A group of researchers in Japan have explored a unique way to "read" dreams with the help of MRI scans to forecast the images that people see during the early stage of sleep.
The report says the, the accuracy in the prediction could be up to 60 percent.
The team now intends to find whether the brain activity could be utilized for prediction of other aspects related to dreams like the emotions experienced during sleep, the BBC reported.
"I had a strong belief that dream decoding should be possible at least for particular aspects of dreaming... I was not very surprised by the results, but excited," said Professor Yukiyasu Kamitani, ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories, Kyoto.
People have been engaged in decoding their dreams since ancient Egyptian times, but recent findings have provided a more direct way to tap into our nighttime visions.
Researchers used MRI scans to monitor three people when they slept.
As the participants started to fall asleep under the scanners, they were woken up and asked to recount the things they had seen during sleep.
Each of images mentioned by them, from bronze statues to keys and ice picks, was noted, no matter how strange.
This process was repeated over 200 times for each volunteer.
The researchers built a database from the results obtained and grouped the objects with similar visual attributes. For example, hotel, house and building were grouped together as "structures".
The researchers then gain scanned the participants while they were awake this time and observed the images on the computer screen.
Through this, they were able to observe some specific patterns of brain activity that correlated with the visual imagery.
During the next part of sleep tests, the scientists could predict what the participants were seeing in their dreams by monitoring the brain scans.
"We were able to reveal dream content from brain activity during sleep, which was consistent with the subjects' verbal reports," Professor Kamitani said.
The researchers will now look at deeper sleep, where the most vibrant dreams are thought to occur. In addition to that, they also strive to know if the brain scans can help them to predict emotions, smells, colours and actions that people experience as they sleep.
The findings are published in the journal Science.
-With inputs from ANI
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