Army to Test ‘Power Dreaming’ to Combat PSTD-Related Nightmares

The Blaze ^ | 21 October, 2011 | Liz Klimas

[Watchdog85]

The U.S. Army recently awarded a contracting firm a nearly half a million dollar contract to support its “Power Dreaming Project.”

Wired Danger Room reports the following scenario that the Army hopes to begin testing next here to help soldiers suffering with PSTD:

A soldier tries to sleep. But he is not safe in his dreams. Jolted awake by a nightmare, the combat veteran fumbles in the dark for his 3-D glasses.

He puts them on. Around him are the faces of people whom he trusts. They fight the darkness with him. The soldier’s re-lived this scene in his head and the laboratory over and over again, until it has become reassuringly familiar. The soldier knows that his pixelated friends will take him away from these troubled dreams. When the scene is over, he takes off his goggles and looks around him. The soldier is home.

The research for this sort of therapy will take place at the Naval Hospital Bremerton, Wash. According to the National Center for PSTD, run through the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, while only 5 percent of the general population complain of nightmares, the number jumps to 52 percent for combat veterans.

This new research is a similar build off of what the National Center for PSTD calls Imagery Rehersal Therapy:

In IRT, the person who is having nightmares, while awake, changes how the nightmare ends so that it no longer upsets them. Then the person replays over and over in their minds the new dream with the non-scary ending. Research shows that this type of treatment can reduce how often nightmares occur.

Wired has more:

The hope is that these “power dreams” can be watched from laptops and “home training and 3-D goggles work to gradually enhance the strength of these new neurological images,” according to the presentation that outlines the program’s aims.

The project is another twist on biofeedback therapy, in which a PTSD-sufferer is fed real-time data on his physical stress levels so that he can be cued to calm down. If he successfully brings down his heart rate and anxiety levels, he may be rewarded with visual cues. One example of this brain-wave therapy is in use to heal troubled veterans.

The problem with existing biofeedback methods is that many patients aren’t able to easily call up imaginary scenarios in their heads that will cue them to relax. So this experiment hopes to get soldiers to custom-design scenes that they can play back to themselves.

The computer program for soldiers to build out imaginary worlds and avatars on will be based on the virtual world Second Life. It will allow dream sequences to be custom designed “to develop physio-emotional states to counteract the reactive stress response inherent in trauma memories.”

Wired states soldiers will use a program called Second Life to customize their dream worlds. Wired also notes, that this is not the sequel script to Inception.

[Watchdog85]

I don't think this will work. A half a million is alot of money for a computer program.

[Watchdog85]

Link to contract:

https://www.fbo.gov/?s=opportunity&mode=form&id=510865625b31b4b4942615444af11b22&tab=core&_cview=0

[garjog]

If this helps our soldiers I am all for it.

Defense spending is clearly a federal responsibility according to the constitution. If they spend $500 million on a stupid electric cars, they can spend this trying to heal traumatized young men sent to fight on our behalf.

[Little Pig]

This would tie in well with the recent announcement that scientists are close to being able to “record” dreams. If the exact dream situation can be recorded, and used as the template for the rewriting, I would think it would be that much more effective. Also, allegedly, the recording technology shows promise for being able to go the other way too, and “write” dreams into the brain, which would mean that the soldier could wear the system while actually sleeping, and the system would recognize when the dream is occurring and “write” in the new ending in real time.

And yeah, the darker implications of that technology were already well-debated.

[Watchdog85]

I don't trust the government to really help our soldiers. Not after hundreds of combat veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan with arms and legs missing were given 20% disability ratings and discharged by the services.

Check out the bio for the CEO of ICF Inc.

Sudhakar Kesavan

---

Chairman + Chief Executive OfficerSudhakar Kesavan serves as the Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of ICF International. In 1997, he was named President of the ICF Consulting Group when it was a subsidiary of ICF Kaiser. Since he took on this leadership role, he has led ICF through a leveraged buyout, an initial public offering, and consistent growth. Mr. Kesavan’s leadership in global environmental issues helped ICF International to become the first professional services firm in the world to go carbon neutral and to achieve recognition by the United Nations as one of the first firms to participate in the Climate Neutral Network.

Mr. Kesavan serves on the Board of the Rainforest Alliance, a New York based nonprofit environmental organization committed to protecting ecosystems by transforming land-use practices, business practices, and consumer behavior. He is also the vice chairman of the Northern Virginia Technology Council (NVTC), the largest technology council in the United States. In addition, he is an active supporter of IIMPACT, a nonprofit focused on primary education for girls from economically- and socially-underprivileged rural areas of India.

Mr. Kesavan received the Executive of the Year award in 2009 from the Greater Washington Government Contractor Awards in the large-sized firm category. He was also named a “Tech Titan” and “industry leader” by Washingtonian magazine in 2011.

Mr. Kesavan received his Master of Science degree from the Technology and Policy Program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), his postgraduate diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and his Bachelor of Technology degree (chemical engineering) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur.

Another U.N. Climate Change advocate.

[Spktyr]

Worth a try.

If it works, I don’t care if it costs a billion dollars, or ten.

[Cvengr]

The entire idea is like putting out a fire by dowsing it with a bucket of gasoline.

