Gamers More Likely to Lucid Dream, Study Suggests

RavenStryker

Former Alias: †Blade†/Xi.Cynx
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Nov 25, 2008
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New research is suggesting that video games not only increase hand eye coordination, but might improve a person's ability to control their dreams. Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada, told Live Science that her studies imply that regular gamers are more likely to experience lucid dreams. She believes that a gamer's comfort with controlling a virtual character in a virtual world translates from 'Halo' to dreaming. She also found that gamers' dreams have certain video game-like characteristics, such as an inability to control anything but their own actions and switching from first to third person views.

Her evidence also suggests that gaming reduces the occurrence of threatening or aggressive dreams, but more importantly, when gamers had such dreams they didn't report being afraid. Instead, game players took on the role of the aggressor. When a threat presented itself in a dream, instead of running and feeling afraid they allegedly stayed and fought back.

Gackenbach believes that video games may actually be a way to combat frequent nightmares and help veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). She's now working specifically to identify what effect the violence level of a game has on dreams, and is lobbying to build a proper sleep and virtual reality lab to back up her evidence with quantifiable data.


[Source]

Interesting stuff seeing as I do remember a lot of my dreams, and I do have a tendency to take action of only me but nothing else around me.
 

lana

Currently On: ?????
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Sep 28, 2009
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I don't remember being unable to control my dreams
 

Freyja

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Jul 31, 2009
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I've never had a lucid dream in my life and gaming's been my biggest hobby for nearly 6 years.
 
Feb 18, 2009
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This is all interesting stuff, I wonder what implications this can have on peoples behavior in situations involving conflict or simply how it effects problem solving abilities. It's also suggested that playing "violent" video games can actually relax you and lower your blood pressure (comparing before playing and a short while after playing).
 

Trotim

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Jul 14, 2009
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...you know, they might be right, now that I think about it. I will definitely have to ask more gaming people I know what their dreams are like!
 

Jimmy

L420: High Member
Jul 6, 2009
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I'm prone to lucid dreams...

I can even influence their frequency by falling asleep whilst listening to music.

I always fall asleep to music. I seem to remember a few lucid dreams, but I can't remember many dreams....
 

lana

Currently On: ?????
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Sep 28, 2009
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It's not that you can't control them. You're just in the middle of a cutscene.
 
Feb 17, 2009
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I had a lucid dream last night. I have them really often. But sometimes when I try to control my dream I realize that it's just a dream and am starting to wake up.
 

FaTony

Banned
Mar 25, 2008
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And i'm almost always have some kind of admin panel in dreams. It's great to be able to noclip, quit or restart by just the force of mind. I also move by pressing keys on keyboard sometimes.
 

Terr

Cranky Coder
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Jul 31, 2009
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I had one good lucid dream years ago, and I remember it because I think I had the presence of mind to use it to answer a question by looking at the landscape.

Specifically, "Do I dream in color?"

The verdict is yes, I dream in color, or at least my dream convinces me to remember it as color.
 

Pocket

Half a Lambert is better than one.
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Nov 14, 2009
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I had one good lucid dream years ago, and I remember it because I think I had the presence of mind to use it to answer a question by looking at the landscape.

Specifically, "Do I dream in color?"

The verdict is yes, I dream in color, or at least my dream convinces me to remember it as color.
I read that everyone dreams in color naturally; the only people who have ever dreamed in black-and-white were people who were raised on black-and-white TV or movies. Well, and colorblind people I guess.
 

Micnax

Back from the dead (again)
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Apr 25, 2009
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Usually I sleep and start off with a lucid dream, but it trails off into some elaborate story, plan, idea or just brilliant dream.

One time thought I tried having a lucid dream while under the effect of some medicine when I was ill. Freaking trippy hallucination nightmare involving insanely large rooms that would hurt my brain and scare me.

Yeah, I know, I'm weird.