Volitional components of consciousness vary across wakefulness, dreaming and lucid dreaming

Consciousness is a multifaceted concept; its different aspects vary across species, vigilance states, or health conditions. While basal aspects of consciousness like perceptions and emotions are present in many states and species, higher-order aspects like reflective or volitional capabilities seem...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Frontiers in psychology Vol. 4; p. 987
Main Authors:	Dresler, Martin, Eibl, Leandra, Fischer, Christian F J, Wehrle, Renate, Spoormaker, Victor I, Steiger, Axel, Czisch, Michael, Pawlowski, Marcel
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Switzerland Frontiers Media S.A 2014
Subjects:	Consciousness dreaming lucid metacognition Psychology Sleep Volition dreaming sleep consciousness lucid volition metacognition
Online Access:	Get full text
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Summary:	Consciousness is a multifaceted concept; its different aspects vary across species, vigilance states, or health conditions. While basal aspects of consciousness like perceptions and emotions are present in many states and species, higher-order aspects like reflective or volitional capabilities seem to be most pronounced in awake humans. Here we assess the experience of volition across different states of consciousness: 10 frequent lucid dreamers rated different aspects of volition according to the Volitional Components Questionnaire for phases of normal dreaming, lucid dreaming, and wakefulness. Overall, experienced volition was comparable for lucid dreaming and wakefulness, and rated significantly higher for both states compared to non-lucid dreaming. However, three subscales showed specific differences across states of consciousness: planning ability was most pronounced during wakefulness, intention enactment most pronounced during lucid dreaming, and self-determination most pronounced during both wakefulness and lucid dreaming. Our data confirm the multifaceted nature of consciousness: different higher-order aspects of consciousness are differentially expressed across different conscious states.
Bibliography:	ObjectType-Article-1 SourceType-Scholarly Journals-1 ObjectType-Feature-2 content type line 23 This article was submitted to Consciousness Research, a section of the journal Frontiers in Psychology. Edited by: Jennifer Michelle Windt, Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz, Germany Reviewed by: Daniel Erlacher, University of Bern, Switzerland; Tadas Stumbrys, Heidelberg University, Germany
ISSN:	1664-1078 1664-1078
DOI:	10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00987