Neural Decoding of Visual Imagery During Sleep

TLDR

The neural representation of specific visual dream contents remains unclear, though machine‑learning analyses can decode stimulus‑ and task‑induced brain‑activity patterns that represent visual content. The study examined brain‑activity patterns during dreaming and compared them to waking responses to visual stimuli. The study found that dream visual content is encoded in the same neural substrate as awake perception. Horikawa et al.

Abstract

Reading Dreams How specific visual dream contents are represented by brain activity is unclear. Machine-learning–based analyses can decode the stimulus- and task-induced brain activity patterns that represent specific visual contents. Horikawa et al. (p. 639 , published online 4 April) examined patterns of brain activity during dreaming and compared these to waking responses to visual stimuli. The findings suggest that the visual content of dreams is represented by the same neural substrate as observed during awake perception.