Stephen LaBerge
Stephen LaBerge (born 1947) is a psychophysiologist and a leader in the scientific study of lucid dreaming. In 1967 he received his Bachelor's Degree in mathematics. He began researching lucid dreaming for his Ph.D. in Psychophysiology at Stanford University, which he received in 1980. He developed techniques to enable himself and other researchers to enter a lucid dream state at will, most notably the MILD technique (mnemonic induction of lucid dreams), which was necessary for many forms of dream experimentation. In 1987, he founded The Lucidity Institute, an organization that promotes research into lucid dreaming, as well as running courses for the general public on how to achieve a lucid dream. In the early 1980s, news of LaBerge's research using the technique of signalling to a collaborator monitoring his EEG with agreed-upon eye movements during REM, helped to popularise lucid dreaming in the American media. The first scientifically verified signal from a dreamer's mind to the outside world came several years earlier in 1975, from a study conducted by Keith Hearne at Hull University, England; however, media confusion over which scientist first published their results has caused the widespread but incorrect belief that LaBerge was the first to conduct this research. Though the technique is simple, it opens broad new avenues of dream research and pushed the field of dream research, or oneirology, beyond its controversialy disputed psychoanalytic roots, establishing it as a widely respected discipline.