Researchers from the Kyoto Computing Laboratory of Neurology (Japan) have developed a technique that allows you to associate tomography data of the sleeping person's brain with certain images. This means that now they can "see" what you are dreaming of.
A team of scientists led by Yukiyasu Kamitani conducted a study in which sleeping people underwent magnetic resonance imaging of the brain, detecting changes in blood flow through certain areas of the cortex. Thus, scientists determined which parts of the sleeping person's brain remain active.
After that, the participants in the experiment were woken up and asked to tell what they dreamed about; then they fell asleep again. By repeating this cycle every three hours, scientists have received "reports" of about 200 dreams.
In the next phase of the work, the researchers collected images that were associated with the most common words in the reports, and asked the participants to view these images, while doing magnetic resonance imaging of the brain already in the waking state.
The scientists then compared data on the brain activity of sleeping and waking people that were associated with the same images.
"We got a model that allows us to determine the presence or absence of this or that type of image in a dream," Kamitani explained in an interview with Scientific American. - By analyzing the data on brain activity nine seconds before waking up, we can state with an accuracy of 75-80 percent whether the sleeping person, for example, has seen a person
At the next stage of the study, scientists will try to collect the same data regarding the so-called "phase of REM sleep" - when a person sees dreams most often.
"This is more difficult, since in order to 'catch' the subject in this phase it is necessary to wait at least an hour after falling asleep."
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"If we learn to 'read' the content of dreams and find out how it relates to brain activity, then perhaps we can understand the function of sleep itself."