Our souls are sometimes tested spiritually. This is a different perception than mental phenomenon, but mental phenomenon may be altered by that perception.

Christianity is a spiritual life.

When tested by situations described in the article, even in dreams, the solution is provided to us by God through faith in Christ. From study of His Word, God the Holy Spirit grows our spirit and sanctifies our soul.

Testing is part of that life. When we remain in fellowship with Him throughout the testing, we are advancing in His walk.

If we choose to rewrite the test in our own volition, we fail by placing ourselves before Him.

I am not surprised that a worldly solution to such testing is anything other than through faith in Christ. Any solution other than through Christ simply further corrupts the soul.

BTW, it is interesting to note that man may be forgiven sins against the Father or the Son as they have been judged at the Cross, but sins against the Holy Spirit are not so judged to allow immediate forgiveness. I am not cognizant that their resolution have been discussed in Scripture. Attempting to use one’s eternal life in the spiritual domain to rewrite the ending of a dream independently of God not only scars the soul, but may be far more damaging and permanent than many other temptations.

[ninonitti]

Fascinating

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Half a million isn’t much for the rights to as many copies as are needed.

[USFRIENDINVICTORIA]

Half a million isn’t much for the rights to as many copies as are needed.

[Captain Beyond]

bflr

[Psycho_Bunny]

You’ve obviously never experienced exented PSTD or Complex PSTD.

While faith is a incredible foundation, stress disorders are reactions to worldly existence and require intervention.

Faith alone doesn’t health a toothache.

[greenhornet68]

Is this the same illness as PTSD? /s

[Psycho_Bunny]

Lol.....I did it too.

[aruanan]

This new research is a similar build off of what the National Center for PSTD calls Imagery Rehersal Therapy:

Is that supposed to be "Imagery Reversal Therapy" or "Imagery Rehearsal Therapy"?

[aruanan]

You’ve obviously never experienced exented [sic] PSTD [sic] or Complex PSTD [sic].

While faith is a incredible foundation, stress disorders are reactions to worldly existence and require intervention.

Faith alone doesn’t health a toothache.

Your error is putting toothache and PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) into the same category. A toothache is organic in nature. PTSD is psychic in nature. A toothache is caused by pressure on a nerve. It is something you directly experience. PTSD is not caused by something you experienced. It's caused by your reaction to something you experienced. That reaction is conditioned by your previous experiences and your understanding of them in the context of your entire life experience and belief structure. An experience that may lead to a PTSD for one person may have little or no effect on another for reasons having nothing at all to do with the event in question. The same is not true of a toothache. A cavity producing enough pressure on a nerve will have the same effect on anyone regardless of a person's beliefs and previous life experience.

This is why a person's faith (because it is directly related to his beliefs about reality and his experiences within it and what they ultimately mean or do not mean) is more likely to be of help in PTSD than in a toothache.

[MrEdd]

You need to relive the event and face it as it was, until it becomes just a memory. That can take a lot of time and some people never get there, but I don’t see trying to deny how it really was as helping long term.

[MrEdd]

Thank you Benny Hinn.

[MrEdd]

You are an idiot faith healer who personally denies medical immaging technology. Next time you are ill don’t be a hypocrit and be consistant in what YOU ADVOCATE FOR OTHERS. The effects of PTSD can be physically seen in the brain with MRI scans. Since you personally are denying the validity of MRI technology, hold fast to your claimed faith and don’t use them when it is you. MRI is probably of the devil since it contradicts your position anyway.

[aruanan]

You are an idiot faith healer who personally denies medical immaging [sic] technology. Next time you are ill don’t be a hypocrit [sic] and be consistant in what YOU ADVOCATE FOR OTHERS. The effects of PTSD can be physically seen [sic] in the brain with MRI scans. Since you personally are denying the validity of MRI technology, hold fast to your claimed faith and don’t use them when it is you. MRI is probably of the devil since it contradicts your position anyway.

The above is an example of reactive reading. You see a few phrases and react to them based on your own unique experiences and limited understanding and then incorrectly assume that your reactions were intended by the author. Specifically, you make ridiculous extrapolations ("you personally are denying the validity of MRI technology...") or misinterpretations ("The effects of PTSD can be physically seen in the brain with MRI scans..."*) or flat-out confabulations ("...be consistant in what YOU ADVOCATE FOR OTHERS...) or irrelevant and irrational conclusions ("MRI is probably of the devil since it contradicts your position anyway") and then incorrectly assume those were intended or disputed by or had their origin in the author. Additionally you seem to equate "faith" with "faith healing," a distinction that nowhere exists in the text.

You, like the Supreme Court, Roe v Wade, and the Constitution, are projecting your own beliefs and prejudices into written material where they don't exist and attributing them to the author. The answer is to stick to what is actually written (and to use spell check).

*You can observe a person's brain via MRI while sticking a knife in him or while he's hallucinating bugs crawling under his skin and see distinctive activity. But you would be incorrect to conclude that the bug hallucinations are real in the same way the knife is real because both produce MRI readings. And you would be incorrect (in a Mary Baker Eddy way) to conclude that the knife is no more real than the hallucinations because both produce MRI readings.