A group of scientists have embarked on a somewhat surreal mission that is attracting a lot of attention, because recording dreams could become too revealing. The goal of this group of researchers is to create a movie with the dreams of an individual, all thanks to the recording of movements, dialogues and images that we “produce” while we sleep.
The fact is that, although this recording dreams seeming like an idea straight out of a science fiction movie, Daniel Oldis, a member of the International Association for the Study of Dreams and author of the book The Lucid Dream Manifesto. He is working with David M. Schyner, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Texas, with a single goal: to turn the surreal of dreams into a movie based on real events, so to speak.
Recording dreams: a rather ambitious idea
In 2017, both researchers conducted research that recorded a person’s movements while sleeping. They did this using electromyography (EMG), which, by means of electrodes placed on the skin, evaluates the electrical activity of muscles and nerves. The result was a video with an avatar that reproduced the movements of the individual.
Subsequently, in 2018 Oldis reconstructed a person’s dialogues while the person slept, he did this also with electromyography, but this time from the movements of the muscles of the face and neck. The result was the recording of the dialogues, but not in their entirety, as there were parts that could not be deciphered.
What follows then will be the most ambitious part, recording the images we perceive while we sleep. And how will they do it? Well, in this case, they will do it based on Japanese scientists who developed a neural network capable of reading what a person has in his or her mind, but which, in addition, can be reflected on a screen.
What will happen then?
What they will ultimately do, will be to use a system to reconstruct the visions of a lucid dream, i.e. here the dreamer is in control and aware of what they are dreaming. Thus, the researchers will tell the dreamer what to dream in order to check that the movement, dialogues and images match what the person is dreaming.
The result will be a basic video of the experiences a person has while sleeping. If this project is successful, it is expected that in about ten years it will be possible to record dreams and thus have the necessary help to advance in the knowledge of the world of dreams, a subject that still holds many secrets for science.
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