Would you learn to lucid dream if you could?

Neuroscientists say people can be "trained" to recognize when they're dreaming — in other words, lucid dreaming may be an acquirable skill.

During dreams, bizarre scenes you encounter can seem as tangible as reality; you feel as though you're really flying through the sky or being chased through a jungle of bright-purple trees. But in special cases, people realize they're in the midst of a dream as it's unfolding.

Called lucid dreaming, this phenomenon occurs when we suddenly regain our capacity for metacognition, or thinking about our own thoughts, in the middle of a dream. Lucid dreamers can sometimes even control the content or trajectory of their dreams.…