Lesson Plan: Researchers Are Finding New Ways to Visit Our Dreams
II. While Reading Activities
Word Inference
- dream |drēm| noun a series of thoughts, images, and sensations occurring in a person’s mind during sleep: I had a recurrent dream about falling from great heights.
- Lucid |ˈlo͞osəd| adjective 1 expressed clearly; easy to understand: a lucid account | write in a clear and lucid style.• showing ability to think clearly, especially in the intervals between periods of confusion or insanity: he has a few lucid moments every now and then.
- riff |rif| noun a short repeated phrase in popular music and jazz, typically used as an introduction or refrain in a song: a brilliant guitar riff.
- electrodes əˈlektrōd| noun a conductor through which electricity enters or leaves an object, substance, or region.
- surreal |səˈrēəl| adjective having the qualities of surrealism; bizarre: a surreal mix of fact and fantasy.
- twitch |twiCH| verb 1 give or cause to give a short, sudden jerking or convulsive movement: [no object] : he saw her lips twitch and her eyelids flutter | [with object] : the dog twitched his ears.
- inception |inˈsepSH(ə)n| noun [in singular] the establishment or starting point of an institution or activity: she has been on the board since its inception two years ago.
- alternate adjective |ˈôltərnət| (abbreviation alt.) [attributive] • (of two things) each following and succeeded by the other in a regular pattern: alternate bouts of intense labor and of idleness.
- phenomenon |fəˈnäməˌnänfəˈnäməˌnən| noun (plural phenomena |-nə| ) 1 a fact or situation that is observed to exist or happen, especially one whose cause or explanation is in question: glaciers are unique and interesting natural phenomena. • a remarkable person, thing, or event.
- morse code |ˌmôrs ˈkōd| noun an alphabet or code in which letters are represented by combinations of long and short signals of light or sound.
Source: New Oxford American Dictionary
Grammar Focus: Structure and Usage
Directions: The following groups of sentences are from the article. One of the sentences in each group contains a grammatical error. Identify the sentence (1, 2, or 3 ) from each group that contains the grammatical error.
I – 2 -discovered
What will be discovered on the other side?
II – 1- in
The dreamers have talked back in a handful of cases.
III – 1–the
Lucid dreaming offers the possibility of communication in real time.
Reading Comprehension
Identify The Speakers
Directions: Read the following quotes and descriptions from (and of) the speakers in the article. Then identify the speakers.
- Ken Paller, a neuroscientist at Northwestern University, in Evanston, Ill. This scientist is part of the group of researchers who control the people who are dreaming.
- Antonio Zadra, a professor of psychology at University of Montreal. “One of the main challenges of doing dream research is that you only have access to the dream experience, the dream report, after the fact.”
- Stephen LaBerge, [previously] a sleep researcher at Stanford in the 1980s and ’90s. This sleep researcher helped bring the subject of Lucid dreamers to the mainstream.
- Benjamin Baird at the University of Wisconsin. He and his colleagues have found that when lucid dreamers trace a line with their eyes they move with a smoothness they don’t have when awake and imagining the same experience.
- Harvard sleep researcher Robert Stickgold. “It is not clear why some people perceived the questions and others did not…But staying lucid is like balancing on a knife’s edge…On the one hand, you may get so excited you’ve achieved lucidity that you wake up. On the other, you can fall back into the deep, languid waters of regular dreaming, losing the ability to participate in experiments.
- Erin Wamsley, a professor of psychology who studies memory and dreaming at Furman University, in Greenville, S.C. “However, the method will always be really difficult and impractical, in the sense that you have to test dozens of participants before getting one instance of really convincing, successful communication.”
:
