Allegation:
Japanese scientists have successfully created an MRI machine that can record dreams and reconstruct them for later viewing.
Evaluation:
What’s True:
In 2013, Japanese researchers published a study describing a method of “recording dreams” using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity associated with specific objects while the person is both awake and asleep. The resulting recordings are a combination of flash images of objects associated with this brain activity.
The wrong one:
The result is not a direct-to-video recording in the conventional sense, nor does it include a narrative recording of a subject’s dream as some social media posts suggest. Instead, the clips consist of a quick series of still images put together with the help of a machine learning program.
The development of a technology that would record and replay dreams like a movie, allowing dreamers to relive their wildest sleep fantasies and nightmares, seems like science fiction. But in 2013, news of an experiment that at least partially confirmed the idea made headlines in media publications. Border, NPRAnd BBC.
The news resurfaced ten years later, albeit in a slightly exaggerated form. breast Shared on Facebook on January 15, 2024, he claimed:
(Screenshot/Facebook)
It is true that in 2013, Japanese researchers developed a technology to “read” and “record” dreams, so to speak, but the recordings were not as “film-like” as some social media posts claimed. Therefore, we evaluated this claim as a Mixture.
Publish your work in a peer-reviewed journal ScienceJapanese researchers have described a method of recording dreams using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a noninvasive technique developed by the University of California, San Diego. described It is used to measure and map brain activity.
This “neural decoding approach” used machine learning models to match specific brain activity patterns to specific objects while the test subject was both awake and asleep.
Dreaming is often, but not always, associated with visual experiences. So, does our brain behave the same way when we see something while awake as when we sleep? To find out, researchers recorded the brain activity of three test subjects (a relatively small sample size) when the subjects were shown various objects while awake.
In addition to fMRI, the scientists equipped these test subjects with an electroencephalogram (EEG), a test from the Mayo Clinic. described as a method of measuring electrical activity in the brain using small metal discs (electrodes) worn on the head. Participants were then asked to fall asleep and woken up as soon as the EEG detected brain activity indicating they were dreaming.
Upon waking, the scientists asked the subjects to describe the content of their dreams, and since fMRI also records brain activity during dreams, the scientists attempted to match the objects visualized in the dream with the objects the subjects saw while awake, based on the relevant brain data. activity patterns. The process was repeated until the researchers obtained 200 visual reports from each subject.
Words describing visual objects were divided into 20 basic categories, such as male and female, and each verbal report was represented by an image.
This data was then entered into a decoder, which the scientists described in an April 5, 2013 Science Podcast interview. as a machine learning model that predicts visual content based on measured brain activity using an algorithm that can identify fine-scale, picture-by-picture images.
Conclusion? Although the brain activity associated with a particular object varies from person to person, individuals experience the same object-related brain activity while awake as when dreaming. The resulting “recordings” consisted of flashes of objects associated with this brain activity, though not a movie-like narrative as some have suggested.
“Our findings provide evidence that specific contents of visual experience during sleep are represented by, and can be read from, patterns of visual cortical activity shared by stimulus representation,” the researchers concluded.
“Our method can also operate beyond the boundaries of sleep stages and reportable experiences to reveal the dynamics of spontaneous brain activity in relation to stimulus representation. We hope this will lead to a better understanding of the functions of dreaming and spontaneous neural events.”
Snopes reached out to the study’s authors to find out where the research stands as of January 2024. The study’s author, Yukiyasu Kamitan, a professor at Kyoto University’s Institute of Informatics, wrote that “not much progress has been made, especially in dreaming.”
However, researchers have developed visual image reconstruction methods that now allow the reconstruction of arbitrary images that are not limited to the categories used for the above study.
” [newly updated] The model can also reconstruct images that reflect subjective visual experiences, such as mental imagery, attention, and illusions. We are now testing the sleep data to see if the images generated reflect the dream content,” Kamitan wrote.
Resources:
EEG (Electroencephalogram) – Mayo Clinic. https://www.mayoclinic.org/tests-procedures/eeg/about/pac-20393875. Access date: January 26, 2024.
Horikawa, T., et al. “Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery During Sleep.” Science, vol. 340, no. 6132, May 2013, p. 639–42. DOI.org (Cross reference)https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1234330.
Log in or sign up to view. https://www.facebook.com/login/. Access date: January 26, 2024.
Robertson, Adi. “Scientists Turn Dreams into Spooky Short Movies with MRI Scanning.” BorderApril 4, 2013, https://www.theverge.com/2013/4/4/4184728/scientists-decode-dreams-with-mri-scan.
“Scientists ‘Read Dreams’ Using Brain Scans.” BBC newsApril 4, 2013. www.bbc.comhttps://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-22031074.
Stein, Rob. “Researchers Use Brain Scans to Reveal Hidden Dreamscape.” NPRApril 4, 2013. NPRhttps://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2013/04/04/176224026/researchers-use-brain-scans-to-reveal-hidden-dreamscape.
What is FMRI? – Functional MRI Center – UC San Diego. http://fmri.ucsd.edu/Research/whatisfmri.html. Access date: January 26, 2024.