Michelle Carr ���Ĵ�ý�10, ���Ĵ�ý�22 (Flw) had experienced her share of vivid���Ĵ�ý�often terrifying���Ĵ�ý�dreams throughout childhood and into early adulthood. What happened at the end of a mid-morning nap during her sophomore year at the ���Ĵ�ý was different. No one was chasing her. Nothing was wrong. She was just there.

���Ĵ�ý�I was in my dorm room in Rochester, and I sat up in bed,���Ĵ�ý� Carr recalls over Zoom from her office at the . ���Ĵ�ý�I 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, ���Ĵ�ý�It looks so real.���Ĵ�ý� 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, ���Ĵ�ý�This is possible.���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�

What Carr was experiencing had a name���Ĵ�ý�lucid dreaming, the state in which a person becomes aware, mid-dream, that they are dreaming���Ĵ�ý�though she didn���Ĵ�ý�t know it yet. Or that deciphering experiences like the one she���Ĵ�ý�d just had would become her life���Ĵ�ý�s work.

Today, Carr is one of a small global cohort of researchers who call themselves dream engineers���Ĵ�ý�scientists 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���Ĵ�ý�her 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���Ĵ�ý�a difficulty hearing higher frequencies, and consonants in particular, that requires her to wear hearing aids in order to understand speech���Ĵ�ý�and the family began making regular trips to Rochester, a hub for audiology care and home to .

���Ĵ�ý�I was just looking at the dream because I was so shocked at how my mind was doing this. I thought, ���Ĵ�ý�It looks so real.���Ĵ�ý��ĝ

Equipped with what she describes as a ���Ĵ�ý�very, very vivid���Ĵ�ý� 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���Ĵ�ý�some 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.

���Ĵ�ý�It was the first time the teacher was like, ���Ĵ�ý�You have to find your sources in the library and give a poster presentation to the class.���Ĵ�ý� So I guess I was always interested in dreams because that was the topic that I chose,���Ĵ�ý� Carr recalls, laughing. ���Ĵ�ý�I just remember every single person in the class asked me a question afterward. Mostly, it was the typical, ���Ĵ�ý�I have this dream; what does it mean?���Ĵ�ý� Which is still what everybody does when they find out what I do.���Ĵ�ý�

Carr was 15 when she experienced the first of what would become frequent episodes of sleep paralysis���Ĵ�ý�when the natural muscle paralysis that occurs during REM sleep seeps into a dream. ���Ĵ�ý�A shotgun fires my mind into a sudden awakening, but my body does not jolt from the recoil,���Ĵ�ý� she described one such episode for an undergraduate writing assignment. ���Ĵ�ý�What was that? It���Ĵ�ý�s pitch black but for a thin line of foggy light coming through the forced squint of my eyelids. I can���Ĵ�ý�t move. Why can���Ĵ�ý�t I move?! I must be tied down. I must be paralyzed, or dead. My eyes . . . won���Ĵ�ý�t open!���Ĵ�ý�

More frightening than nightmares, Carr���Ĵ�ý�s 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 ���Ĵ�ý�too fictional���Ĵ�ý� for a nonfiction writing assignment.) It was only when she went to [the early search engine] Ask Jeeves that she learned the term ���Ĵ�ý�sleep paralysis���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�and that she was far from alone in suffering it. ���Ĵ�ý�The 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,���Ĵ�ý� she wrote. ���Ĵ�ý�I was to become one of those people.���Ĵ�ý�

Alternate realities

When Carr arrived at URochester 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. ���Ĵ�ý�There���Ĵ�ý�s the where they show you what the attentional blink is. You���Ĵ�ý�re watching people play with a ball and then a gorilla walks through the scene���Ĵ�ý�you don���Ĵ�ý�t even notice it because you���Ĵ�ý�re paying attention to the ball,���Ĵ�ý� she says. ���Ĵ�ý�I was just fascinated to learn that everyone���Ĵ�ý�s mind is doing this. Everything seems so concrete and so stable and solid, but it���Ĵ�ý�s really illusory���Ĵ�ý�we���Ĵ�ý�re fabricating what we perceive in some way. And I think that ties into dreaming quite a bit.���Ĵ�ý�

Carr got her first taste of research as a sophomore intern in the under psychiatry professor . She recalls participating in one overnight study���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�just for fun���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�but mostly cleaning data, reviewing scientific literature, and performing other entry-level tasks as needed. ���Ĵ�ý�She was one of these very motivated students who, I think, knew from early on that she was going to graduate school,���Ĵ�ý� says Pigeon. ���Ĵ�ý�She was the kind of person who would always ask, ���Ĵ�ý�Is there anything else I can do?���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�

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. ���Ĵ�ý�I think a huge strength of going to school there was just the amount of opportunities available,���Ĵ�ý� she says. ���Ĵ�ý�I 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���Ĵ�ý�it���Ĵ�ý�s something that���Ĵ�ý�s ephemeral and hard to describe, but we���Ĵ�ý�re also trying to study it very scientifically through the brain and understand what���Ĵ�ý�s happening. I really appreciate being able to straddle those two worlds.���Ĵ�ý�

