People say other peoples dreams are boring, but what if the problem is technology?
For this weeksGiz Asks, we reached out to a number of experts to find out.
This story was originally published on November 16, 2020.
Illustration: Angelica Alzona/Gizmodo
There is no particular circuitry or brain region that is activated during dreams but not in waking life.
It doesnt matter how fast technology progresses if we still dont really understand the underlying neurophysiology.
We still cant really decode experience.
There are theories, but fundamentally we lack consensus.
Were really far behindI think were talking about decades here, rather than years.
Think about itits almost impossible to share your thoughts with someone else verbally.
But theyre all there as part of your thoughts.
You cant walk in someone elses shoes by just putting them on and hiking on down to the mall.
I dont think so.
So the same sensory stimulus in two minds may be an entirely different experience.
There have been strides already at decoding the visuals from a dream using brain imaging.
And our work at Fluid Interfaces has shown we can incubate specific themes in dreams.
We cannot share a whole dream without sharing a whole self.
Our research suggests that the prevalent Western view of dreaming is wrong.
On this alternative view, there is no fundamentally private experience behind our dream reports.
If we are right, dream-scanning wouldnt reveal much.
There is hope for the other sense of dream-sharing, though.
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