by Demand:
Japanese scientists have succeeded in creating an MRI machine that can record dreams and recreate them for later viewing.
Rating:
What’s True:
In 2013, Japanese researchers published a study that described a method to “record dreams” by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity related to certain objects when a subject is awake. and asleep. The resulting recordings are flashes of images of objects associated with this brain activity.
What is False:
The result is not a direct-to-video recording in the usual sense, nor is it a narrative record of a person’s dream as some social media posts have suggested. Rather, the clips are a quick series of still images put together with the help of a machine learning program.
The development of technology to record and replay dreams like film, allowing dreamers to relive their wildest sleeping fantasies and nightmares is like the stuff of science fiction. But in 2013, news of an experiment that at least partially validated the idea made headlines in media publications including The Corr, NPRand BBC.
The news resurfaced more than ten years later, albeit in an exaggerated form, when meme shared on Facebook on January 15, 2024, claimed the following:
(Screen/Facebook)
It is true that Japanese research developed technology in 2013 to “read” and “record” dreams, so to speak, but said recordings were not “like a movie,” as some social media posts claimed. Therefore, we have rated this claim as Mixed.
Publish their work in a peer-reviewed journal Sciencethe Japanese researchers described a method of recording dreams using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-invasive technique at the University of California, San Diego, Put down as used to measure and map brain activity.
This “neural decoding approach” used machine learning models that would match specific brain activity patterns to specific objects, when a test subject was awake and asleep.
Dreaming is often, though not always, related to visual experiences. But do our brains behave in the same way when we see something when we are awake as they do when we are asleep? To find out, the researchers recorded the brain activity of test subjects – a relatively small sample size – when the subjects were shown different objects while they were awake.
In addition to the fMRI, the scientists provided these test subjects with an electroencephalogram (EEG), a test performed by the Mayo Clinic. Put down as a method of measuring electrical activity in the brain using small metal discs (electrodes) attached to the head. Participants were then asked to fall asleep and were awakened as soon as the EEG detected brain activity that indicated they were dreaming.
When they were awakened, the scientists asked the subjects to describe the content of their dreams, and, as the fMRI recorded brain activity during the dream, the scientists tried to describe what appeared in the dream. matched those seen by the subjects while awake based on corresponding brains. activity patterns. The process was repeated until researchers obtained 200 visual reports from each subject.
Words that described an object were grouped into 20 basic categories, such as male or female, and each verbal description was then illustrated with an image.
This data was then fed into a decoder, which the scientists described in a Science Podcast interview on April 5, 2013. as a machine learning model that predicts visual content given measured brain activity using an algorithm that can identify small-scale images, picture by picture.
The result? Although brain activity related to a particular object differs from person to person, people experience the same brain activity related to the object when they are awake as they do when they are dreaming. The resulting “recordings” were flashes of things related to this brain activity, although not a movie-like story as some suggested.
“Together, our findings provide evidence that the specific content of visual experience during sleep is represented by, and can be read out from, visual cortical activity patterns shared with stimulus representation,” the researchers said.
“Our method may work beyond the boundaries of sleep stages and reportable experience to reveal the dynamics of spontaneous brain activity in association with stimulus expression. We hope that this will lead to a better understanding of the functions of dreams and spontaneous neural events.”
Snopes contacted the study’s authors to find out where the research stood as of January 2024. Study author Yukiyasu Kamitan, a professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Informatics, wrote that “specifically, there is little progress on the dream. “
However, the researchers have improved their visual image reconstruction methods that now allow the reconstruction of arbitrary images that are not limited to categories used for the above study.
“The IS [newly updated] The model can also recreate images that represent subjective visual experiences, such as mental imagery, attention, and illusions. We are now testing sleep data to see if the generated images reflect dream content,” Kamitan wrote.
Sources:
EEG (Electroencephalogram) – Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/eeg/about/pac-20393875. Accessed 26 January 2024.
Horikawa, T., et al. “Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery During Sleep.” Science, vol. 340, no. 6132, May 2013, pp. 639–42. DOI.org (Crossref)https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1234330.
Log in or Register to View. https://www.facebook.com/login/. Accessed 26 January 2024.
Robertson, Aidy. “Scientists Turn Dreams into Eerie Short Films with MRI Scans.” The Corr4 April 2013, https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/4/4184728/scientists-decode-dreams-with-mri-scan.
“Scientists Read Dreams Using Brain Scans.” BBC News4 April 2013. www.bbc.comhttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22031074.
Stein, Rob. “Researchers Use Brain Scans to Reveal Hidden Dreamscape.” NPR4 April 2013. NPRhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/04/04/176224026/researchers-use-brain-scans-to-reveal-hidden-dreamscape.
What is FMRI? – Center for Functional MRI – UC San Diego. http://fmri.ucsd.edu/Research/whatisfmri.html. Accessed 26 January 2024.
