Possible to record dreams onto video?

I think this will will one day be possible over a long period of time and research. The only way they will be able to have access from information directly from the brain though, is when they find out a way to actually take information from the neurons and somehow transfer that to a computer ( or whatever advanced bio-electronics would be used in that era). They already know how to use electric currents to stimulate parts of the brain… so they just got to figure out how to actually retrieve information directly.

Anyway, it would be cool if that would be possible. I could just see crowding around the TV (or other futuristic media device) to watch a cool lucid dream from the previous night.

Anything is “theoretically possible” - but yes i think eventually that will be possibile - although i doubt it will be within my life time.

Hmm, and if it’s possbile to “slow down” time in your dream (make 3 hours in real time seem like 3 years in dream time), would you need 3 years of videotape to record it on, or would 3 hours be enough? (The movie would seem REALLY REALLY fastforward ^^)

I don’t think it’s possible… because I don’t think that dreaming has anything to do with your brain.

(although I liked the dream machine from prof. Barabas (I don’t know his english name)

First af al, IF dreaming would give the same energy in your brain as the same experience would have in real life. I think it IS possible… Because when you would find out what energy/electronical parts however it is called :smile: if we could find out that if someone sees a read dress… it’s the same as braincell number 978562 in group B is active (for the color read) and braincell number 6532 (for the dress) if we could do that, and dreams give the same brainactivity on the same places but only the activity is stopped before it reaches any senses. It would be possible to record dreamings.

(you will have a 3 hour tape with really really fastforward recording on it. If you would dream three years)

But… I don’t think that is true, so I don’t think it’s possible to tape dreams. Why don’t I think it’s true???

Because of the Near Death Experiences people have when there is NO dreamactivity… together with the statement of people who think a Near Death Experience is just a dream…

Although I don’t think that… I think its compareble… It’s just living in an other world inside your brain (in a other dimension) … so I really think dreaming has nothing to do with brain activity, and so also nothing to do with your brains…

If you’ve ever seen the movie “Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within,” one of the first scenes of the movie is the main character having and recording one of her dreams. I just thought that was a worthy comment.

Yeah, but like you said, “In the movie…”

Anything is possible in a movie.

Huh, I am just writing a book where some people invite a device possible to bring objects from dreams to virtual reality. If it is impossible, my book is bullshit… :’( But I believe it is theoretically possible, though it does not necessarily mean it will be done. It is really a complicated task for the science… First, because we still do not know, how the brain really works, in detail. Second, because it must be a device, getting information about the state of every brain cell (and we don’t want to have 10000000000 electrodes stuck into our head, do we?) Third, the deciphering will be different for different people, because it is not necessary that if one person always sees something when having some signal in some center, that another person will see the same thing. So, the system will have to be set up for every person whose dreams are going to be recorded… I am also afraid, that the videotape only, without other feelings, would be not enough to understand somebody’s dream. And if you can translate all the information straight into the audience’s brains… :bored: I am afraid, that if such thing is ever invented, dreams will be the last thing the scientist will dream about. :sad: But I believe simpler devices will be invented rather soon (thought I don’t think to live as long :sad: ), which will just say, without showing the whole picture, what the dream is about… It could help to remember dreams, for example…

Interesting research on the cat. Something about it really doesnt sit well with me but it is certainly interesting.

It doesnt shed much light on just how the brain is supposed to produce consciousness because the visuals the experimenters produce are not the visuals the cat sees. The visuals they produce are on a monitor: where are the visuals the cat sees? Literally everything scientists observe will not be what the cat ACTUALLY sees, only the cat can see that…

But maybe, in theory, a dream record device is possible. Would certainly be interesting. Not sure I’d want all my dreams recorded but maybe some of the better ones. But again, you wouldnt ACTUALLY be seeing the dream itself,you’d be seeing the visuals of it on a tv screen. The emotion of the moment wouldnt be there…

Basically although I find the research interesting, I don’t think it is worth doing considering the ethical questions it raises. Of course that won’t stop it happening…

Here’s something they could try:

Hook up the cat with the electrodes and get the real-time visuals up on a computer monitor.

Then get the cat to look directly at the monitor!

What would be on the monitor then? Or would the universe just implode? :tongue:

Poor cat he will go crazy… So many monitors, one inside the other… :bored: We will at last know if cats can hallucinate… :smile:
Or he will be able to see the next level of reality… :smile:
In fact, the quality of the picture will just became worse and worse, because information is lost in all links of the cycle… In several minutes, we will get a gray screen and nothing more…

Perhaps you don’t have to. It seems a neural network can learn the information from another by reproducing his inputs and outputs. So you will have fewer electrods (just 10000000). :happy:

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/471786.stm

it stands to reason that this would work for things hallucianted and therefore dreamed… and i do believe cats dream… i wonder if they had the sense to see if they could see a cats dreams… :confused:

By recording the electrical activity of nerve cells in the thalamus, a region of the brain that receives signals from the eyes, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley were able to view these shapes.

