A new peer-reviewed study suggests that some lucid dreamers may be able to experience “dream-body transformation” into animals, or even another gender, while remaining fully aware that they are dreaming.
Lucid dreaming describes a unique dreaming state in which the dreamer becomes aware that they are dreaming. This hybrid state of consciousness allows the dreamer to gain conscious control over the elements within the dream.
In a new study conducted by the California-based company REMSpace, researchers argue they have uncovered a previously unexplored form of neuroplasticity that operates at the level of personal identity.
Gender Defined
In recent years, debates about gender have been controversial in Western countries. To add context to this article and the gender debate, understanding the term’s origins could help.
“The word ‘Gender’ originates from Latin genus, and means ‘Kind’ or ‘Type,’ and it was first used in Grammar prior to its use in describing Identity,” says Dr. Lori Bohn, a board-certified psychiatric-mental health nurse practitioner and medical director at Voyager Recovery Center.
“The modern distinction between ‘Sex’ and ‘Gender’ did begin to take shape in Psychology and Sexology in the Mid-Twentieth Century via John Money,” Bohn said in an email to The Debrief.
“John Money is probably the first one to introduce the term “gender identity”, which he thought to be the private experience of gender role,” according to Professor Daphna Joel, School of Psychological Sciences and Sagol School of Neuroscience from Tel-Aviv University, who is also a member of The NeuroGenderings Network, an international group of researchers in gender studies and neuroscience.
“So for Money, there was a strong link between what people do (including sexual behavior) and their gender identity,” Professor Joel told The Debrief. Joel went on to explain how Robert Stoller, American professor of psychiatry at UCLA Medical School and a researcher at the UCLA Gender Identity Clinic, was the first to use the term in the sense of “a person’s inner, psychological sense of being male or female.”
“This is already divorced from gender roles, and is more similar to how we now understand gender identity and the type of identity the researchers asked the participants to manipulate in their lucid dream,” Joel adds. “Note, however, that the meaning of the term ‘gender identity’ in more recent years is also divorced from the body being male or female (as there are many more gender identities than sex categories).”
Of the new lucid dreaming study, Joel, who was not involved in the research, says it demonstrates that people can embody the body of the other sex, as they can with animals.
“Does their ‘gender identity’ or ‘identity’ also change while doing this (to the identity of the other sex/gender or of an animal)? At least the descriptions of some of the lucid dreams suggest there are also psychological components to the body transformation,” Joel said.
“We don’t know where or how gender identity is constructed in the brain, but in principle, if an experiment like this has been done while brain activity is scanned with MRI, we could have gain information regarding which brain circuits/regions change their activity as a person manages to transform their body into a wolf or the other sex,” Joel adds.
The Debrief also reached out to Luigi Sciambarella, Chief R&D Officer & Trainer from The Monroe Institute, who offered perspectives on the new study in terms of its implications to consciousness studies.
“In a dream, you are simultaneously the environment, the characters, and the observing perspective,” Sciambarella said. “From that standpoint, identity is clearly not fixed in the way we often assume in waking life. It can shift rapidly depending on context, attention, and expectation. In that sense, consciousness does appear capable of constructing a sense of self moment by moment.”
The Study
“Our study was conducted in The Project Elijah, where we have hundreds of advanced lucid dreamers who test our hypotheses in lucid dreams,” said Michael Raduga, founder and CEO of REMSpace and one of the new study’s authors. “Using the data, we’ve already published a few papers (since 2020).”
Raguda explains that gender within the study was used “in a phenomenological sense (how participants experienced their body and identity within the dream).” But also states that the team “did not strictly distinguish between biological sex and gender identity.”
“The study was not designed to comprehensively categorize all gender identities because we were glad to find a large enough sample of lucid dreamers just to accomplish the study,” Raduga told The Debrief in an email, noting that “Participants reported transformations relative to their own waking identity.”
“The analysis focused on the transformation experience itself,” Raduga said.
The researchers asked participants to attempt to reach a lucid dreaming state and, once in the dream, to try to alter their bodies. When the data were collected after each test, a surprising 79% reported some form of transformation, with around 85% reporting that they embodied an animal, specifically a wolf.
“The 79% reflects participants reporting some degree of transformation, not complete success. Full transformation into the opposite gender was less common, with many reports describing partial changes,” said Raduga.
After the lucid dreaming test, many participants said what they experienced wasn’t just imagination, and that they felt fully embodied during these dream-body transformations. Participants noted changes in their senses, anatomy, movement, and behavior, as well as shifts in their emotions and perceptions.
