Inventing a Dream-Viewer

Source: Kelly Bulkeley

Advances in neuro-imaging technology are making it possible to use brain data to create video reconstructions of people’s dreams while they sleep. Is this thrilling, terrifying, or both?

How It Could Work

Researchers observe an individual’s brain while viewing a specific image (let’s say a cat), and they identify the neural patterns correlated with that image. Then the researchers observe the individual’s brain while sleeping and watch for a recurrence of the “cat” neural pattern. If it appears, a signal can be sent to a video monitor to show an image of a cat—presumably what the sleeping person is dreaming about at that very moment.

Does this mean we will soon be able to watch a “dream-viewer” (an iDreamer?) showing videos of our dreams and the dreams of other people?

Soon, probably no. But someday, probably yes. Many technical challenges have to be overcome first. A great deal of time and effort are required to train computer algorithms to recognize the patterns of an individual’s brain. The pattern for “cat” from one person’s brain does not necessarily match the “cat” pattern from another person’s brain, so the system would have to be trained and calibrated anew for each individual. The nearly infinite variety of dream content magnifies the learning challenge for this kind of technology (how many images of different kinds/colors/sizes of cats need to be incorporated into the system? In how many different poses and moods?). Efforts to model the contents and experiential qualities of dreams have to find some way to reckon with a boundless, unpredictably varied set of data.

Advocates will emphasize the huge potential benefits if these methodological challenges can be overcome. Researchers would, for the first time, have “objective” dream data, unfiltered by the subjective biases and limited memories of the dreamer. For anyone who looks to dreams for personal insight and guidance, this technology offers a quantum leap in the depth and range of access to one’s dreaming experience. For example, psychotherapists would have a powerful new resource for understanding the unconscious conflicts, fears, and concerns of their clients.

Ethical Questions

These potentially positive applications sound appealing, of course. But no less time should be given to considering the potentially negative applications and consequences, too.

• Does the process of training and calibrating the system disrupt the natural rhythms of people’s sleep and dreams? If yes, what are the long-term health risks and psychological dangers of that disruption? This basic question is too rarely asked in discussions of new dream technologies, perhaps because of an unspoken assumption that dreams themselves aren’t really “real,” so nothing that harms dreaming does any real harm to a person.
• What is the source of the images used to reconstruct people’s dreams? Who chooses those images? Is there transparency in the algorithms that correlate specific images to specific neural patterns? Are measures taken to prevent biases from excluding the appearance of certain kinds of images and favoring others?
• Does the technology distort and flatten the contents of people’s dreams? Can it represent bizarre or anomalous experiences for which there are no images? What about essential elements of dreaming like feelings, thoughts, and bodily sensations? And non-imagistic qualities of intensity, atmosphere, or awareness? Jorge Luis Borges noted these qualities when he described a nightmare of an ancient King standing by his bed: “Retold, my dream is nothing; dreamt, it was terrible.” (Seven Nights, 1980) Will a dream-viewer ever be able to convey the ineffable terror in a nightmare like the one Borges experienced? It seems unlikely. Videos will show what videos show, not what dreams are in any full or "objective" sense.
• Who gets access to the dream-viewers? What is done with this incredibly personal source of information? It takes little imagination to envision potential abuses of this technology for commercial, political, governmental, and/or criminal purposes. The prospect of bad actors gaining access to private details so secret even the individual does not consciously know them should be a red-flag concern for any technology that is openly offering an unfiltered view into people’s minds.
• Can this technology be re-engineered to manipulate the process and contents of dreaming itself? What if a tool designed to identify neural patterns associated with dreaming were re-purposed and turned around to selectively target specific neural patterns either for suppression or stimulation? This seems to lead into Inception territory, making people vulnerable to an unprecedented depth of external control and manipulation.
• How much dream awareness can people handle? An even more direct cinematic reference to this kind of technology appears in Wim Wenders’ futuristic film Until the End of the World (1991), in which the equivalent of a dream-viewer has already been invented. The CIA is determined to steal the device, which of course is not a speculative idea at all. More unexpectedly, the characters in the movie who use the device become lost in narcissistic labyrinths of their own fantasies. They become oblivious to the rest of the world, retreating into a video womb of reconstructed dreaming, staring passively at their dream-viewers for hours on end. Here, the technology poses a danger from our own abuse of it, not from someone using it against us. Researchers usually assume that more insight into our dreams is a good thing, but is that necessarily true for everyone? Does each of us have a healthy limit of dream awareness, beyond which we become lost in ourselves?

Why It Matters

Dreaming is an innate function of the brain-mind during sleep. It is an experience that humans from around the world and all through history have considered vitally important, meaningful, and useful in their waking lives. Any new technology, like a dream-viewer, that has the potential, whether intended or not, to disrupt the natural rhythms of people’s sleep and dreaming needs to be publicly evaluated in terms of its long-term risks and benefits.