interests. Do you think 60 out of 100 people are still lucid dreaming? I doubt it. I don’t think you can dispute the idea that family influences are a big part of a person’s life. All I was saying is that MY influences have caused me to be interested in what I am today. That seems like it would go for most other people (regardless of the area of interest).

BTW, my family isn’t interested in LDs, and it didn’t jsut happened once, it happened all the time like it did to me. It has clearly been shown that specific mental conditions are better for lucid dreaming, for example sleeping lightly during REM cycles.

I wasn’t saying that lucid dreaming is dependent on genetics, but any one who has studied any psychology knows that, consistently, characteristics are 50% determined by genetics and 50% by socialization (by average of course). Some characteristics are clearly more predisposed to socialization, but some, are strongly influenced by genetics (most people would say personality is a socialization thing, but your personality is most strongly effected first by your brain chemsitry and then by your life situation. This is the very philosphy behind drugs like ritalin and SSRIs/MAOIS).

Some have you ahve touched upon socialization as a factor. If your family or friends are into lucid dreaming, there is a greater chance that you are. However, not even coincidence explains that my father has not lucid dreaming experiences, but both my sisters and I do. Clearly, because when my mom was younger she didn’t know what lucid dreaming was, but it obviously happened enough for her to learn to fly. In this case socialization had nothing to do with lucid dreaming. It seems that it would have to be the result of brain chemistry. I know you say 60% of people have had lucid dreams, but that doesn’t mean regularly and 60% is almost random, if you subtract the people who actually know what lucid dreaming is, it doesn’t seem as great a coincidence that she, both my sisters and I all experienced very regular lucid dreams as children.

From a group of people who is willing to consider shared dreaming, I am suprised they are unwilling to explore the posibilty that some people have an easier time lucid dreaming that others, because of their genetics. I mean… if some people have an easier time in school because of their genetics, why is it so far fetched?

I didn’t look at it that way. You’re right. It’s closed-minded to discount genetics as a factor in LD ability. I was just thinking about how in my own family, many of us enjoy writing and have a knack for it. It seems coincidental that out of my nine main family members, six of us are what we consider to be “writers.” It could be related to genetics. . .

Thanks for your post. It made me open my eyes to other possibilities.

Well, let’s not get into nature vs. nurture…
but…
I’d have to say that we may have a genetic advantage pertaining to intelligence, creativity, and learning.
Sure, the environment probably has more of a role, but genetics does matter.
I wouldn’t say that genetics is directly related to lucid dreaming abilities, but your skill in lucid dreaming may depend on your creativity and intelligence (as well as a million other factors).
But who knows?
My entire family is incredibly skilled in mathematics.
I am terrible with numbers.
Too many of them, damnit!

What does depression have to do with it?

Ive never had an LD in my life, I hope it isnt anything to do with your family, because that would mean some people are at a great advantage whilst others arent…

Although, i think yes, it must have something to do with it, although it may not be a good thing, the truth is that people are sometimes born with skills, and other people are born without skills, it is unfair, but thats how life is…
Although people say that everyone can LD, I wonder if theres anyone who can never do it… there must be someone for who it is impossible for…

but I do think that “genetics” would have something to do with it…

Where did you get these figures, and how could they possibly be measured?

How does it not? That single situation (which is a very tiny sample of a population of 6 billion) could very easily be accounted for by statistics and simple chance. If the 60% figure is correct (which I seriously doubt considering the thousands of factors involved in “internal” psychology), it sounds pretty reasonable that 3/4 of you had natural LDs, again, especially if your family is very open with each other, or regularly talk about dreams with each other, or any of the other billions of things that could be involved.

Well, I don’t believe in shared dreaming, but that’s just me. I didn’t say genetics had nothing to do with it, probably just little compared with environment. And if some psychologist ever finds that some people develop better grades (although I don’t know why this in particular is what would be measured) while having the same exact environment (which is not even a remotely possible control), I will gladly concede that genetics played a much bigger role in human affairs than I originally thought, but until then it’s mainly conjecture either way.

EDIT: Of course, I’m not saying I won’t be convinced until an impossible experiment is done, just that there hasn’t been enough evidence to convince me, personally.

I think lucid dreaming is a natural ability that we all were equally capable of growing up.

However society does not place importance on dreams “that wasn’t real honey, it was just a dream” and so unless you are in an envrionment where you are exceptionally encouarged to pursue such things, you might not reach the potential, or you might smother it.

