Researchers Seeking to Create TiVo for Dreams and Nightmares

From Dateline Zero – A team of researchers is seeking to create a Dream Catcher, a device that will actually record your dreams — or nightmares — and allow you to play them back. This will be like TiVo for your dreams.

My first thought is along the lines of celebrity videos that get leaked to the public. Paris Hilton, Miley Cyrus, and Jennicam immediately spring to mind. If real-life is scandalous and voyeuristic, what about dream life? Yowzers!

On the other hand, we could quickly discover that watching someone’s dreams is a lot like watching someone’s dull-as-hell vacation sideshows.

This all began when a team of researchers, led by Moran Cerf of the California Institute of Technology, conducted a study on how the brain calls up images and illustrates thoughts — leading to a program that creates electronic visualisation of brain activity.

According to an article in Wired, Dr. Cerf’s team enlisted the help of epileptics whose brains had been temporarily wired to computer monitors, allowing doctors to see where seizure patterns began in anticipation of corrective surgery. This was all done in an an experiment published October 28 inNature (subscription required to view the article at Nature).

Continue reading from the full article at Dateline Zero.