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."

Comments

Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

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What this article is talking about is "lucid dreaming", or being able to control your dreams. While this sounds like a good idea in theory, in practice it is dominated by the worst sort of idiots. It is directly tied to Shamanism, out-of-body experience, and other ridiculous theistic tropes that have long been discredited in our scientific atheist world. "Amazing Lucid Dreaming Kit! Mind Blowing Results. 29 FREE Lucid Dreaming mp3 Audios. New Technology Combines Binaural Frequencies, Hypnosis and Subliminals." Does this sound like something that an educated person would have anything to do with? HELL NO! But here it is, presented as acceptable, on the front page of slashdot. Sad...sad.

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

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"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?

Re:Lucid Dreaming = teh suck

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It's more like, "judge a man by the company he keeps". Or as They Might Be Giants said, "This is where the party ends, I can't stand here listening to you and your racist friend. I know politics bore you, but I feel like a hypocrite talking to you and your racist friend." As soon as you take this position, you're in bed with the worst kind of theistic believer, and that simply cannot be good, ever.