The Matrix Revonsuo

A couple years ago on this blog I mentioned Finnish scientist Antti Revonsuo's Threat Simulation Theory, which proposes that the purpose of dreaming is to rehearse one's reactions to real-world dangers so that we're better prepared when we meet them in waking life. It's like those training programs in the Matrix after which Neo unplugs and gasps, "I know kung fu."

The TST has definite surface appeal, but it's taken quite a beating itself over the years (with researchers noting, for example, that nightmares actually get in the way of daytime functioning, and that most dreams are not even nightmares), and there's now a paper in press in Consciousness and Cognition that puts a few more dings in the theory.

According to TST, the more threats you face, the more they'll show up in your dreams. So the researchers peaked inside the nightscapes of subjects in both South Africa and North Wales. (Guess where they're counting real sheep.) Turns out African dreams contained no more physical threats than Welch. And perhaps more telling, only about 1% of dreams in each group contained "realistic escapes from realistic physical threats." (Yes but what of flying away from killer electric sheep?) Without that crucial element, it's like the Matrix except with Neo sputtering "I know how to get the crap beat out of me."

P.S.
My colleague Jay Dixit also does a kicking of the TST tires in the December issue of Psychology Today. He concludes with the words of Harvard psychologist Deirdre Barrett: "Yes, dreams are worrying about disasters. But they're also planning for nice things and they're fantasizing and they're problem solving. [The purpose of dreaming is] as broad as all waking thought. That's why I say dreams are really just thinking in a different biochemical state." Check it out.