Beam your dreams into computers

A Japanese research team claim to have created a technology that could eventually display human dreams on a computer screen. Researchers at the ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have actually succeeded in processing and displaying images directly from the human brain.

To date the technology has only managed to reproduce simple images. However, experts are suggesting that in the not-to-distant future, the technology could advance exponentially and eventually be used to capture dream images and other pictures inside the human mind.

The way that it works is like this – when a person looks at an object, the eye’s retina recognises an image that is converted into electrical signals, that then go into the brain’s visual cortex. The team, led by chief researcher Yukiyasu Kamitani, succeeded in catching the signals and then reconstructing what people see.

This is relatively new technology and embedded in scientific research and analysis. I am fascinated by this technology and some of the ideas that spin-off from brain mapping experiments. At this stage scientists can take pictures out of people’s minds but what happens when they can put images in? As new ideas emerge, I’ll keep you posted.