In the near future, dreams can be recorded on a flash drive to be reviewed or exchanged with friends.
Scientists have discovered that it makes no difference for the brain whether we see the world around us in reality or daydream during dreams.
People spend the third part of our life in a dream. Closing our eyes, we open the door to the world of dreams, which are so real that the illusion arises that we have been in a parallel universe. Unfortunately, we know very little about our adventures in this other dimension. Because 90 percent of dreams are instantly forgotten, as soon as we wake up. And only a few night visions remain in the memory, making you wake up in a cold sweat or, conversely, experience a state of magic and bliss.
However, in recent years, scientists have advanced so far in research on the study of our brain that it can be argued that in the near future, our dreams can be recorded on a flash drive, like a movie. You will be able to revise your favorite dreams, share them with friends, or demonstrate them to psychoanalysts.
How does the "record" button work?
In 2017, scientists from the University of Wisconsin at Madison (USA) published a paper in which they calculated the area of the brain responsible for the occurrence of dreams. The subjects were connected to an apparatus for recording an electroencephalogram of the brain for the whole night. The volunteers were then woken up at different times of the night and asked if they had any dreams before waking up. As a result, it turned out that the periods of dreams coincide with the beginning of the "glow" on the sensors of the so-called posterior cortical "hot zone" of the brain. When we are awake, it helps us perceive the visual range around us. A decrease in low-frequency activity in this area signals that the "recording" has gone - a sleeping person begins to fly in a dream, escape from the pursuit or embarks on an erotic adventure (read about the most common dream plots, read the "BTW" add-on).
Another surprising discovery was that it makes no difference for the brain whether we see the world around us in reality or daydream during dreams. For example, when in a dream we talk to someone, a part of the cerebral cortex called the "Wernicke's region" is activated - here speech signals are processed. And if the subject in a dream saw someone's face, then the sensors showed the activation of the fusiform gyrus, which is responsible for recognizing human faces.
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Reconstruction of dreams
This discovery provides the key to deciphering dreams. Based on it, a team of scientists from the University of California at Berkeley tried to decode brain signals and convert them into video images. They sat the participants in the experiment to watch videos and, using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), studied how the brain reacts to certain images. They managed to decipher 479 categories, concepts and objects. For example, they determined which brain wave graphs correspond to the verb "speak", the concepts of "road transport", "animal", "thing" (see diagram).
Such graphs of brain waves indicate that a sleeping person: 1. hears a conversation 2. sees an animal 3. sees a vehicle 4. sees a certain thing.
And since in a dream and in reality what they see generates the same brain waves, experts have learned to understand the general content of a dream and even reconstruct a kind of "picture".
“Our decoding algorithm, in principle, allows us to decipher rather detailed information about the heroes of dreams and their actions,” explains Professor Jack Gallant, the lead author of the study. - But there is a big problem in the depth of detail. We haven't gotten very far here. Relatively speaking, we can easily understand which brain signal corresponds to the category "motor vehicle". But does a person see a sports car or an SUV in a dream? Sedan or station wagon? What is the make of the car? This is still very difficult for us to decipher.
What prospects does this give?
Of course, the ability to record and view action-packed dreams is not the most important task that scientists are solving. Much more exciting is the prospect of creating a brain-computer interface that will help establish the exchange of information between our gray matter and electronic devices.
This opens up incredible opportunities for humanity. After all, experts in neurophysiology believe that the natural resources of the brain are already exhausted. And we have come to the point where the efficiency of its work can be increased only by connecting external devices. And here it is not necessary to sew some gadget into the cortex of the cerebral hemispheres. For example, the prospect of learning during sleep sounds tempting, when the content of a course from Harvard University or Moscow State University will be directly downloaded into our brains overnight. Of course, new risks also arise. For example, intruders can hack into your brain and read it like an open book. But it is better not to think about this scenario at night looking.
BTW
The most common dream subjects: chase, naked in public, tooth loss
Why do people from different countries dream the same thing?
UC psychology professor William Domhoff is a dream collector. There are more than 22 thousand dreams in his catalog, about which many respondents tell him. As the analysis shows, people from opposite corners of the planet, of different skin colors and religions and ages, dream about the same thing. The most common dream plots are falling from a height or flying, chases, appearing in public naked, teeth falling out … Here it should be noted that these are the most typical dreams that are present in the arsenal of almost all people. But the frequency with which Morpheus sends them to us is not great. It's just that such bright events are better remembered. Usually they dream about things that excited people: exams, health problems, meeting with deceased loved ones, trying to find their way in an unfamiliar place, wandering in some room … Probablycommon motives arise from the universal emotional experiences that people experience through similar stages of life. And national, cultural characteristics do not play a big role here.
YAROSLAV KOROBATOV