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Science

Scientists Match Dream Images To Photos 47

Posted by Soulskill from the that's-nice-but-please-don't dept.
scibri writes "Scientists have learned how to discover what you are dreaming about while you sleep. A team of Japanese researchers scanned the brains of three people as they slept, and compared the scans to those of the same people looking at photos of common objects. They were then able to tell, with 75% — 80% accuracy, if one of those images appeared in a dream."
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Scientists Match Dream Images To Photos More

Scientists Match Dream Images To Photos

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  • Uh-oh... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19, 2012 @04:42PM (#41710279)

    Don't show naked women, don't show naked women...

  • Security through Obscurity (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Luckily for me I rarely dream about existing, much less common, objects.

  • Well... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    if you are dreaming images of common objects your dreams are not interesting enough to be worth the research...

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward

      While working in shipping at Dell during one of those months where we were working 10 hour days for over 30 days straight I used to have erotic dreams about Dell shipping boxes.

      Damn straight I'm posting that AC, no way in hell would I like that associated with my ...... hmm

      apk

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward
        I've got you now, baby boy!

        Alexander Peter Kowalski
        - 903 East Division St.
        - Syracuse, NY 13208
        - DOB: 01/31/1965

        - Mother: Jan Kowalski
        - - DOB: 12/03/1933

  • Japanese researchers (Score:2, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I predict a high probability of tentacles and schoolgirls.

  • I remember when David was viewing the dreams of the cryosleeping crew thinking that is just stupid. I'll buy spaceships and aliens, but we'll never have tech like that. I'll be damned, we have a primitive form now. And by 'we' I mean 'they'.

  • obligatory PBF (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 19, 2012 @04:51PM (#41710367)

    http://pbfcomics.com/160/

  • Did I see Christopher Nolan in that dream last night?

  • let me know when i can control my dreams (Score:4, Interesting)

    by RobertLTux ( 260313 ) <robert.laurencemartin@org> on Friday October 19, 2012 @05:10PM (#41710537)

    this of course would make 98% of TV rather boring in comparison but...

    • Re:let me know when i can control my dreams (Score:5, Informative)

      by chichilalescu ( 1647065 ) on Friday October 19, 2012 @05:14PM (#41710597) Homepage Journal

      a lot of people can train themselves for lucid dreaming.
      look it up.

      • I did. Unfortunately, the whole "lucid dreaming" thing is overrun by people who think that they are shamans, crystal healers, and all sorts of other fools. It's less about "controlling your dreams" as it is "unlocking past life experiences" and other nonsense.

        • Re:let me know when i can control my dreams (Score:4, Informative)

          by PrimaryConsult ( 1546585 ) on Friday October 19, 2012 @06:24PM (#41711167)

          That's why you learn from either a print book, or the simplest online guide out there, and ignore the discussion community entirely...

          I know it is real because I have accidentally done it a few times, I just really don't care enough to improve the odds by doing all the mental exercises out there.

          An easy example: A sign that you are dreaming is inconsistent numbers, and simply being aware of this fact will help trigger lucid dreams if you encounter numbers in a dream. To improve the chances of this occurring, you can make a habit of checking your watch / clocks / other things with numbers twice while awake, and verify that the numbers remain consistent. This isn't as easy as it sounds, which is why I gave up...

          • Same thing with text: if you re-read it and it's different, it's a dream. Another one: jump, and if you come down slowly (like you're on Moon gravity), you know you're dreaming.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mrxak ( 727974 )

            Last time I accidentally started lucid dreaming, I changed the angle of view and aspect ratio of my vision, which was really strange and really kind of cool at the same time. I've been interested in doing more lucid dreaming, but don't really care quite enough to train myself for it. I just enjoy it when it happens.

        • I went to the wikipedia page after reading the xkcd comic that had "lucid dreaming" in its mouseover text.
          There, I saw that lucid dreaming is taught to people who have a lot of nightmares, while undergoing therapy, so that they can gain control over their dreams.
          It sounded intriguing, but I didn't have the patience to learn more about it.

          In any case, sorry to hear you ran into stupid people.
          But if you did train yourself to do this, I do have a couple of questions:
          (1) can you control the passage of time in y

        • I lucid dream most of the time; generally something happens in the dream that doesn't seem right (internal inconsistencies), which alerts me to the fact that it's a dream, and from that point I can control pretty much anything I like, so long as I don't think too hard about it (which causes me to wake up). One thing I have difficulty with is other people's reactions in dreams; I'm not sure if that's because a different part of the brain handles that or what, but the current location, people, objects and law

    • You can. People have been practicing lucid dreaming [wikipedia.org] for centuries.

      These days you can even purchase devices to make lucid dreaming easier. [lucidity.com]

  • No pictures? (Score:5, Funny)

    by partyguerrilla ( 1597357 ) on Friday October 19, 2012 @05:28PM (#41710743)
    Seriously?

  • Scary thought. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    If their deck of cards includes a seven-armed warrior princess battling a horde of flying possums while I finger her gently then my dream last night is as good as public.

  • I've never been wrong when I've said: I can tell you're not dreaming about this picture I drew of the mobile drilling machine I piloted while trying to head off a subterranean nuke-missile and save the world, before I decided to take a detour and visit my "middle-earth" high-school, which is why the pic shows the Magma-Men and I gathered 'round the rig with glowing smiles.

    Honestly, you could monitor my dreams and accurately compare every photograph of everything in the entire Universe and you'd still nev

  • The title is really inaccurate. I was at this conference and talked to Kamitani about it. He was able to determine whether the dreams we have when entering sleep (not those we have in deep sleep) contained faces, places, or inanimate objects. Significantly above chance levels. It's good work, but it's nothing like reconstructing a photo of what someone was dreaming. Kamitani also tried to explicitly do this, but so far, it's not possible. The linked article makes all of this really clear.

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