Research that last year suggested gamers had the ability to control their dreams ā or fight back in nightmares ā has been applied to soldiers who have seen combat duty, and finds that those who game have fewer and less intense nightmares about war.
https://lastchance.cc/video-gamers-have-power-over-their-nightmares-5547398%3C/a%3E%3C/p%3E
Gackenbach, who spoke at the Game Developers Conference last week, thinks that video games serve as a āthreat simulatorā that conditions the mind to cope with intense situations when they come up in nightmares.
One soldier wrote to Gackenbach, saying, āI would see many soldiers, in combat, with PSPs or anything we could hook up to 220v electricity. When soldiers werenāt on patrol, we often had violent war games on our systems. It was weird. Like we didnāt get enough violence.ā
Evidently it was good for them.
Can video games quell nightmares? [New Scientist]
