Tag Archives: dreams

Here’s how to soon be able to record your dreams

Posted on by
Reply

Utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) in combination with mind-reading technology is essential for recreating the sensations we experience in our dreams.

In a well-known Japanese study, the initial steps of this method were showcased in 2023. Researchers employed a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scanner to monitor the brain activity of participants during sleep and utilized machine learning to identify recognized objects like keys, individuals, and chairs from that activity.

Nevertheless, this study concentrated on sleep onset, the first two stages of sleep where visual imagery (hallucinations) occur, and did not explore dreams at all.

They adopted this approach so participants could articulate what they observed upon waking.

To replicate dreams, we need an extensive database of detailed fMRI information from dreaming volunteers to educate a large-scale AI. Participants should possess exceptional recall abilities to describe their dreams vividly, which will help determine the accuracy of the predictions.

Recording dreams in this level of detail poses a significant challenge, and establishing a reliable method to generate such data remains uncertain.

Nonetheless, progress has already been made in related areas, with research studies producing vast datasets of fMRI brain activity from conscious participants watching videos, listening to spoken language, and reading text.

By employing AI trained on these datasets, we can already predict what people are viewing or reading while awake.

Assuming there is enough data to develop such an AI in a few years, as well as portable fMRI machines that allow for dreaming individuals to be monitored while asleep, the required methodologies to exhibit results will already be in place.

Generative AI such as OpenAI’s Sora and Google DeepMind’s Lumiere can already generate captivating video sequences. Utilizing dream analysis AI, when you provide a textual depiction to the generative AI, you receive a video illustrating the dream sequence.

However, it’s important to note that these AIs are not actually reading minds, but rather matching brain activity patterns with images that may have been previously seen. The generative AI cannot validate if the video accurately represents the dream—it simply pieces together images and possibly adds a rudimentary narrative.

Though the end product may strikingly resemble a dream with many familiar elements, it does not provide an exact replica, similar to how the movie Cast Away featuring Tom Hanks only loosely mirrors the true story of Jose Salvador Alvarenga, a fisherman stranded for 14 months in the Pacific Ocean.

AI is remarkable, intelligent, and sometimes eerie, but in terms of understanding the human brain, it is not always precise.

This article responds to a query by Andrew Taylor via email: “How close are we to being able to record our dreams?”

If you have any inquiries, please send them to the email address below. For further information, or to reach out to us, visit the Facebook page, Twitter, or our Instagram page (don’t forget to include your name and location).

For more remarkable insights, visit our ultimate fun facts and explore additional fascinating science pages.

Read more:

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

Sweet Dreams Universe: Exploring the Mind of a Psychic Infant | Activities

Posted on by
Reply

HHow do you follow up on a game that made the world cry? It’s a question that’s vexed writer Graham Parks since his 2021 BAFTA-winning Before Your Eyes. Released during the height of lockdown, Parks’ webcam-controlled story uses the player’s blinks to fast-forward through protagonist Benny’s memories, blinking through each uplifting and heartbreaking moment of his existence. It quickly gained a reputation as Twitch’s tearjerker, its moving story and the misery of the pandemic’s last few months creating a perfect, tissue-paper-shredding storm. “As a writer, it was definitely a scary thing,” Parks says. “I’m interested in using games to tell concise, emotional stories, but I can’t say they’re going to make you cry every time.”

Still, tears or no tears, things are already looking pretty promising for Goodnight Universe, an intriguing sequel to Before Your Eyes. Developed by Nice Dream, an all-new studio founded by creators Graham Parks and Oliver Lewin, Goodnight Universe has already won the 2024 Game of the Year award at the TriBeCa Film Festival, beating out the excellent Thank Goodness You’re Here!

So moving…Goodnight universe Photo: Nice Dream

What’s the premise of Goodnight Universe? “It’s a game where you play as a baby with psychic powers,” Parks says with a coy laugh. Using a webcam or a VR headset, players step inside the tiny body of baby Isaac, who begins to develop mysterious abilities. The slithering psychic must grasp his rapidly blossoming new powers and use his eyes to bend the vast world around him to his will – preferably without scaring Isaac’s poor parents, Parker explains.

