• Question: will we be able to watch our dreams like a movie?

    Asked by to Andrew, Elaine, Emma, Michael, Nancy on 23 Jun 2014. This question was also asked by .
    • Photo: Andrew French

      Andrew French answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      Hi!
      Not my area, but I think its safe to say no – not anytime soon. I think if we can do this, we would also be able to display our thoughts on a machine. And there is just so much we don’t understand about how the brain and consciousness works right now. Even if we did understand, I’m not sure we would have the ability to record and replay the signals such that it would display dreams. We can record brain activity at the moment (basically electrical signals), but we can’t tell what dreams, or thoughts, are from these.

      But who knows! In the far future, anything could be possible!

    • Photo: Nancy Carlisle

      Nancy Carlisle answered on 23 Jun 2014:

      I agree with Andrew. People have tried to ‘decode’ brain states with some success using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Researchers can determine with high accuracy whether someone is looking at a face or a house, for instance, just by looking at their brain activity pattern. But knowing whether someone is looking at a face or a house is clearly far different than knowing someone is dreaming about Justin Bieber visiting their auntie’s house… so I’m not sure we’ll ever get to a point where we can completely reconstruct someone’s ‘conscious experience’. 😉 Interesting question!

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