Dreams as a Virtual Reality Training Center

Understanding dreams is the playground of philosophers, poets and mediums. People seek meaning behind their dreams, but to date there have been no concrete explanations even for their existence. Even Freud's longstanding Dream Theory crumbled when cognitive research into REM sleep unveiled "dreams are regulated by a lowly, elementary physiological mechanism [that has] absolutely nothing to do with wishes and memories and feelings and desires and your grandmother." More recent movements such as Senoi Dream Theory are bashed as simply wishful thinking.

Research at the University of Wisconsin has produced yet another potential explanation for dreams. In essence, it sets the dreamscape a presenting a virtual reality playground within which a person is exposed to threatening situations. According to psychologist Antti Revonsuo, "the primary function of negative dreams is rehearsal for similar real events, so that threat recognition and avoidance happens faster and more automatically in comparable real situations." The revelation came from research with REM sleep deprived rats that failed to respond to hazardous situations like normal rats.

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