Video Gamers Have Power Over Their Dreams

Ponca City, We love you writes "Live Science reports that researchers say playing video games before bedtime may give gamers an unusual level of awareness and control in their dreams, which could provide an edge when fighting nightmares or even mental trauma. 'If you're spending hours a day in a virtual reality, if nothing else it's practice,' says Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada, who says that hardcore gamers represent the leading edge of immersion in virtual worlds that increasingly has come to define a large part of contemporary entertainment and communication. 'Gamers are used to controlling their game environments, so that can translate into dreams.' One intriguing theory holds that dreams are a sort of threat simulation where nightmares help organisms hone their skills in a protective environment, and ideally prepare organisms for a real-life situation. To test that theory, Gackenbach conducted a study using independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports and found that gamers experienced less or even reversed threat simulation (in which the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall. In other words, a scary nightmare scenario turned into something 'fun' for a gamer."

Lucid dreaming?

[Anonymous Coward]

How this differs from lucid dreaming?

Re:Nothing to do with video games

[Droce]

You're not very good with logic are you, mate? They say gaming helps, plenty of people can do without it. I have lucid dreams all the time and I've been gaming for 10 years. Not everyone who can control dreams play games, but a disproportional amount of people who play games can control their dreams, according to the article.

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

[N0Man74]

Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of lucid dreaming doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit.

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, who is modding this up? Many people have lucid dreams who are not involved in the nonsense mentioned in any way. The two, in fact, have no necessary connection.

Re:Nothing to do with video games

[justinlee37]

You're kind of a dick aren't you, mate? Your post would have been just fine without the condescending first sentence.

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

[darkstar949]

Serious scientific research can be done on lucid dreaming and there might be something worth learning from it (e.g. how does it happen, why is it allowed to happen?) and just because it is tied to theology and other non-scientific aspects of the human experience is no reason to just toss it out as being uninteresting. Lucid dreaming is actually a phenomenon that we know happens, that we can record markers for in sleep laboratories, and that there is still a lot of interesting things that can be learned about it.

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

[dangitman]

WTF does this have to do with atheism? I'm an atheist, and I've had lucid dreams. It's a phenomenon, not a religion. Charlatans encroach on any phenomenon, doesn't make it any less real. Just like spammers selling fake viagra doesn't mean that real viagra doesn't work.

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

[Spatial]

You might want to run a search on the phrase "Association fallacy," Mr Science.

There's plenty of Grade-A bullshit surrounding the subject, that's for sure. But what has this article got to do with it? Nothing at all as far as I can see.

amidoinitrite

[barkingcorndog]

"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of Teabaggers doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."

You see how fucking stupid you sound right now?

I can play this game!

"Just because there are many quacks that get involved with the subject of String Theory doesn't mean that the entire subject is without interest or merit."
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