The team used what they describe as a “linear decoding technique” to convert the signals from the stimulated cells into visual images.

By being able to tap directly into the brain and extract a visual image the researchers have produced a “brain interface” that may one day allow the control of artificial organs and indeed machines by thought alone. It is also conceivable that, given time, it will be possible to record what one person sees and “play it back” to someone else either as it is happening or at a later date.

scary if abused, and surely it will be, right? if we can do it “wirelessly” one day? Right… damn.

More over, they said that "it could prove a breakthrough in the hoped-for ability to wire artificial limbs directly into the brain and could lead to :

  • artificial brain extensions like extra data storage or processing power or the ability to control devices just by thinking about them.
  • machines with brain interfaces."

Not very far from “Ghost in the Shell”, isn’t it ?
This has be done in 1999. I wonder if they made some progress…

Another funny experience about what rats are dreaming :

“The researchers examined REM episodes recorded while the rats slept. About half repeated the unique signature of brain activity that was created as the animal ran. The correlation was so close that the researchers found that as the animal dreamed, they could reconstruct where it would be in the maze if it were awake and whether the animal was dreaming of running or standing still.”

https://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2001/dreams-0131.html

I’ve spent some time thinking about this and I have 2 opinions on the matter:

On one hand, it could be really good for Dream Recall and may unlock some secrets of dreams. You’ll be able to look up dream signs in detail.

But on the other hand, if you buy one and you’re siblings/parents/husband/wife/boyfriend/girlfriend want to know what you dream about, and they hook you up to it without you knowing, they may not like what you dream about. Some things are better left unsaid, same with dreams.

So it’s hard to choose.

But yes, I think it’s possible.

I believe that it is possible. Back a few centuries ago people would have said it was impossible to record life onto video, as everybody would percieve colours and things in a different manner. But I’m quite sure it’ll be beyond all of our lifetimes.

news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/472796.stm

There you go. The cat experiment covered by BBC. Interesting!

After seeing those blurry images and reading some articles about the cat experiment, I’m stunned! This will lead to amazing discoveries about existence - specially when we can record dreams.

I don’t think that “some things are best left unsaid” for everyone. Some people might feel uneasy about others seeing their sometimes bestial dreams, but I think this would require human ethics to open new doors. Everyone has dreams - from sick nightmares to, yes, sick pleasure dreams. The waking mind is not the same as the dreaming mind. I’ve dreamt countless of sick and bizarre dreams, and many of them have been enjoyable - although sickening when I woke up. Perhaps people will be more humble towards each other when they see what others dreams, and what they dream themselves, it will also teach us about what we go through while trying to remain sane and lawful.
I don’t think that most peoples’ dreams are insane, but we should not go hypocritical on our nature and try to hide away from our selves. We would rather grow on being able to handle how we think.

I embrace these new technologies. It would be fun :smile:

I dont think this is a worthy comment - the whole reason we live is because we have no brain… no brain, no life, we cannot transplant brains (yet) no man has been given a pigs brain or anything, its just not possible.

If you took out your brain, u cease to exist anymore. All the things you see and hear are interpretations of the world around through several systems all linking to your brain, the 5 senses.

I was thinking, it would perhaps be possible to send a beam of lazer-optics to penetrate the brain/thalemus to reach the neurons and decipher the information onto a computer leading to a television, another way (although extremely dangerous) would be to use raidation…

what do you think?

I think this is very possible and I hope it is realised in our lifetime…

  • Silva

I’m not convinced by the cat experiment. And I still believe it’s impossible to record dreams on tape, because this would reduce the whole dreaming experience to empirical data. That just doesn’t make any sense to me. Dreaming is a fully subjective experience, and the only way to deal with it is by means of interpretation. Scientific methods however don’t show any of this interpretation. They’re only capable of denoting the objects without submitting any value to them. Compare it with the thinking process: scientists think the mind is the result of brain activity. However, they can fully dissect the brain and monitor every synaptic change or anything, but they will never be able to empirically derive data from the thinking process itself. Scientists can only detect the physiological changes correlated with the thinking process, not the thinking process itself. To know anything about that, the scientist need to start a dialogue with the test subject and interprete his thoughts. And still they keep saying the mind is the result of brain activity. This is very strange really… because the mind has very different properties than the brain from which it apparently originates: the brain can be seen and denoted, but it doesn’t show any gradations of value. However, if we look at the mind, we cannot see it visually, nor can we denote it, because the only way to understand the mind is through interpretation and dialogue. Thereby, the mind has an inherent structure of values: dreams can be expressions of joy, fear, grief,… but this can never be seen on the brainwave EEG (theta waves are not particularly more beautiful than delta waves). This to me proves the brain and the mind are highly correlated, but they cannot be reduced to each other. Therefore, reducing a subjective mind experience, a dream in this case, to fully objective data, will never succeed properly. The only thing they will get is a highly distorted outcome because it only depicts one aspect of the whole experience, namely the empirical derived changes in the brain which don’t need any interpretation.