Most of the people love to dream. It is said that each and every dream has some connection with our daily life. According to psychologists, every person’s life has a special relationship with dreams! Many believe that dreams indicate important events (both good and bad) of one’s life. Experts are of the opinion that events that happen throughout the day, fatigue or thoughts have an impact on a person and are reflected in dreams during sleep! Hence, dreams send a special message with a special meaning.

As per Sigmund Schlomo Freud‘s theory (of Dreams), there are three main characteristics of dreams. The part of the dream that a person remembers is usually related to what happened to her/him on a given day! Secondly, dreams have a symbolic meaning. It can also be described as a repressed wish. Thirdly, dream is basically a process of transforming the latent content into the manifest content, making the forbidden wish non-threatening so the person can remain asleep. The Austrian neurologist and the founder of Psychoanalysis used to believe that dreams represent wishes as already fulfilled and in the present tense.

Most of the dreams disappear as soon as one wakes up. Although one usually forgets the good dreams, nightmares haunt the person for a long time! According to psychologists, it is not possible for a person to remember all of what s/he experiences in dreams. However, the person becomes too restless to remember the dream after waking up in most of the cases. It would have been great if one can remember the entire episodes of the dream! Although it seems unrealistic, this dream is about to come true. Japanese scientists are working hard to make it possible!

Reports suggest that Japanese researchers have crafted a device that could capture a dream and play it back! In other words, this device can hold the dream and help a person to realise what exactly s/he saw while sleeping! The researchers have built this device in such a manner so that one can watch her/his own dreams like movies! The device, made with the latest technology, is also capable of taking images of human brains. It can enter the mysterious realm of dreams, using Artificial Intelligence (AI), and record it.

Scientists have conducted research in this regard at the laboratory of ATR Computational Neuroscience in Kyoto. As a part of the study, they observed the activities of some volunteers during the early stages of sleep. Scientists claimed to have succeeded in predicting the contents of dreams with 60% accuracy by analysing brain images of the participants. Professor Yukiyasu Kamitani, the Head of Department of Neuroinformatics at ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, has claimed that his team managed to extract the contents of dreams from the brain’s activity during sleep. He has explained that researchers employed functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) to record detailed neural activity associated with dreaming. The fMRI helped them to observe cognitive activity of volunteers during the early stages of sleep. Interestingly, when they entered REM sleep, they were awakened and questioned about their dreams. Professor Kamitani has stressed that they achieved a 70% accuracy in predicting dream contents for specific visual items, saying: “We were able to reveal dream content from brain activity during sleep, which was consistent with the subjects’ verbal reports.“

Professor Kamitani has further explained that they combined the brain images with sophisticated algorithms in order to create videos, too! One could watch those videos later to find out what s/he saw in her/his dream! There is a huge possibility of revealing various aspects of dreams by monitoring different brain functions with the help of this technology!

According to scientists, people can continue to communicate with the real world during a special stage of dreaming. This particular state of dreaming is called Lucid Dream. A lucid dream is a dream in which the dreamer is aware that s/he is dreaming and can actively control the dream’s content. Lucid dream is a type of metacognition or awareness of one’s own awareness. It typically occurs during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, the stage of sleep when most dreaming takes place. It is such a state, one’s body is completely at rest, but her/his mind wanders in dreamland!

Researchers have opined that the brain makes people dream in different special ways. Although there is little scientific evidence that dreams can predict the future, some people believe that they can do so. Neuroscientists have stressed that the research carried out by the Japanese scientists would help provide a clearer understanding of the human brain. They also expressed hope that the dream recording device would help scientists to conduct more research on the activities of the brain in the near future.

Meanwhile, the device is still in the early stages of research as the Japanese scientists are trying to improve the resolution of reconstructed dreams and to improve the device through experiments.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das