Michelle Carr 鈥�10, 鈥�22 (Flw) had her first lucid dream as an undergraduate at the URochester. She鈥檚 been unraveling the science of the sleeping mind ever since.
Michelle Carr 鈥�10, 鈥�22 (Flw) had experienced her share of vivid鈥攐ften terrifying鈥攄reams throughout childhood and into early adulthood. What happened at the end of a mid-morning nap during her sophomore year at the 蘑菇传媒 was different. No one was chasing her. Nothing was wrong. She was just there.
鈥淚 was in my dorm room in Rochester, and I sat up in bed,鈥� Carr recalls over Zoom from her office at the . 鈥淚 realized I was dreaming, and I looked down and could see my sleeping body lying in bed. I stood up and walked over to the wall and to the desk. I was just looking at the dream because I was so shocked at how my mind was doing this. I thought, 鈥業t looks so real.鈥� It was like that scene in Inception where [Saito] looks at the carpet very closely. That was the whole dream. I just looked at the wall and the desk, and I was like, 鈥楾his is possible.鈥�鈥�
What Carr was experiencing had a name鈥攍ucid dreaming, the state in which a person becomes aware, mid-dream, that they are dreaming鈥攖hough she didn鈥檛 know it yet. Or that deciphering experiences like the one she鈥檇 just had would become her life鈥檚 work.
Today, Carr is one of a small global cohort of researchers who call themselves dream engineers鈥攕cientists who apply techniques and technologies to influence, record, and manipulate the content of dreams to benefit memory, creativity, or well-being. She helped coin the term, organized the first Dream Engineering Workshop, and late last year released the first book to bring dream engineering to a mainstream audience. The field was galvanized by that first lucid dream but its roots, in fact, run much deeper.
Eyes wide shut
Carr grew up in Corning, New York, a small city about 100 miles south of Rochester, with two brothers and parents who highly valued education鈥攈er mother taught special education in the local school district and her father rose to vice president at Corning Community College. At around age three, she was diagnosed with moderate hearing loss鈥攁 difficulty hearing higher frequencies, and consonants in particular, that requires her to wear hearing aids in order to understand speech鈥攁nd the family began making regular trips to Rochester, a hub for audiology care and home to .
鈥淚 was just looking at the dream because I was so shocked at how my mind was doing this. I thought, 鈥業t looks so real.鈥欌赌�
Equipped with what she describes as a 鈥渧ery, very vivid鈥� imagination, Carr was drawn to both science and the arts. She was captivated by biology and harbored ambitions of becoming a writer. Dreams were a defining presence in her childhood, too鈥攕ome pleasant, others so troubling that she would lie awake for hours to avoid sleep. Her first science project, predictably enough, tackled the subject head-on.
鈥淚t was the first time the teacher was like, 鈥榊ou have to find your sources in the library and give a poster presentation to the class.鈥� So I guess I was always interested in dreams because that was the topic that I chose,鈥� Carr recalls, laughing. 鈥淚 just remember every single person in the class asked me a question afterward. Mostly, it was the typical, 鈥業 have this dream; what does it mean?鈥� Which is still what everybody does when they find out what I do.鈥�
Carr was 15 when she experienced the first of what would become frequent episodes of sleep paralysis鈥攚hen the natural muscle paralysis that occurs during REM sleep seeps into a dream. 鈥淎 shotgun fires my mind into a sudden awakening, but my body does not jolt from the recoil,鈥� she described one such episode for an undergraduate writing assignment. 鈥�What was that? It鈥檚 pitch black but for a thin line of foggy light coming through the forced squint of my eyelids. I can鈥檛 move. Why can鈥檛 I move?! I must be tied down. I must be paralyzed, or dead. My eyes . . . won鈥檛 open!鈥�
More frightening than nightmares, Carr鈥檚 sleep paralysis often involved a demon-like creature pressing so hard on her chest that it felt like it was squeezing the life right out of her. When she shared her experiences with a few friends, no one seemed to understand or recognize what was happening. (Even her professor would later tell her it sounded 鈥渢oo fictional鈥� for a nonfiction writing assignment.) It was only when she went to [the early search engine] Ask Jeeves that she learned the term 鈥渟leep paralysis鈥濃�攁nd that she was far from alone in suffering it. 鈥淭he bad news was that a select few unlucky people go on to experience sleep paralysis regularly throughout their lives, and there was no known cure or treatment,鈥� she wrote. 鈥淚 was to become one of those people.鈥�
Alternate realities
When Carr arrived at 蘑菇传媒 as a first-year student in the fall of 2006, she planned to major in biology. But an Intro to Cognition class prompted her to switch immediately to brain and cognitive sciences. 鈥淭here鈥檚 the where they show you what the attentional blink is. You鈥檙e watching people play with a ball and then a gorilla walks through the scene鈥攜ou don鈥檛 even notice it because you鈥檙e paying attention to the ball,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 was just fascinated to learn that everyone鈥檚 mind is doing this. Everything seems so concrete and so stable and solid, but it鈥檚 really illusory鈥攚e鈥檙e fabricating what we perceive in some way. And I think that ties into dreaming quite a bit.鈥�
Carr got her first taste of research as a sophomore intern in the under psychiatry professor . She recalls participating in one overnight study鈥斺�渏ust for fun鈥濃�攂ut mostly cleaning data, reviewing scientific literature, and performing other entry-level tasks as needed. 鈥淪he was one of these very motivated students who, I think, knew from early on that she was going to graduate school,鈥� says Pigeon. 鈥淪he was the kind of person who would always ask, 鈥業s there anything else I can do?鈥欌��
Carr worked in three other labs as an undergraduate, studying everything from visual cognition to video games and infant-mother attachment, while satisfying her love of the arts through clusters in photography, creative writing, tai chi, and drum circles. 鈥淚 think a huge strength of going to school there was just the amount of opportunities available,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 also really liked that side of U of R, how much the arts and creativity and the humanities were valued in concert with science and psychology. That, to me, is dream science鈥攊t鈥檚 something that鈥檚 ephemeral and hard to describe, but we鈥檙e also trying to study it very scientifically through the brain and understand what鈥檚 happening. I really appreciate being able to straddle those two worlds.鈥�
鈥淔lying is the first trick everyone learns, and once you do, that鈥檚 your transport mode of choice鈥攆orever.鈥�
Over the years, Carr also became something of an expert in lucid dreaming. After that first experience, she read everything on the topic she could find. She learned about ancient religions that used the practice to harness altered states of consciousness or prepare for death. She even conducted her own experiments, learning how to move around inside her dreams (鈥淔lying is the first trick everyone learns, and once you do, that鈥檚 your transport mode of choice鈥攆orever鈥�) or practice skills, like tai chi, that she was studying in her waking life. Perhaps most significantly, she discovered she could use lucid dreaming to confront, and even transform, her most distressing nightmares and fears.
But finding a graduate program where she could study dreams鈥攏ot just sleep, not just neuroscience, but dreams鈥攖urned out to be harder than she expected. Unwilling to compromise, she cold emailed a dozen researchers she found through the (IASD). 鈥淚s there anywhere I can actually study dreams?鈥� Several people told her no, but four or five pointed her to the same place: the , run by a researcher named . She applied鈥攙ery late, as it turned out鈥攁nd was accepted into the graduate program.
鈥淚t鈥檚 funny. I found the email I wrote to [Nielsen] before I even started, with a long list of the topics I was interested in at the time. I could have written it today,鈥� Carr says. 鈥淚鈥檓 interested in how dreaming is related to mental health and well-being鈥攈ow we can interact with our dreams, gain insight from them, and try to make them more positive. But also the more functional mechanisms of sleep: How is dreaming related to memory consolidation during sleep? How is it related to what鈥檚 happening in the body?鈥�
Into the lab
Carr spent five years in Montreal, impressing Nielsen with her calm demeanor and inquisitive mind. 鈥淯nlike me, she was quite confident in lucid dreaming being accepted by other, non-dream-oriented researchers as a legitimate area of science,鈥� he says. 鈥淐oming from a background heavily steeped in behaviorism, I never had this kind of confidence. At the same time, I came to appreciate that Michelle had very good ideas about the possible functions of dreams and nightmares.鈥�
Some of those ideas were published in a joint paper with Nielsen on sensory processing sensitivity and nightmare sufferers. Others reached a different audience entirely through a Carr maintained for several years, translating dream science research for general readers鈥攁n early sign that her interests extended beyond the聽lab.
