Video games change the way you dream
Video games change the way you dream
Video games change the way you dream
Katie Drummond
January 21, 2014
Summary
Gackenbach is a psychologist at Canada's Grant MacEwan University and arguably the world's preeminent expert on how video games can impact dreaming.
Those transformations, Gackenbach says, also offer insights into how video gaming might shape an individual's experiences in the waking world.
"The major parallel between gaming and dreaming is that, in both instances, you're in an alternate reality, whether a biological construct or a technological one," she says.
In her most recent paper, published in the latest issue of Dreaming, Gackenbach and her colleagues further solidified a key earlier finding: that so-called "Hardcore" gamers were more likely than their peers to experience lucid dreams.
Gackenbach first reached that conclusion in 2006, after noting that gamers and lucid dreamers both displayed traits like intense focus and superior spatial awareness in their waking lives.
She's since honed that preliminary finding with subsequent studies, and also found that during lucid dreams, gamers had control only over themselves as a character.
"At least for male gamers, gaming seems to be sort of protective against nightmares," Gackenbach says, "And that can largely be seen as a good thing, the threat is less upsetting, and doesn't wake you up."
"Maybe games can actually remove the 'need' for nightmares and the threatening feelings that come with them."
Bizarre dreams, in turn, have also been linked to enhanced creative output in day-to-day life, suggesting that gaming might make us more creative in real-world scenarios.
Assuming that Gackenbach's findings genuinely reflect the dream experiences of gamers, she suspects these effects are likely to become even more pronounced as gaming systems like Oculus Rift offer users more immersive experiences.
Reference
Drummond, K. (2014, January 21). Video games change the way you dream. Retrieved December 19, 2020, from https://www.theverge.com/2014/1/21/5330636/video-games-effect-on-dreams