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Dreams Actually Virtual Reality Threat Simulation?

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the fighting-the-forces-of-evil-in-your-underwear dept.

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.'"

8 of 452 comments (clear)

  1. Yeah by dreamchaser · · Score: 5, Funny

    Last night while I was dreaming of playing poker with Einstein and Hawking and an anthropomorphic Zebra, I stopped and thought "This is really a great simulation of reality!" It got really interesting when the dancing elephants started circling our table. I feel far better prepared for life now.

    1. Re:Yeah by morgan_greywolf · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Last night while I was dreaming of playing poker with Einstein and Hawking and an anthropomorphic Zebra, I stopped and thought "This is really a great simulation of reality!" It got really interesting when the dancing elephants started circling our table. I feel far better prepared for life now Hmm.. Well, I'm not really a dream interpretation expert, but I play one on the Net. Anyway, many dreams are just the mind's way of working out problems -- or calling attention to problems -- that are currently occurring in our lives. Most of what occurs in people's dreams is more of a metaphor for something else.

      Take, for example, the oft-cited 'I dreamt that I showed up to work/school/whatever naked/wearing only underwear.' Showing up to work naked isn't actually the real problem the brain is trying work out. The real problem is that the person is a afraid of being unprepared or being caught in an embarassing situation. They are usually insecure about something or other when they have dreams like this. This is the brain trying say "Hey, you! You're insecure about this or that, what are you doing to fix that?"

      Of course, the imagery of dreams isn't always that universal. In your case, what do Einstein and Hawking represent for you? What about zebras? What does playing poker mean to you? Do you bluff a lot in poker? Or do you play on the merits of your cards? If you're a physicist, and just making guesses here about the zebra, I'd say that you that see Einstein and Hawking as a black-and-white dichotomy that needs to somehow be resolved. Maybe you think one of Hawking's theories and another of Einstein's are in deep conflict and maybe you see yourself as trying to resolve that. Of course, if you're not a physicist, the dream could mean something else entirely.

      --
      My blog
    2. Re:Yeah by pixelpusher220 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      The funny part is some of us *don't* dream. Seriously.

      I know that I pretty much stopped dreaming about the time I hit puberty. Vivid dreams as a kid but once I 'grew up' they stopped.

      How do I know this you ask? Because during a sleep test for sleep apnea they found out my blood oxygen saturation level was about 80%, below the threshold needed for REM sleep. So from about 12-14 to 26, I couldn't dream. Just not enough oxygen to do it.

      There were the occasional odd dreams when a sleeping position allowed better than normal oxygen levels, but mostly I just didn't.

      Even today, after the surgery, my dreams are wildly mild stuff. Mostly just replaying some experience of the recent days.

      It did sort of explain why HS was mostly just a fog for me though...going without restful sleep for multiple years will do that ;-)


      --
      People in cars cause accidents....accidents in cars cause people :-D
    3. Re:Yeah by badasscat · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's one dream. The summary says that they're looking at 1 to 4 dreams a night, which indicates that the dreams they're talking about are the ones we don't remember.

      That doesn't do anything to explain away the implied criticism. We presumably have dozens of dreams per night that we don't remember, the vast majority of which are neither realistic nor "threat dreams". So what's the purpose of those?

      I don't think there's a scientist anywhere that thinks some dreams serve one purpose and other dreams serve another. Dreaming in general probably serves more than one purpose simultaneously, but every dream serves those same purposes... whether it's defragmenting memories, or cataloging fantasies, or whatever. REM sleep is REM sleep; there are no different "categories" of REM sleep. And clearly, most of our dreams have nothing whatsoever to do with preparing us for threats. Simply using anecdotal quotes about people saying "it was like a dream!" when they respond to a real life threat situation is hardly proof of anything.

      This is one of those cases where a single "false" result precludes a "true" result from the rest of the experiment. And we've all got plenty of "false" results every night.

    4. Re:Yeah by Nykon · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I know that I pretty much stopped dreaming about the time I hit puberty."

      That's a shame. The good dreams don't start until puberty ;-)

      --
      "It's better to be a pirate then join the Navy"
  2. NUDE by chowhound · · Score: 5, Funny

    Apparently my brain is exhaustively preparing me for the possibility that I'll drive to work naked.

    1. Re:NUDE by eclectic4 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Apparently my brain is exhaustively preparing me for the possibility of having sex with Jessica Alba. All I can say, is that I'm very, very prepared...

      --

      "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge." - Daniel Boorstin
  3. Personal experience... by Phanatic1a · · Score: 5, Interesting

    One fairly common dream that people in the self-defense community have is the one where you come under sudden attack and your gun malfunctions, or is out of ammunition, or for whatever reason you can't fire it at your dream-attacker.

    I didn't have this dream *until* I started training with a handgun for self-defense purposes. I grew up hunting, with rifles and shotguns, and didn't have this dream. Not until I incorporated the self-defense aspects into my identity. Then my brain started to throw that dream at me.

    So, yeah, I can buy this idea.