Dream = Our Private Virtual Reality Training?

According to this article, nightmares are the brain's training to respond to threatening situations in real life. This hypothesis explains my frequent dreaming about fighting monsters in my dreams :-) I think I actually get better at shooting double-taps in real life since I did it hundreds of time in my brain's simulation but very few times in reality because of the high cost of ammunition. In my dreams, I usually get attacked from the side -- that probably means I should look around for monsters waiting to ambush me if I ever go on Zombie hunting.

The ingenious part is the description of how the researchers prevent their mice from dreaming. It's clever and hilarious (to us; to the mice, it is maddening.)

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P.S. The picture comes from this (also interesting) article.