Every night our brains simulate a highly convincing thought often bizarre dream reality. In the rare case of lucid dreaming, the dreamer becomes aware of the ongoing state of mind without waking up. The main obstacle to both its scientific investigation and clinical application is its rarity: only few people have lucid dreams on a regular basis. Several strategies to increase lucid dreaming frequency exist, how-ever none induces lucid dreams with high reliability.

In this project, we aim for an embodied approach to lucid dream induction, focusing in particular on the vestibular system, inducing dreams of falling and potentially flying by galvanic vestibular stimulation during REM sleep. We will then train participants to associate such vestibular experience during wakefulness with the metacognitive thought "This is a dream!", which we in turn aim to reactivate during sleep, thus eliciting full-blown lucid dreams. We will combine this strategy with virtual reality scenarios of flying/falling experiences, thus developing a highly immersive training environment for effective lucid dream induction. With a combined EEG-VR approach, we will further elucidate the neural correlates of metacognitive introspection, as well as vestibular experiences, during both wakefulness and sleep, levering machine learning strategies to compare between the two states.

As a whole, the project will allow for novel insights into embodied dream experiences on both a cognitive and neural level, will develop a potentially highly effective new lucid dreaming induction strategy 'on button press', and will thus pave the way for applications in research, clinical practice, sports, and everyday life.

Tasks and responsibilities

• Plan, coordinate, perform, and analyze a research project using vestibular stimulation, virtual reality and HD-EEG for lucid dream induction.
• Prepare and write publications on the basis of open science practices.
• Supervise a PhD student dedicated to the project and more junior staff.
• Enjoy collaborative work in an interdisciplinary team of international scientists.

As an ideal candidate you have a PhD and strong methods skills in cognitive neuroscience, computer science, engineering, biomedical sciences, psychology, or in a related field. You also have interpersonal and communication skills to effectively collaborate in a highly interdisciplinary, international research setting, including PhD student supervision.

Furthermore you have:

• Strong statistics and coding skills (R, Python or Matlab).
• Experience HD-EEG data acquisition and analyses.
• Experience in virtual reality, brain stimulation and/or machine learning.

Candidates who only partially meet this profile are nonetheless strongly encouraged to apply.

Fixed-term contract: 3 years.

Working at Radboud university medical center means that you are ahead of the curve and working together on the healthcare of the future. And there is more. Our secondary terms of employment are impressive. These are fully tailored to you thanks to our Employment Conditions Selection Model. At Radboud university medical center, you will be given trust, and you will take the responsibility to handle everything together. We provide annual courses, both professional and personal.

• In addition to your monthly salary and an annual vacation allowance of 8%, you will receive an end-of-year bonus of 8.3%.
• If you work irregular hours, you will receive an allowance.
• As a full-time employee (36 hours per week), you are entitled to approximately 168 vacation hours (over 23 days) per year.
• Radboud university medical center pays 70% of the pension premium. You pay the rest of the premium with your gross salary.
• You get a discount on health insurance as well: you can take advantage of two group health insurance plans. UMC Zorgverzekering and CZ collectief.

In addition to our terms of employment, we also offer employees various other attractive facilities, such as childcare and sports facilities. Want to learn more? Take a look at the CAO UMC.

Radboudumc

The project is part of the research conducted by Donders Sleep & Memory Lab of Dr. Martin Dresler, associate professor at the department of Cognitive Neuroscience (CNS) of the Radboudumc, focusing on the cognitive neuroscience of sleep. The project will be co-supervised by Dr. Daniel Erlacher, professor at the University of Bern and a leading expert on lucid dreaming.

The project is embedded in the infrastructure of the Donders Institute for Brain, Cognition and Behaviour, a world leading centre for cognitive neuroscience that offers a unique, multidisciplinary working and learning environment with opportunities for developing expertise in a diversity of research areas and techniques. The centre is equipped with two (sleep) EEG labs, three 3T MRI scanners and access to a high field (7T) MR system, MR-compatible EEG systems, a 275-channel MEG system, multimodal brain stimulation labs, and high-performance computational facilities.

Radboudumc
Radboud university medical center is a university medical center for patient care, scientific research, and education in Nijmegen. Radboud university medical center strives to be at the forefront of shaping the healthcare of the future. We do this in a person-centered and innovative way, and in close collaboration with our network. We want to have a significant impact on healthcare. We want to improve with each passing day, continuously working towards better healthcare, research, and education. And gaining a better understanding of how diseases arise and how we can prevent, treat, and cure them, day in and day out. This way, every patient always receives the best healthcare, now and in the future. Because that is why we do what we do.

Read more about our strategy and what working at Radboud university medical center means. Our colleagues would be happy to tell you about it. #weareradboudumc