“This study points to a form of neuroplasticity operating at the level of the self,” says Raduga. “It suggests that the sense of identity is not a fixed construct, but a dynamic process that can be intentionally modified under specific conditions.”
According to one male participant described in the study, “I found myself near the mirror and twirled around. The transformation didn’t work the first time, but on the second try, I saw in the mirror a very beautiful woman, somewhat like me, with long hair and a beautiful body. I touched my breasts (they were large) and felt a pleasant sensation, then I decided to touch my vagina, but I didn’t experience any pleasant sensations. I just felt it.”
In another instance, a female participant described her experience: “While walking around the apartment, I began to imagine myself as a man. Almost immediately, my back became wider, my gait became masculine, and I felt more confident inside, as if I was no longer afraid of anything.”
To verify that the study participants were genuinely experiencing these changes rather than imagining or reconstructing them after waking, Raduga said the research team employed a specific system.
“We use a specific system to sort out imagined reports from actual ones,” Raduga told The Debrief. “It consists of a few rules and semantic markers that we use before accepting any single report.”
While the system is not flawless, Raduga says that “for non-lucid dreamers, it is almost impossible to submit a report that we will count,” describing their system as “a standard approach for studies like this.”
Based on their analysis of reports that passed the study’s screening, Raduga says that, in many instances, participants experienced difficulty undergoing the requested dream-body transformations.
“It appeared that, for psychological/cultural reasons, for many people, it is hard to transform into the opposite gender,” Raduga told The Debrief. “That is why it was much easier to transform into an animal. As a result, many people couldn’t fully accomplish the task. Some even got stuck in a transitional ‘hermaphrodite’ stage, being both man and woman.”
A Critical Eye
Not all the professionals The Debrief spoke with were entirely convinced by the study’s findings. While applying a critical eye to new research, Sciambarella said he finds the results interesting from a phenomenological standpoint, however, and suggests that lucid dreaming may involve dramatic shifts in body representation, spatial perspective, and identity. This fits with wider findings in dream research suggesting that the “sense of self is known to be fluid and context-dependent.”
Still, Sciambarella cautions others when reading this study that interpreting these findings as evidence about gender identity or the fundamental nature of consciousness, since the study relies primarily on self-reported experiences and asks participants to intentionally imagine specific transformations.
“The methodology relies heavily on self-report, with participants following explicit instructions to imagine specific transformations,” Sciambarella told The Debrief. “That introduces a significant role for suggestion, expectation, and imaginative compliance, which makes it difficult to separate genuine insight into identity from guided experiential content.”
“Lucid dreaming highlights the flexibility of experienced identity,” Sciambarella said, though adding that “this study alone doesn’t provide strong evidence about the underlying structure or origin of gender identity, nor does it settle broader questions about the nature of consciousness.”
Exploring Gender
While the term gender is not clearly defined in the recent study, nor is the gender preference of many participants, Raduga explains that “we did not collect participants’ gender identity beyond basic fields, so we cannot identify transgender participants. Maybe some of them have participated, but we don’t know it,” he said, adding that this would “be an interesting idea for a follow-up study.”
“By studies like this, and given the unique features of lucid dreaming (awareness without physical limitations), we explore the fundamental psychophysiological boundaries of perception,” Raduga explained. “For example, if gender identity can be intentionally altered, even within a lucid dream, it may reveal underlying mechanisms of human behavior and help explain the spectrum of sexual self-identification.”
Studies like this, Raduga argues, could also help to foster more understanding and empathy for those who are transgender, and thereby may encourage positive societal shifts.
However, Joel also suggests that “society abuses science against marginalized groups,” and she believes the results of a study like this one could similarly be misused, adding that “I would prefer that people would use the results of this study to inspire imaging (in LD, in daydreaming or guided imagination) how it feels to be in someone else’s body, to increase tolerance, sympathy, and empathy for others.”
The Future of Lucid-Dreaming Research
Lucid dreaming is gaining traction as a potential tool for exploring consciousness and self-perception. Researchers like Raduga believe that a dreamer’s ability to intentionally alter their dream identities or genders could provide meaningful insights on an academic level and help those who may be struggling with gender identity and transitions, all while exploring those possibilities in a safe place.
As their research progresses, Raduga and his team say they plan to go beyond the limits of gender and animal embodiment.
“We’re conducting at least a few more experiments regarding bodily perceptions in lucid dreams,” Raduga says, which include dreams where individuals may be able to experience “having more limbs … or separating some body parts to observe the connectivity of visual and bodily perceptions.”
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