���Ĵ�ý�Flying is the first trick everyone learns, and once you do, that���Ĵ�ý�s your transport mode of choice���Ĵ�ý�forever.���Ĵ�ý�

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 (���Ĵ�ý�Flying is the first trick everyone learns, and once you do, that���Ĵ�ý�s your transport mode of choice���Ĵ�ý�forever���Ĵ�ý�) 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���Ĵ�ý�not just sleep, not just neuroscience, but dreams���Ĵ�ý�turned out to be harder than she expected. Unwilling to compromise, she cold emailed a dozen researchers she found through the (IASD). ���Ĵ�ý�Is there anywhere I can actually study dreams?���Ĵ�ý� Several people told her no, but four or five pointed her to the same place: the , run by a researcher named . She applied���Ĵ�ý�very late, as it turned out���Ĵ�ý�and was accepted into the graduate program.

���Ĵ�ý�It���Ĵ�ý�s 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,���Ĵ�ý� Carr says. ���Ĵ�ý�I���Ĵ�ý�m interested in how dreaming is related to mental health and well-being���Ĵ�ý�how 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���Ĵ�ý�s happening in the body?���Ĵ�ý�

Into the lab

Carr spent five years in Montreal, impressing Nielsen with her calm demeanor and inquisitive mind. ���Ĵ�ý�Unlike me, she was quite confident in lucid dreaming being accepted by other, non-dream-oriented researchers as a legitimate area of science,���Ĵ�ý� he says. ���Ĵ�ý�Coming 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.���Ĵ�ý�

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���Ĵ�ý�an early sign that her interests extended beyond the 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. ���Ĵ�ý�Getting people to give eye signals in response to our cues while they were sleeping was really exciting,���Ĵ�ý� she says. ���Ĵ�ý�That was fun.���Ĵ�ý� Blagrove also introduced her to dreamwork���Ĵ�ý�the practice of sharing dreams for both personal insight and empathy���Ĵ�ý�which Carr continues to study for its potential to enhance social connection.

It was while at Swansea that Carr���Ĵ�ý�s ambitions for dream engineering as a field���Ĵ�ý�not just a set of techniques scattered across different labs���Ĵ�ý�crystallized 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 URochester���Ĵ�ý�and to Pigeon���Ĵ�ý�s lab���Ĵ�ý�this 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���Ĵ�ý�s large Deaf community. Around the same time, Carr was rising through the ranks of the IASD���Ĵ�ý�first as vice president, then as president beginning in 2021.

���Ĵ�ý�She is, at first blush, not someone you would think of as especially outgoing���Ĵ�ý�and yet she has a very vast and nice network of folks that she���Ĵ�ý�s built over time,���Ĵ�ý� Pigeon says. ���Ĵ�ý�Some 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���Ĵ�ý�s unheard of.���Ĵ�ý�

Living the dream

Carr now directs the Dream Engineering Lab���Ĵ�ý����Ĵ�ý�at the University of Montreal���Ĵ�ý�s , where she oversees six to eight graduate students and postdoctoral researchers working across several concurrent studies. The projects reflect Carr���Ĵ�ý�s 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���Ĵ�ý�a 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���Ĵ�ý�and what she expounds on in her new book, ���Ĵ�ý�is collaborating with clinicians to help those suffering from serious conditions such as addiction and chronic pain. ���Ĵ�ý�I 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���Ĵ�ý�s an avenue for treatment there that���Ĵ�ý�s so far been neglected,���Ĵ�ý� she says. ���Ĵ�ý�I feel like an energy is starting to spread to other domains. Other research fields are saying, ���Ĵ�ý�OK, there���Ĵ�ý�s something we could do with this.���Ĵ�ý��ĝ

Looking ahead, Carr sees sleep���Ĵ�ý�and the dreams that animate it���Ĵ�ý�becoming as vital to understanding our physical and mental health as anything that happens during our waking lives. ���Ĵ�ý�I think we���Ĵ�ý�re really beginning to uncover this,���Ĵ�ý� she says. ���Ĵ�ý�There are specific patterns in how dreaming changes in different health conditions. It���Ĵ�ý�s 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.���Ĵ�ý�

Nearly two decades since she first awoke inside a dream, Carr has reached a point where she can choose whether to enter ���Ĵ�ý�that dark basement corner of our unconscious mind���Ĵ�ý� or simply bask in the sensation of becoming lucid. Most nights she sleeps nine hours and wakes without an alarm. ���Ĵ�ý�I usually spend some time remembering my dreams, but I don���Ĵ�ý�t often write them down unless they���Ĵ�ý�re really striking. I just kind of rehearse them a little bit,���Ĵ�ý� she says. ���Ĵ�ý�If I had a bad dream, I���Ĵ�ý�ll think about it and maybe reframe it. But that���Ĵ�ý�s really it.���Ĵ�ý�

Then she gets up and looks around. She might glance back at the bed. There���Ĵ�ý�s nothing���Ĵ�ý�and no one���Ĵ�ý�there.

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This story appears in the fall 2025 issue of Rochester Review, the magazine of the ���Ĵ�ý.