Japanese scientists can read dreams in breakthrough with MRI scans
Japanese scientists find way to use magnetic resonance imaging to unravel nighttime visions of unconscious mind in breakthrough study
Forget Freud and psychotherapy. You want to read dreams, get an MRI and a pattern recognition program for your computer.
Scientists in Japan say they have found a way to "read" people's dreams, using magnetic resonance imaging scanners to unlock some of the secrets of the unconscious mind.
Researchers have managed what they said was "the world's first decoding" of nighttime visions.
They then woke up the dreamer and asked him or her what images they had seen, a process that was repeated 200 times. These answers were compared with the brain maps that the MRI scanner produced.
Researchers were then able to predict what images the volunteers had seen with a 60 per cent accuracy rate, rising to more than 70 per cent with around 15 specific items including men, words and books, they said.