Science

Visualizing data from the visual cortex: one step closer to dream recording?

Visualizing data from the visual cortex: one step closer to dream recording?
Japanese student walking in a virtual world with the character controled by his brain waves, in Yokohama, in 2007. Pic courtesy AFP/HO/File
Japanese student walking in a virtual world with the character controled by his brain waves, in Yokohama, in 2007. Pic courtesy AFP/HO/File
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Japanese student walking in a virtual world with the character controled by his brain waves, in Yokohama, in 2007. Pic courtesy AFP/HO/File
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Japanese student walking in a virtual world with the character controled by his brain waves, in Yokohama, in 2007. Pic courtesy AFP/HO/File

December 12, 2008 Dream analysis could be set to become a whole lot easier with news that a Japanese research team has created a technology that could eventually display images from people’s dreams on a computer screen. So far the team at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories has only managed to reproduce simple images from the brain, but, “by applying this technology, it may become possible to record and replay subjective images that people perceive like dreams," the private institute said in a statement.

The technology works by capturing the electrical signals that are sent from the eye’s retina to the brain’s visual cortex. For the experiment the team first figured out people’s individual brain patterns by showing them some 400 different still images and then showed the people the six letters in the word “neuron”. They then succeeded in reconstructing the letters on a computer screen by measuring their brain activity. The researchers revealed the breakthrough in a study unveiled ahead of publication in the US magazine Neuron. Exciting technology to be sure, but if my experiences in listening to other people recount their dreams are anything to go by, tuning into other people’s dreams is likely to be a baffling experience.

Via Yahoo.

4 comments
4 comments
Gonzalo Villouta Stengl
I dreamed awaken on same advance, so imaging a system that could allow us to watch a color video of our dreams from last night sleep. This was on the way, trying to advance if we would be still alive when future technologies bring us things that were impossible to be developped at that time, so 30 years ago. Now, only 30 years later you bring us some lights to think, I wasnt that wrong with this thought. I feel much closer now to work for the dream color video device.
Thanks, please keep in touch. Do you want to share some projects?
We would have astonishing sinergies.
Yours,
Gonzalo
Facebook User
Why do we need something like this, why do we need to know dreams?
Facebook User
To save the forests.
HZ
Accuracy and precision of this amazing technology, is at hand?