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Scientists can now see what you are dreaming

Everybody dreams while sleeping.

The key is whether you can remember what you’ve dreamt or not.  Some dreams are awesome, some are nightmarish – but all reflect some aspect of the subconscious (whether buried deep or not).

And, if you’re like most people, you may find yourself wishing that you could revisit your dream state to finish out the story that was being unraveled while you slept.

Dream Sight: A Dictionary and Guide for Interpreting Any Dream
Dream Sight:
A Dictionary and Guide for Interpreting Any Dream

So, similar to the Dream Sequence in the cult favorite movie Futureworld, where Yul Brenner and Blythe Danner frolicked in a dream state captured on a computer (using the first CGI animation clip seen in a movie – if you wanted some extra trivia about this awesome film), scientists have now figured out a way to READ DREAMS USING BRAIN SCANS.

So, while they may not be able to record your dreams to video, as they said they could do in the film, what they’ve been able to do by studying brain waves is determine the topics being dreamt about.  They’ve been 70% accurate with their guesses that people were dreaming about specific words, books, etc.

This Japanese study has already spent about 3.4b yen on the project (yes, that’s “billion”), and their next step is to determine how to pick out smells, color, and emotions now that they’ve been able to –more or less– pick out nouns seen in dreams.

There is a catch, however.  The methods used are not applicable to everyone just yet.  The men being studied were shown specific images while awake, and their brain waves were recorded.  Then, when the men were asleep, the brain waves were studied again looking for matches to when they were awake.

In other words, the study could prove that their subject was dreaming about the specific car picture that they were shown earlier… but not what they were doing in the car during the dream.

Not yet, at least.

So what do you think — would you like the ability to relive your own dreams?  What about if you had access to your partner’s dreams with a system like this?