Have Japanese scientists developed an MRI machine to record dreams?

Claim:

Japanese scientists have successfully created an MRI machine that can record dreams and reconstruct them for later viewing.

evaluation:

what is true

In 2013, Japanese researchers used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to record brain activity related to specific objects while subjects were awake and asleep. published a study explaining how to record The resulting recording consists of flashes of images of objects that correlate with this brain activity.

what is wrong

The result is not a direct video recording in the usual sense, nor does it constitute a narrative record of the subject’s dreams, as some social media posts have suggested. Rather, clips consist of a rapid succession of still images assembled with the help of a machine learning program.

The development of technology that allows dreams to be recorded and played back cinematically, allowing dreamers to relive their wildest fantasies and nightmares alike, is something out of science fiction. But in 2013, news of an experiment that at least partially verified this idea made headlines in media publications such as: The Verge, NPRand BBC.

More than a decade later, the news has resurfaced, albeit in a somewhat exaggerated form. meme Shared on Facebook on January 15, 2024. argued as follows:

It’s true that in 2013, Japanese researchers developed technology to “read” and “record” dreams, so to speak, but the recordings are not as “cinematic” as some social media posts claim. said. Therefore, we rated this claim as “mixed.”

Publish your research in a peer-reviewed journal scienceJapanese researchers described how to record dreams using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), a non-invasive technology developed by the University of California, San Diego. explained Used to measure and map brain activity.

This “neural decoding approach” utilized machine learning models that matched specific patterns of brain activity to specific objects, both when the subjects were awake and asleep.

Dreams are often, but not always, associated with visual experiences. But when we look at something while awake, does our brain work the same way it does when we’re asleep? To find out, researchers used a relatively small sample size. She recorded the brain activity of three subjects when they were shown various objects while awake.

In addition to fMRI, the scientists equipped these subjects with electroencephalography (EEG), a test from the Mayo Clinic. explained As a way to measure electrical activity in the brain using small metal disks (electrodes) attached to the head. The participants were then asked to fall asleep and woke up as soon as their EEG detected brain activity indicating they were dreaming.

The scientists asked subjects to describe their dreams upon awakening, and because fMRI also recorded brain activity during hypnosis, the scientists were able to determine which objects were visualized in the dream, based on their brain equivalents. An attempt was made to match objects that the subjects saw while awake. activity pattern. This process was repeated until the researcher had obtained her 200 visual reports from each subject.

Words describing visual objects were grouped into 20 basic categories, such as male and female, and each verbal report was represented by an image.

This data is fed into a decoder and was explained by the scientist in an interview on the Science Podcast on April 5, 2013. It works as a machine learning model that takes into account measured brain activity to predict visual content, using algorithms that can identify fine-scale images on an image-by-image basis.

result? Although the brain activity associated with a particular object varies from person to person, people experience the same object-related brain activity when they are awake as when they are dreaming. The resulting “recording” consisted of flashes of objects correlated with this brain activity, but was not a cinematic story as some have suggested.

“Our findings provide evidence that the specific content of visual experiences during sleep is represented by, and can be read from, patterns of visual cortical activity that are shared with stimulus representations,” the researchers concluded. I attached it.

“Our method has the potential to reveal the dynamics of spontaneous brain activity related to stimulus representations, beyond the limits of sleep stages and reportable experiences. We hope that this will lead to a better understanding of the function of neural events.”

Snopes reached out to the study authors to find out where the study stands in January 2024. Study author Yukiyasu Uetan, a professor at Kyoto University’s Graduate School of Informatics, wrote, “There has been little progress, especially with regard to dreams.”

However, the researchers have improved their visual image reconstruction method and are now able to reconstruct any image, not limited to the categories used in the above study.

” [newly updated] The model can also reconstruct images that reflect subjective visual experiences such as mental images, attention, and illusions. We are currently testing sleep data to see if the images generated reflect the content of dreams,” Kamitan wrote.