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."

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Re:(most of this post is plagerized)

[rodrigovr]

I learned to fly inside dreams too. It was kinda evolutive, begining with "long jumps" and now I can do very long controled flights.
Many times Im beeing stalked by some kinda of aliens/big monsters too. What scares me is the fact that almost always I jump thru windows, so if that shit is not a dream I can end killing myself.
Sometimes the dreams feel so realistic that I think I'm living some kind of doomsday, with Independance Day's styled invasions.
My way to know that I'm inside a dream is to ask people around or try to run. When asking people, they don't speech, and when running I can't get speed and tend to turn backward.