Thursday, October 28, 2010

Dream recording device 'possible' researcher claims

BrainA US researcher has said he plans to electronically record and interpret dreams.

Writing in the journal Nature, researchers said they have developed a system capable of recording higher-level brain activity.

"We would like to read people's dreams," says the lead scientist Dr Moran Cerf.

The aim is not to interlope, but to extend our understanding of how and why people dream.

For centuries, people have been fascinated by dreams and what they might mean; in ancient Egypt for example, they were thought to be messages from the gods.

More recently, dream analysis has been used by psychologists as a tool to understand the unconscious mind. But the only way to interpret dreams was to ask people about the subject of their dreams after they had woken up.

The eventual aim of Dr Cerf's project is to develop a system that would enable psychologists to corroborate people's recollections of their dream with an electronic visualisation of their brain activity.

"There's no clear answer as to why humans dream," according to Dr Cerf. "And one of the questions we would like to answer is when do we actually create this dream?"

Dr Cerf makes his bold claim based on an initial study that he says suggests that the activity of individual brain cells, or neurons, are associated with specific objects or concepts.

He found, for example, that when a volunteer was thinking of Marilyn Monroe, a particular neuron lit up.

By showing volunteers a series of images, Dr Cerf and his colleagues were able to identify neurons for a wide range of objects and concepts - which they used to build up a database for each patient. These included Bill and Hilary Clinton, the Eiffel Tower and celebrities. ...

via BBC News - Dream recording device 'possible' researcher claims.

What happens if you completely knock out someone's Marilyn Monroe neuron?

2 comments:

florida medicare plans said...

for seniors and even their medical doctors, the AMA is without a doubt urging Congress to act before a good Medicare predicament begins concerning December 1. Congressional motion this month is in order to eliminate the medicare insurance cut. Congress should keep medicare insurance strong for our senior people and be sure baby boomers will deal with physicians as long as they begin benefiting from their medicare insurance cards for at first chance this economy is shown.

vitamin d3 said...

Insurers offer countless different plans around the country, by using their very own sets of variables like different deductibles, premiums and co-insurance. UnitedHealth Group Inc. and Humana Inc. are the two largest Medicare Advantage plan providers. This season, about 24 different plans is going to be offered in each county, even though the overall total fell about 13 percent nationwide, [the Kaiser Family Foundation] said, citing in part new rules encouraging consolidation of low enrollment and duplicative plans. About 11.8 million Medicare beneficiaries, or nearly one fourth from the total Medicare population, were enrolled in a Medicare Advantage plan as of Sept. 30