Dreams Actually Virtual Reality Threat Simulation?

Time Slows Down writes "Psychology Today has an interesting story on a new theory of why we dream. Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo believes that dreams are a sort of nighttime theater in which our brains screen realistic scenarios simulating emergency situations and providing an arena for safe training. 'The primary function of negative dreams is rehearsal for similar real events, so that threat recognition and avoidance happens faster and more automatically in comparable real situations,' he says. We have 300 to 1,000 threat dreams per year — one to four per night and just under half are aggressive encounters: physical aggression such as fistfights, and nonphysical aggression such as verbal arguments. Faced with actual life-or-death situations — traffic accidents, terrorist attacks, street assaults — people report entering a mode of calm, rapid response, reacting automatically, almost without thinking. Afterward, they often say the episode felt unreal, as if it were all a dream. 'Dreaming is a sensitive system that tries to pay much attention to the threatening cues in our environment,' Revonsuo says. 'Their function is to protect and prepare us.'"

Comments

So real!

[Quiet_Desperation]

nighttime theater in which our brains screen realistic scenarios

Oh, I agree. Thanks to my dreams, I can totally handle it when giant marshmallow bunnies attack my sky fortress when it drifts over the Land Of The Tiny Pigs. Generally, I hit the Chaos Gong in the Dark Energy Rectory, and an army of cybernetic Winona Ryders materializes and attacks the bunnies with flamethrowers. There's also the alternative of firing the spacefolding trebuchet into the Inner Circle Of Thought, thus causing a degenerative cascade effect in the local fauna matrix. There's some damage to other marshmallow species, but it takes care of the bunnies pretty well.

Still working on the whole "showing up naked for the midterm I forgot to study for" scenario though, although I suspect a combination of satire, extreme violence and an industrial vat of chocolate fudge might be called for.

Nice

[Strange Ranger]

This will really come in handy!
This means I'm much more prepared for a ménage à trois with 2 playboy models in which I look like Brad Pitt in Troy.

On the flip side, I'm also prepared to have psychedelic encounters with random grade school classmates I haven't seen in 25 years and would never think of outside of a dream.

Go dreams go!!

Re:Recursive dreams?

[Rob T Firefly]

What's a recursive dream meant to prepare you for? The next level of recursion or that I am living in the matrix? I answered that in my response to this post.