“Before Your Eyes was a game about disempowering the player,” Parks says, “but we always felt that mechanics like blinking and eye tracking could also be used to empower the player and give them a sense of magic.”

Second grade angst…Goodnight universe. Photo: Nice Dream

Sounding more like Boss Baby than indie darling, Goodnight Universe’s storyline was definitely a tonal shift, and one that took the team a while to realise. “We had been anxious about the second album for a really long time,” Parks says. “We even had to make a rule in ideation sessions that we couldn’t even talk about ‘Before Your Eyes’.”

Luckily, inspiration struck from a new face in the room. “Our lead designer, Bella, had just had her first child,” says Parks. “She started coming into meetings and was at an age where you’d sit down and she’d just stare at one thing for an hour and you’d forget she was there. We’d become known as people who make games that don’t move around a lot… I noticed her quietly staring at me, and that was my ‘Oh, noooo!’ moment.” Goodnight Universe was born.

From kinetically changing TV channels to sending wooden blocks flying, Goodnight Universe takes players on Isaac’s strange but heartwarming journey to understand his powers, be accepted by his family, and avoid being kidnapped by a shady tech company. The diaper-clad protagonist is voiced by Top Gun Maverick’s Lewis Pullman, and the supporting cast includes actors from TV shows like Veep, Barry, and The Daily Show, and the LA studio cleverly takes advantage of its proximity to Hollywood.

“Many indies [the union] “Some actors only do film or TV,” adds the game’s director and composer Oliver Lewin, “but the truth is, these actors are really excited about this.”

Skip Newsletter Promotions

Thanks to its BAFTA win, Before Your Eyes has transcended its webcam origins, making its way to PlayStation VR2 and joining Netflix’s steadily growing library of mobile games. But while you can play Goodnight Universe in VR and turn off face tracking, for Lewin, the game’s story is still tied to the humble webcam. “For us, the face-tracking technology is there to enhance immersion,” Lewin says. [few] Developers are researching this…There’s a lot you can do with just a simple webcam, and everyone has one.”

“Our game is, in many ways, a playable movie,” Parks adds. “I think what motivates us more than any exciting controls is how we can use this medium to tell a story in an interesting and unique way.”

In a medium that revolves around slaying dragons, crushing demons and embarking on intergalactic power fantasies, there’s something fresh and quaint about Goodnight Universe, but after shedding a fair few tears over Before Your Eyes, if anyone can do justice to this strange premise, it’s the quirky LA Art Games collective.

Goodnight Universe is scheduled for release on PC in 2025. Other platforms are yet to be determined.

Source: www.theguardian.com

Scientists in neuroscience claim that certain dreams can accurately forecast events to come

Posted on by
Reply

Kamran Dibba, an anesthesiologist at the University of Michigan, and his colleagues have found that during sleep, some neurons not only replay the recent past but also anticipate future experiences.

To dynamically track the spatial tuning of neurons offline, Mahboudi others We used a novel Bayesian learning approach based on spike-triggered average decoded positions in population recordings from freely moving rats.

“Certain neurons fire in response to certain stimuli,” Dr. Dibba said.

“Neurons in the visual cortex fire when presented with an appropriate visual stimulus, and the neurons we study show location preference.”

In their study, Dr. Dibba and his co-authors aimed to study the process by which these specialized neurons generate representations of the world after new experiences.

Specifically, the researchers tracked sharp ripples, patterns of neural activity that are known to play a role in consolidating new memories and, more recently, have also been shown to tag which parts of a new experience will be stored as a memory.

“In this paper, for the first time, we observe individual neurons stabilizing spatial representations during rest periods,” said Rice University neuroscientist Dr. Caleb Kemele.

“We imagined that some neurons might change their representation, mirroring the experience we've all had of waking up with a new understanding of a problem.”

“But to prove this, we needed to trace how individual neurons achieve spatial tuning – the process by which the brain learns to navigate new routes and environments.”

The researchers trained rats to run back and forth on a raised track with liquid rewards at each end, and observed how individual neurons in the animals' hippocampus “spiked” in the process.

By calculating the average spike rate over multiple round trips, the researchers were able to estimate a neuron's place field – the area of ​​the environment that a particular neuron is most “interested” in.

“The key point here is that place fields are inferred using the animal's behavior,” Dr Kemele said.

