Dark visions, ancient fears

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Registered: 03-09-2001
Dark visions, ancient fears
1
Sun, 07-09-2006 - 5:15pm

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,589-2259194,00.html

from the article:

"Dark visions, ancient fears

Scientists claim that nightmares evolved to help us to deal with daily threats. So dream on, says Roger Dobson

Those dreams about being chased by wild animals may not be meaningless after all. And the bottomless pits, the running but not moving, and those rooms with no doors and windows, they also may have a real purpose.

According to new research from Canada and Finland, which is backed by a Boston University study presented at a recent international conference, dreams are not meaningless but are part of an evolutionary survival strategy that developed in early man to help him to learn how to recognise and deal with threats in a hostile world. And Canadian research indicates that almost seven dreams out of ten do involve threats and the practising of defensive and evasive tactics, and that almost a third include chases.

The Finnish hypothesis is that the biological function of dreaming is to simulate threatening events and to rehearse threat perception and threat avoidance. “In the ancestral environment, human life was short and full of threats,” says Dr Antti Revonsuo, of the University of Turku in Finland, a pioneer of the evolutionary idea, who analysed 592 dreams. He adds: “A dream-production mechanism that tends to select threatening events and to simulate them over and over again in various combinations would have been valuable for the development and maintenance of threat-avoiding skills.”

(article continues...)

Just sharing something interesting I found while surfing around. ;)) I know I dream and can't remember most upon waking in the morning, except perhaps a sense of struggle or turmoil. And sometimes, I find answers popping in my head unbidden, when presented with a new and unexpected challenge. Hmmmm.... Maybe I practiced this "answer" or "solution" or sorted it out in a dream???

Gypsy




Edited 7/9/2006 5:15 pm ET by gypsywolfwoman


Blessings,

Gypsy

)O(



iVillage Member
Registered: 04-22-2003
Sun, 07-09-2006 - 8:10pm

Hi, Gypsy.