If this don’t shock you, you’re insensate.

Researchers from Japan’s ATR Computational Neuroscience Laboratories have developed new brain analysis technology that can reconstruct the images inside a person’s mind and display them on a computer monitor, it was announced on December 11. According to the researchers, further development of the technology may soon make it possible to view other people’s dreams while they sleep.

And, oddly enough, W. Gibson predicted this in his short story The Winter Market, collected in Burning Chrome. Wikipedia says the Kings of Sleep album mentioned in the story is a stim-album, which it is, but it’s a dream-recording or imagination-recording in that story, unlike the sensory recording sim-stim detailed in Neuromancer. This should really pave the way for both. Just need to invent a way to broadcast back into the brain (magnetic pulses can already be used to temporarily blind people, it’s just a matter of refining the technique to properly induce vision magnetically) and then miniaturizing the technology (which tends to happen naturally).

This entry was posted on Monday, December 29th, 2008 at 20:43.