Example: I learned how to WILD on accident as a kid, but it gave me a nightmare, and my mom told me I shouldn’t have been thinking about what I wanted to dream before I went to bed… (well becuase it was on a topic that had potential to become scary)

Did I ever try it again? No.

I used to be able to see hypnagogic like stuff with my eyes open too… did people say “hey, that’s amazing, please keep doing it, it’s a very special ability!” NO… can I do that now? No…

I bet any average kid can develop natural LDing very easy, kids are by nature meditative, contemplative, explorative, but society eventually kills that.

So is it genetic? Not really, I think all humans have the capacity to do it quite well, but it depends on how they were raised, what they believe, and what sort of sleep life they have developed throughout growing up.

Will some kids, in an equal envrionment, be more likely to LD? Probably… more right brained kids I’d imagine, but as children we are pretty heavily right brained to begin with aren’t we? Logic tends to be a hard concept for a young child to understand.

I’m trying to imagine how fundamentally different my perception and beliefs would be right now given my LD skills, if I were raised in a culture that praised lucid dreaming, or at least, recognized the importance of dreams… or even told you dreams were real… what would we do while lucid if we thought it was real, somewhere, in some reality?

How would we treat things? I think lucidity would be thought of as much more special, but much more dangerous… I think it would be a huge precious gift compared to how it’s more just a nifty matrix like video game for us now… hmm…

It’s really almost impossible to comprehend how differently I would treat my dreams if I were raised that way…

I don’t know if you think I was responding directly to you, but I wasn’t…

The 50% average is something I learned in psychology.

My family has never discussed lucid dreaming with me… this would explain why I thought something was wrong with me when I was younger, because it happened to regularly and never happened to any of my friends, when I inquired.

There have been numerous studies to show the relationship between genetics and things like inteligence and personality. Many of these are meta-analysis of multiple case studies. Other than that, I don’t know how they came up with this average, but they have, so it is safe to accept the link between genetics and inteligence, but this doesn’t mean that things like inteligence are dependent on genetics.

I think this is what you are misinterpreting. I don’t think that ability depends completely on genetics, but instead may be influenced. From the day you are born different babies show greater abilities in different areas than other babies. This is most likely due to genetics. Additionally, these “starting blocks” may lead the child on a very different path of socialization, which could result in different abilities etc, which would by the laws of implication most likely be a result of genetics. It is the first pusher theory.

I think one of the greatest things being overlooked here is also the strong link between genetics and brain chemistry. While brain chemistry can be altered through socialization, the link between genetics and brain chemistry is just as strong as genetics and height.

I think this is probably the reason that, for some reason, some people are so anti-nature. It makes them feel like things are out of their hands.

Nothing that I know of. It was just an example.

I was just trying to prompt a debate. I doubt you started the topic to hear one side of the discussion. I apologize if I seemed hostile. It certainly wasn’t my intention.

The 50% thing doesn’t even make sense. I’m not sure what it’s measuring, how, or what definitions are being used, but it’s just a made-up statistic.

I’ve never heard of anyone that disputed the fact that genetics influence your personality, intelligence, etc. But, based on what I’ve read, the amount is blatantly negligible compared to environment. If you have some citations that propose a counter-point to that stance (i.e., detailed experiments, not conjecture), I would appreciate you posting them.

Well, we seem to both believe the same thing then. Perhaps we’re just on slightly different areas of the spectrum.

That’s equivalent to an ad hominem argument. Besides, genetics is just a large part of environment depending on what definition you’re using. The question is how much that part takes up.

TIME TO BREAK OUT THE ADOPTED TWIN STUDIES!

As far as nature versus nurture goes, psychologists don’t even bother with the question. It’s “the interaction between nature and nurture.”

Suppose you live in an African tribe. You are very tall, and your chosen profession is a warrior. You’re combative and ill-tempered. In your tribe, height is very important for warriors.

Is that nature or nurture?

Height = nature
Value of height for warriors = nurture
You’re a warrior = nature x nurture

It could be that genetic advantages exist, for example some combinations of neurotransmitters produced by the body could make it more easy to LD than others, and maybe there are people endowed with a body which produces more effective combinations during sleep than others. However I find it hard to believe there is a specific LD-gen or something. It’s probably a complex combination of talent and environment. But we don’t have a clue about this because science doesn’t have a clue about physiological circumstances leading to more LD’s. So anything we say here is just a guess I suppose