The idea of controlling your dreams might sound like the plot of the latest science fiction blockbuster. But this mysterious gift is a reality for around 20 per cent of people, who are able to go on exciting trips in impossible worlds. Depicted in films such as'Inception', lucid dreaming could provide a useful link between the real world and the dream world. Scientists are trying to tap into the potential of lucid dreaming, helping people complete tasks like turning on lights or even driving virtual cars while asleep. Here are three tricks that could allow you to try it for yourself.

Eric Wollberg's interest in facilitating lucid dreams emerged while living in Jerusalem, reading lots of theology. "Abraham, Muhammad, Buddha, all those prophets received their prophetic wisdom in their dreams," the startup and tech investment alum told me recently. During some periods of his life, Wollberg too regularly experienced the sorts of dreams where he knew he was awake. He wondered whether there was a way to use emerging technology to have them on demand. Last February a hint came from, of all people, Grimes.

It's a bit of a bummer that dreams are as fascinating as they are hard and expensive to study. Famed psychologists like Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung may have made big names for themselves mining the meaning and significance of our dreams, but even today, with powerful brain-monitoring technology, it's tough to get a handle on what, exactly, is going on. Researchers, if they wait to wake up their subjects from sleep in the morning, have to contend with "rapid forgetting." A better method is to wake people up while they're dreaming, but this requires running a sleep lab, which doesn't offer that much of an advantage. The dreamers are groggy and still forgetful.

Researchers analyzed the brain signals and eye and facial movements of people engaged in lucid dreaming "conversations." In the movie Inception, Leonardo DiCaprio enters into other people's dreams to interact with them and steal secrets from their subconscious. Now, it seems this science fiction plot is one baby step closer to reality. For the first time, researchers have had "conversations" involving novel questions and math problems with lucid dreamers--people who are aware that they are dreaming. The findings, from four labs and 36 participants, suggest people can receive and process complex external information while sleeping.