Video Gamers, Dream Warriors

Can playing videogames before bedtime make you the master of your dreams? MSNBC entertains that possibility in this technology and science story, showcasing the work of Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada.

Gackenbach is somewhat of an expert on lucid dreams, or dreams where the subject is aware of being in a dream state. Many years ago she noticed her son's love of video games and the similarities between dream worlds and virtual worlds. This prompted her to conduct a decade's worth of research. That decade of game-related research has apparently yielded some surprising data, although she concedes that her findings represent "suggestive associations" rather than definitive proof. Gackenbach will discuss her work as a featured speaker this week at the Games for Health Conference in Boston.

So what did she find in her research?

Gackenbach found that both lucid dreamers and gamers seemed to have better spatial skills and were less prone to motion sickness. These groups also demonstrated a high level of focus or concentration. This encouraging data convinced Gackenbach to survey both groups about their dreams, beginning with two studies published in 2006. She prepared by conducting larger surveys in-class and online to get a sense of where to focus questions.

Her first study suggested that people who play a lot of video games were more likely to have lucid dreams - dreams where they observed the unfolding plot from outside their bodies, and the ability to control or actively influence some outcomes.

A second study she conducted attempted to narrow down uncertainties by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before, and focused more on gamers. This study found that  lucid dreams were common, but that the gamers never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves. Gamers also frequently cycled between a first person  and a third person view of themselves, except never with the calm detachment of a distant witness. Eventually she was able to replicate her findings about lucid dreaming and video games with college students as subjects, and refined her methods by controlling factors such as frequency of recalling dreams.

Gackenbach also wondered if playing videogames might affect nightmares in some ways, based on the "threat simulation" theory proposed by Finnish psychologist Antti Revonsuo. Revonsuo suggested that dreams might mimic threatening situations from real life, except in the safe environment of dream world. Such nightmares help improve avoidance skills in a protective environment, and prepare for a real-life situation.

To test Revonsuo's theory, Gackenbach conducted a 2008 study with 35 males and 63 females, and used independent assessments that coded threat levels in after-dream reports. That study found that gamers experienced less or reversed threat simulation (where the dreamer became the threatening presence), with fewer aggression dreams overall.

"If you look at the actual overall amount of aggression, gamers have less aggression in dreams," Gackenbach said. "But when they're aggressive, oh boy, they go off the top."

This data further inspired Gackenbach to pursue a new study with Athabasca University in Canada. She reasoned that, if gaming can act as some sort of a protective function against nightmares, maybe it could help war veterans who experience post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) after enduring combat. Data on that study is still forthcoming.

Some of Gackenbach's latest research includes studying violence levels in games based on ESRB ratings, and seeing what effect they have upon aggression within dreams.