Sci-fi dreaming
October 7, 2020 DOI: 10.4324/9781315516653-8 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Topics | Dreaming |
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| Key points | The text describes a first-of-its-kind experiment by Yukiyasu Kamitani's team that translated brain images from dreaming people into pictures of their dreams, and notes that MIT researchers are developing technology to implant specific content into dreams. It also draws parallels between psychedelic consciousness and dreaming as a kind of 'waking dream'. |
Abstract
Sci-fi has had a lot to say about dreaming over the years: film director Christopher Nolan, fiction writer Ursula Le Guin, anime director Satoshi Kon, and many others have explored the weird and wonderful world of dreams. Inception begins with the premise that it’s possible to enter someone’s dream and extract information from their mind. In the first experiment of its kind, a research team led by Yukiyasu Kamitani was able to translate images from the brains of people who were dreaming to pictures of their dreams on a screen. DeepDream uses artificial neural networks to create what end up as very psychedelic images. In psychedelic consciousness we may hallucinate – in other words, have a kind of ‘waking dream’, and there are many other similarities between the two states of consciousness. Researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have been developing technology that will allow far more specific content to be implanted into a dream.