Gamers More Likely to Lucid Dream, Study Suggests

[RavenStryker]

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]

I don't remember being unable to control my dreams

 

[Freyja]

I've never had a lucid dream in my life and gaming's been my biggest hobby for nearly 6 years.

 

[Knight-Errant]

Only sometimes do I have a lucid dream.

 

[Engineer]

The red ball.

 

[Mick-a-nator]

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).

 

[Bermuda Cake]

always wanted to have a lucid dream... the make magazine made a kit for inducing them, not sure if it works, but it uses flashing lights that start flashing when you're asleep, apparently that's a cause of lucid dreams.
http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2006/11/lucid_dreaming_mask.html

 

[Trotim]

...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!

 

[grazr]

I'm prone to lucid dreams...

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

 

[Jimmy]

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....

 

[HellJumper]

I actually studied this! Lucid dreaming is definitely an intriguing thing. I usually control my dreams 50/50... Half the time I can, the other half I dream of a black room and then 2 seconds later I wake up and go... "Ah.... morning already...?"

 

[lana]

It's not that you can't control them. You're just in the middle of a cutscene.

 

[Bermuda Cake]

What does that make quicktime events then?

 

[Engineer]

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]

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]

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.

 

[Rexy]

Wish I had lucid dreams, it would be nice.

 

[Pocket]

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]

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.