Thread: Dream recording device 'possible' researcher claims

very neat, it would be cool in the future to be able to watch your dreams later that day, it would kinda bug me if dreaming went mainstream, but i guess the pros would still be pros and the joes joes.

thanks thats very interesting, I have wanted something like this every since I was little, lol

That's so cool. Now they just need a way of interpreting and playing back the recording.

Give it 5 years and there will be 1 i bet ya!, the computer at the moment can collect images that you are thinking within 5 years i bet you will be able to record and playback your dreams hopefully anyway

that could lead to some pretty intense privacy issues.

This was one-half of the premise of my Nanowrimo 2009 novel. I set it some 200-300 years in the future. That's life as a sci-fi writer: sometimes things aren't as far in the future as you think they are.

I both want, and don't want, this line of research to pan out. Certainly, I would LOVE to have replayable recordings of my dreams. And I would like to be able to talk about dreaming with more people. But... one more mystery de-mystified by science makes me a little sad, 'cause I like to have a sense of wonder in my universe.

Originally Posted by Nikkonic

that could lead to some pretty intense privacy issues.

well you have to have electrodes in your brain to capture the images, so doubt there will be brain hackers.... for awhile.

Originally Posted by moongrass

well you have to have electrodes in your brain to capture the images, so doubt there will be brain hackers.... for awhile.

I'm talking more about people sharing dreams that have other real people in them. like if i had a dream about someone that i know in which they were naked and i showed others (or the opposite), that would infringe on an individual right to privacy.

Alternatively, if i was to have a dream where i kick someones ass and i share it with a few people word gets around... police see it as probable cause to arrest me for intent to injure or something like that...

Maybe I'm paranoid but i think that the lines would be very fuzzy for a while, it would be very interesting if it could happen, i would love to be able to record my dreams for my own personal entertainment, but at the same time i don't want someone dreaming of me naked then showing everyone either.

woun't that break the "dream plane" theory?

I would not be interested because the beauty of dreams it's that it's something personal and recalling stories on your own is great.
I'm so excited when i remember dreams . It makes me feel proud

nikkonic, I understand what you mean but its just a dream.... also what exactly do you mean by dream plane. and I agree it would kinda ruin dreams....

I still think it's a heck of a jump to go from PET brain scans while the subject is sleeping to what we would call a "video" of a dream.

Taking what he described in the article, he has appearantly found that when you think of a certain person, a certain neuron will light up. So in theory if while you were dreaming that neuron fired, the outside observers could assume you just dreamed about that person.

While I'm not a neuroscientist, I'm a little dubious that we have a specific, singular neuron that fires exclusively for each person, place, item, smell, emotion, etc. But even if we assume that we did, and you mapped out ALL of them ahead of time, what you would end up with at the end of the dream is a list of items/people/places that appeared in the dream, not a "video" of the dream.

So let's say you dream that WW3 broke out, and everyone was stuck inside the belly of huge robots that roamed the wasted cities and used humans for fuel. The data at the end of the dream would look something like;

WAR
MACHINE
CITY
ROBOT
CONSUMPTION
RUINS
PEOPLE
SMOKE
OIL
ESCAPE
FEAR
ROBOTS
SKY
SHIRT
BLOOD

You've got a list of neurons that fired and (if they are devoted, specific neurons) what those neurons represent. But you don't have the narative of the dream, the flow of events, and so on.

It would be like trying to rewrite Titus Andronicus when the only info you can go by is

TITUS
LAVINA
TAMORA
BETRAYLE
WAR
ROMANS
EMPEROR
SONS
DAUGHTERS
CANIBALISM
CHIRON
PIE
HAND

Originally Posted by moongrass

nikkonic, I understand what you mean but its just a dream.... also what exactly do you mean by dream plane. and I agree it would kinda ruin dreams....

I'm guessing he means the whole supernatural thing where when you dream your spirits flies up to the dream plane and parties with other people dreaming at the same time, and fight off evil dream entities assuming you have a low enough Thac0.

In which case...I hope the dream-mapper does work, so people will stop thinking they have wireless routers in their head.

Originally Posted by moongrass

nikkonic, I understand what you mean but its just a dream.... also what exactly do you mean by dream plane. and I agree it would kinda ruin dreams....

I agree with you moongrass it is just a dream. However we live in a world where a majority of people are paranoid post 911 and people can be arrested for buying things that just happen to resemble what someone would need to buy to make bombs or cook up drugs. They're a potential threat. Could you imagine what would happen if the proper people got a hold of some of the dreams that we record, full of violence, sex, drug use and probably a whole lot more that people just are just not to keen in sharing with the general public. I believe that the authorities would see our dreams as the hardest evidence that one could collect to build a case against someone for the simple reason that the dream comes directly from our subconscious. We (or at least I) use my dreams as a way to escape reality and do all those things that i can't really do in this world, unfortunately i don't think that the people who hold the power would see it as so. Granted this is just my opinion, but my gut tells me that if this does become a reality, we're just one step closer to the thought police we've read about in George Orwells' 1984.

yup so true. Dreams really are a great way to do ANYTHING! Some friends I have want to read my dream journal and I'm like no, it's a very personal thing that some just would not understand.

Oh man, I'd be way too embarassed to let someone record my dreams. I like to share my dreams, but only after the fact. You never know what sort of crazy things you might dream! I think the stress of knowing someone is recording it would make me have a nightmare. It's going to be the case of the observer changing what he observes. People probably dream and sleep a little differently in sleep labs with recording devices than they would at home, comfortably.

But it sure would be a cool way to test shared dreaming!

This would be cool to use as a personal device that only you can access, watch, and use, but if hackers figured out how to get into them... well, you're in some trouble. The only way make this go public is if you created some advanced kind of security system for it and some very good sealing. Plus, police could, at any time, come into your house and watch your dreams, and, like Nikkonic said, police can arrest you for suspicious dream material. Even though you may know that you're doing this and it's just to do stuff that you normally wouldn't do but want to, the authorities probably wouldn't buy it. Then 34,000+ people get arrested, people go ranting everywhere they go because of it, they do all kinds of stuff to stop it, &c, &c, &c. Really, it's just an idea for chaos.

But, like I said, if it was something that only you use, watch, and enjoy without any hackers or authorities, that would be pretty cool to have.

yeah, I agree. I researched this article for a collage assignment and it brought up some good discussion,

come on guys if there was a dream recording device, the police wouldnt come and arrest you beacause of a dream, theres no physical evidence of any law breaking, sometimes it is uncontrollable what you dream about. They would surely be understanding im sure some police have dreams that they wouldnt want any1 else to see. + why be afraid people will know your thoughts do u not think you couldnt delete any footage captured?!

Don't forget brain hackers. Once you figure out to do one thing, you can easily do the reverse. In this case they can feed nightmares and horror movies into your dreams.