Dream of “reading” dreams

2010/11/28 Aulestiarte Lete, Izaro - Elhuyar Zientziaren Komunikazioa

• Anatomia/Fisiologia

Scientists keep trying to understand the world of our dreams.

Who wouldn't want to read dreams? For many it would be interesting to know not only of others, but also of their own dreams. Sometimes we get to remember the dreams of our night, but sometimes we walk around, wanting and unable.

In ancient Egypt, dreams were messages from the gods. And without having to go so far in time and geography, we know that psychologists often observe their dreams to understand unconscious intelligence. There are many theories and techniques to interpret dreams, but so far the most direct or useful way has been to ask people to, after awakening, describe their dreams.

For the study of the brain activity of volunteers 64 electrodes were placed each.

In the U.S., the California Institute of Technology (Pasadena) works on an ambitious project that seeks to record and interpret their dreams, for which they claim that they are able to record brain activity with great precision and high level. Nature has given the news.

“We want to read people’s dreams,” they say. But what they can achieve in the short term thanks to the system being developed is easier. For the moment, the main objective is to offer psychologists the opportunity to ratify the memories that people have about their dreams, taking advantage of the electronic visualization of brain activity. They say that improving and adjusting the procedure could also help interpret the thoughts of people who cannot communicate.

Marilyn Monroe Neuron

It is based on the thesis that the activity of neurons is related to certain objects or concepts. The experiment was carried out with twelve people suffering from severe epileptic seizures, to analyze their brain activity, they applied 64 electrodes to each in the medial lobe.

Researchers claim that brain neuron activity is able to “read subjects’ minds.”

They showed several images to the patients and recorded on a computer the signals that sent their brains. Identify neurons directly related to some objects or concepts that got it. The researchers discovered, for example, that when volunteers thought of Marilyn Monroe a certain volunteer neuron was activated, the same happened with other famous objects or characters such as the Eiffel Tower or the Bill Clinton, since in each case a certain brain cell was activated.

At the moment, they have only been able to experiment with the elements found in the research database, but researchers say they will have the opportunity to modify and enrich it. The next step will be to perform the experiment during sleep. It is also clarified that they will prevent any possible irreversible damage in the electrode installation.

The head of the research has pointed out that the activity of brain neurons is able to “read the mind of the subjects”. He has confessed that the way for that simple observation to become a real device of recording dreams will be long, since it would be necessary a complete narration of dreams to interpret and understand its meaning in a whole. However, they are sure that this will be possible in the future: “and we’ll try.” They will continue to work on this challenge.

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