The next stop after Montreal was Swansea, Wales, where Carr spent three years as a postdoctoral researcher in the sleep lab of British research psychologist . It was there that she began running her first polysomnography (sleep study) experiments using light and sound cues to induce lucid dreams. 鈥淕etting people to give eye signals in response to our cues while they were sleeping was really exciting,鈥� she says. 鈥淭hat was fun.鈥� Blagrove also introduced her to dreamwork鈥攖he practice of sharing dreams for both personal insight and empathy鈥攚hich Carr continues to study for its potential to enhance social connection.
It was while at Swansea that Carr鈥檚 ambitions for dream engineering as a field鈥攏ot just a set of techniques scattered across different labs鈥攃rystallized into something concrete. In January 2019, she organized and led the first at the MIT Media Lab, bringing together more than 50 scientists to brainstorm new technologies for studying, recording, and influencing dreams.
Later that fall, Carr returned to 蘑菇传媒鈥攁nd to Pigeon鈥檚 lab鈥攖his time as a postdoctoral associate supported by the . The fellowship enabled her to study sleep in Deaf and hard-of-hearing individuals, drawing on her own experience with hearing loss and that of Rochester鈥檚 large Deaf community. Around the same time, Carr was rising through the ranks of the IASD鈥攆irst as vice president, then as president beginning in 2021.
鈥淪he is, at first blush, not someone you would think of as especially outgoing鈥攁nd yet she has a very vast and nice network of folks that she鈥檚 built over time,鈥� Pigeon says. 鈥淪ome people who may have been working relatively independently in their labs are now a community, talking about [dream engineering] and developing it as a subfield. And it was wild that before she was even a faculty member, she became president of an international organization. It鈥檚 unheard of.鈥�
Living the dream
Carr now directs the Dream Engineering Lab鈥斺�攁t the University of Montreal鈥檚 , where she oversees six to eight graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working across several concurrent studies. The projects reflect Carr鈥檚 wide-ranging interests, from lucid dreaming and the memory sources of dreams to a unique partnership with a film studies team exploring targeted dream incubation鈥攁 technique in which subjects are shown a movie just prior to sleep, then hear clips of its soundtrack at different sleep stages.
But what excites her most鈥攁nd what she expounds on in her new book, 鈥攊s collaborating with clinicians to help those suffering from serious conditions such as addiction and chronic pain. 鈥淚 see a lot of other clinical researchers becoming interested in dreams and nightmares and how prevalent they are in their patients, and starting to question whether there鈥檚 an avenue for treatment there that鈥檚 so far been neglected,鈥� she says. 鈥淚 feel like an energy is starting to spread to other domains. Other research fields are saying, 鈥極K, there鈥檚 something we could do with this.鈥欌赌�
Looking ahead, Carr sees sleep鈥攁nd the dreams that animate it鈥攂ecoming as vital to understanding our physical and mental health as anything that happens during our waking lives. 鈥淚 think we鈥檙e really beginning to uncover this,鈥� she says. 鈥淭here are specific patterns in how dreaming changes in different health conditions. It鈥檚 something we can use as information, but also something we can treat. That would change the quality of our sleep, but also the quality of our lives.鈥�
Nearly two decades since she first awoke inside a dream, Carr has reached a point where she can choose whether to enter 鈥渢hat dark basement corner of our unconscious mind鈥� or simply bask in the sensation of becoming lucid. Most nights she sleeps nine hours and wakes without an alarm. 鈥淚 usually spend some time remembering my dreams, but I don鈥檛 often write them down unless they鈥檙e really striking. I just kind of rehearse them a little bit,鈥� she says. 鈥淚f I had a bad dream, I鈥檒l think about it and maybe reframe it. But that鈥檚 really it.鈥�
Then she gets up and looks around. She might glance back at the bed. There鈥檚 nothing鈥攁nd no one鈥攖here.
