The Virtual Dreaming project is a complex game where the user, wearing a virtual reality headset, can engage with the traditional Aboriginal culture of the Darug people of NSW. The terrain over which people playing the game move, is Western Sydney University's Parramatta campus in NSW, as it was centuries ago.
Virtual reality dream theory asserts that we explore a potentially infinite repertoire of predictive dream scripts. These scripts or scenarios are rehearsed in dreaming to provide an efficient (minimally complex) portfolio of explanations for the waking sensorium.
What Are Lucid Dreams? Lucid dreams are when you know that you're dreaming while you're asleep. You're aware that the events flashing through your brain aren't really happening. But the dream feels vivid and real. You may even be able to control how the action unfolds, as if you're directing a movie in your sleep.
Another report suggested that “a shift in brain activity in the direction of waking” during REM sleep dreaming causes the move towards lucid dreaming, creating a “hybrid” situation involving “features of both REM sleep and waking.”
Depending on the game and setup, your motions don't exactly match what is happening on screen, which can lead to a bit of an eerie, disassociation. It's always good to take breaks whenever it crosses over to feeling unwell. It's normal and it will go away eventually. Don't worry about it!
Sexually explicit content and abusive language and behavior. Privacy and data collection on users, like eye movement and facial recognition. Potential psychological risks, like "addiction, increased aggression and dissociation from reality"
Just like with any other technology, overexposure to VR can lead to increased alterations in the brain, resulting in headaches and nausea.
Generally, lucid dreaming is quite rare. Only one half of the general population know the phenomenon from personal experience, approximately 20% have lucid dreams on a monthly basis, and only a minority of approximately 1% have lucid dreams several times a week.
Our results suggest that frequent lucid dreaming is associated with increased functional connectivity between aPFC and temporoparietal association areas, regions normally deactivated during sleep.
In a lucid nightmare, the dreamer is aware that he is dreaming and that the dream is a nightmare. The nightmare themes often involve demonic figures out to inflict terrible harm on the dreamer who struggles to wake up but can't.
Risks of Lucid Dreaming. Although more research is needed, some experts suspect lucid dreaming could come with negative consequences. The most concerning potential dangers of lucid dreaming are disrupted sleep and mental health issues.
While recurring dreams and disorienting dream loops are common during lucid dreams, it is not possible to get actually get stuck.
Shared dreams definition
Shared dreaming is the idea that two or more people can share the same dream environment. The degree to which the dream is shared can vary, from simply having common elements or events that happen in each person's dream, to the entire dream being identical.
They found that people who trained using VR not only experienced more flying dreams, but had more lucid control over those dreams. “It feels so real that they forget where their real body is,” she said.
There are 3 primary categories of virtual reality simulations used today: non-immersive, semi-immersive, and fully-immersive simulations.
In a lucid dream your senses are heightened. Sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch are all more extreme than what you would experience in real life. Emotional feelings may also be intensified. You'll feel a greater sense of happiness and pleasure from engaging in enjoyable activities.
Although some theorists have suggested that pain sensations cannot be part of the dreaming world, research has shown that pain sensations occur in about 1% of the dreams in healthy persons and in about 30% of patients with acute, severe pain.
Although spontaneous commencement of lucid dreaming can occur as early as age 3, it seems most likely to happen around age 12–14 years and much less likely to occur after age 25 (Figure 1).
Most experts believe that lucid dreams are the rarest type of dreams. While dreaming, you are conscious that you are dreaming but you keep on dreaming. According to researchers, 55 percent of people experience these types of dreams at least one time in their life.
Here, we report a case of a low-impact VR-related fall resulting in spinal cord injury, hypoglossal nerve injury, vertebral artery dissection and post-concussion syndrome/traumatic brain injury. We discuss how this case highlights the risks of this increasingly popular technology in the home environment.
The results showed the VR group had a 44% higher addiction tendency than the control group, meaning VR created a habit more quickly, but that should not be interpreted as an absolute negative.
Is VR therapy effective? Yes. VR has been successfully and safely(link is external and opens in a new window) used for decades in the treatment of anxiety disorders in adults, including fear of flying, fear of heights, PTSD, and public speaking fears.