I’ve been thinking for a long time about how we can assess neuronal preferences outside the labyrinth, such as during sleep,” Dr. Dibba added.”

“We addressed this challenge by relating the activity of individual neurons to the activity of all the other neurons.”

The scientists also developed a statistical machine learning approach that uses other neurons they examined to infer where the animals were in their dreams.

The researchers then used the dreamed locations to estimate the spatial tuning process of each neuron in the dataset.

“The ability to track neuronal preferences in the absence of stimulation was a significant advance for us,” Dr. Dibba said.”

This method confirmed that the spatial representation formed during the experience of a novel environment remained stable in most neurons throughout several hours of sleep following the experience.

But as the author predicted, there was more to the story.”

“What I liked most about this study, and why I found it so exciting, was that it showed that stabilizing memories of experiences isn’t the only thing these neurons do during sleep. It turns out some of them are doing other things after all,” Dr. Kemmele said.”

“We can see these other changes that occur during sleep, and then when we put the animals back into the environment, we can see that these changes actually reflect something that the animals learned while they were asleep.”

“It’s as if the animal is exposed to that space a second time while they’re sleeping.”

This is important because it provides a direct look at the neuroplasticity that occurs during sleep.

“It appears that brain plasticity and rewiring require very fast timescales,” Dr. Dibba said.”

This study paper In the journal Nature.

_____

K. Mabudi others2024. Recalibration of hippocampal representations during sleep. Nature 629, 630-638; doi: 10.1038/s41586-024-07397-x

Source: www.sci.news

Control Your Dreams with This Inception-Style Headset: What to Know Before Diving into Dreamworld

Posted on by
Reply

Can you imagine putting a device on your head before bed that allows you to control your dreams? This futuristic headband, currently under development by American technology startup Prophetic, promises to do just that.

Set to be released in 2025, Halo is designed to make dreams more lucid, meaning dreams in which you are aware that you are dreaming. These dreams can be controlled in some cases, potentially providing practical benefits in waking life, such as problem-solving, virtual travel, or skill practice.

While lucid dreams can happen spontaneously, about half of the population can expect to have at least one in their lifetime. The Halo headband aims to leverage these experiences for real-life benefits using the latest technology.

The Halo team collected brain data from volunteers having lucid dreams using EEG and fMRI technology. This information is then used to develop a mechanism for inducing, maintaining, and influencing lucid dreaming using transcranial focused ultrasound (TUS) technology, which is transmitted through the headband. TUS uses high-frequency sound rather than magnetic fields or electric current, offering improved anatomical precision and the ability to reach deep areas of the brain.

Research shows that electrical or sound stimulation can increase brain activity, particularly during sleep, resulting in more frequent lucid dreams. Professor Mark Blagrove, a sleep scientist, states that sound stimulation may induce high-frequency brain activity linked to dream clarity.

Despite the potential benefits, there are some concerns about the long-term effects and interference with the purpose of dreaming. The Halo headband is expected to cost up to £1,575 ($2,000) and may not be suitable for everyone. There are other techniques for inducing lucid dreams, such as sound pairing and self-awareness training, that do not require advanced technology like the Halo headband.

About our experts

Professor Mark Blagrove is a sleep and dream researcher based at the Swansea University Sleep Research Institute. He is involved in various sleep and dream research work and is a co-author of the book Science of Art and Dreams as well as having contributed to several psychology and dream publications.

read more:

Source: www.sciencefocus.com

New Study Unravels the Varied Emotional Purpose of Dreams in Different Locations

Posted on by
Reply

Dreaming is a complex neurophysiological experience that is influenced by the sociocultural environment, and recent research has compared the dreams of forager communities in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with those in Europe and North America, and has Differences in tone and simulation of real-life situations became apparent. This study shows that dreams reflect social norms and values, suggesting a link between dream content and an individual’s sociocultural life.

A study conducted by researchers at the University of Geneva (UNIGE) and the University of Toronto revealed that dreams have a variety of emotional functions.

