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NEUROSCIENCE
Dream stream decoded
Machine learning and imaging show what the dreaming brain sees.
Dreaming shows how busy the brain stays during sleep. A research team in Japan has now found a way to infer dreams from brain activity. Dreaming is a fascinating phenomenon because it often accompanies visual experience, but there is no physical sensory input, says Yukiyasu Kamitani from ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, who led the work. When a person is dreaming about an object or scene, the brain activity is similar to that caused by actually seeing the same object or scene.
The scientists recruited people to their sleep...