pet dream videos

Wondering just what quarry Rex is chasing in his fevered dreams? What kind of string-mounted toy Fifi wants for her birthday? What your turtle really thinks of you? For the answers, just tap into your pet's own latenite closed circuit cable tv show: make a pet dream video.

Back in 1999, Stanley et al. (J. Neurosci. 19:8036-42) reported the 'reconstruction of natural scenes from ensemble responses in the [cat] lateral geniculate nucleus.' Put simply, they monitored the activities of 177 neurons in a key region of the cat brain's sight pathway, and used the signals to reconstruct a low-res monochrome image of the cat's visual field. They got nice clear pics of woods, human faces, &c. out (whatever they showed the cat in question).

Taking their work a step further, why not monitor the same neurons during REM sleep, and reconstruct a video of the cat's dream? Though I don't know about the LGN per se, the thalamus it forms part of is certainly implicated in REM sleep and dreaming. So who knows what you'd find... monitoring a dog's dream, perhaps you'd see yourself animated, with an outsized food-giving, fur-stroking, comfy-smelling hand (ok, the smell pathway is a different challenge). And for some -real- video entertainment, dim the lights, nuke some popcorn, and break out the catnip...