Gamers "Can Control Dreams"

Some fascinating stuff about gamers and lucid dreaming is reported over on LiveScience. The piece discusses the work of Jayne Gackenbach, a psychologist at Grant MacEwan University in Canada. She seems to have found a connection between gaming and "dream control". Relevant bit below.

The first study suggested that people who frequently played video games were more likely to report lucid dreams, observer dreams where they viewed themselves from outside their bodies, and dream control that allowed people to actively influence or change their dream worlds – qualities suggestive of watching or controlling the action of a video-game character.

A second study tried to narrow down the uncertainties by examining dreams that participants experienced from the night before, and focused more on gamers. It found that lucid dreams were common, but that the gamers never had dream control over anything beyond their dream selves.

To throw in my own anecdotal non-evidence, I've found I've had increasing control in dreams in the past few years. And increasingly frequent "videogame" dreams. I assumed it was just a factor of getting older, but perhaps it's profound changes being wrought on my brain by over-exposure to pixellated mind-bombs. Thanks to reader "Jerricho" for the link. [We've actually covered some of this material before here.]