Why do we dream? This phenomenon is rooted in neurophysiological processes in the brain and manifests as multifaceted, often emotionally charged experiences that can mimic aspects of reality to varying degrees. However, the definitive reason for dreaming remains unclear. A new study jointly conducted by the University of Geneva (UNIGE), the University of Toronto and the University Hospitals of Geneva (HUG) compares the dreams of her two hunting communities in Tanzania and the Democratic Republic of the Congo with those of individuals living in Africa. did. Europe and North America.

It showed that the first two groups not only produced more threatening dreams but also more cathartic and socially oriented dreams than the Western group.These results will be read scientific reportshows how strong the link between sociocultural environment and dream function is.

Dreams are hallucinatory experiences common to all humankind. This occurs most often during a paradoxical phase of sleep known as the rapid eye movement (REM) phase. However, it can occur during any sleep stage.

What is the physiological, emotional and cultural function of dreams? Do they regulate our emotions? Does it prepare us to deal with certain situations? Recent theories suggest that during “functional” dreaming, individuals simulate more threatening or social situations, which may have an evolutionary advantage in promoting adaptive behavior in real-life situations. It suggests that it is possible.

Dream results vary depending on environment and population studied

To test these theories, researchers from UNIGE and the University of Toronto compared the dream content of the Bayaka people of the Democratic Republic of the Congo and the Hadza people of Tanzania, two communities that approximate a hunter-gatherer lifestyle. . Ancestry – Ancestry of a diverse group of individuals living in Europe and North America (Switzerland, Belgium, Canada), including healthy participants and patients with mental disorders.

Bayaka and Hadza dream stories were collected over two months in the field by anthropologists from the University of Toronto. Data on dreams in Western groups comes from previous studies published between 2014 and 2022.

“We found that Bayaka and Hadza dreams are very dynamic. They often begin in dangerous, life-threatening situations, whereas the Western groups we observed In contrast, in clinical populations, such as patients suffering from nightmares or social anxiety, dreams may be intense but do not involve cathartic emotional resolution. “The latter group seems to lack the adaptive function of dreaming,” says Lampros, a private professor and group leader in the Department of Psychiatry and Basic Neuroscience at UNIGE School of Medicine, and HUG’s attending physician.・Mr. Perogamvros explains. The Center for Sleep Medicine led the study.

A mirror that reflects social structure

The researchers found that among the responses Native Americans have when faced with threats in dreams, those related to social support are very frequent. For example, an indigenous person reports a dream in which he was run over by a buffalo in the middle of the bush and was rescued by a member of his community. Or someone may have a dream where they fall into a well and one of their friends saves them. These dreams contain their own emotional resolutions.‘

“Social bonds are necessarily very strong among the Bayaka and Hadza people. Daily life and the division of labor are typically more egalitarian when compared to the more individualistic societies of Europe and North America. This kind of dependence on social connections and community means that the best way for them to process the emotional content associated with threats in their dreams is to take advantage of the social relationships they have. “In fact, these relationships are emotional tools used to process life’s challenges,” says John, an associate professor of evolutionary anthropology at the University of Toronto in Mississauga and lead author of the study. David Samson explains. Therefore, the research team suggests that there is a close relationship between the function of dreams and the social norms and values ​​of each specific society studied.

“However, this study makes it difficult to infer a causal relationship between dreams and daytime activity. Nor should we conclude that dreams in Western populations have no emotional function.”・Mr. Perogamvros added. In fact, in 2019, the same research team found that “bad dreams” in Western people, dreams with negative content that are not nightmares, are often simulations of our fears, and that once we wake up, we are faced with our fears. published a study showing that they are preparing to do so. I’m awake. “There appears to be more than one type of ‘functional’ dream. This study shows that there is a strong link between our sociocultural lives and the function of dreams,” the researchers said. concludes.

Reference: “Evidence for the Emotionally Adaptive Function of Dreams: A Cross-Cultural Study” David R. Samson, Alice Clerge, Nour Abbas, Jeffrey Senese, Marika S. Sarma, Sheena Lou-Levi, Ibrahim A.・Mabulla, Audax ZP Mabulla, Valcy Miegacanda, Francesca Borghese, Pauline Henkarz, Sophie Schwartz, Virginie Starpenich, Lee T. Gettler, Adam Boyett, Alyssa N. Crittenden, Lampros Perroganvros, 2023 October 2nd, scientific report.
DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-43319-z

Source: scitechdaily.com