英语听力精选进阶版 13924

（单词翻译）

Scientists hope to record dreams

Summary

29 October 2010

US researchers say they want to record dreams electronically. Writing in the journal¹ Nature, scientists in California developed a system that can record a higher level brain activity. The lead researcher believes that it could possibly be used to study dreams.

Reporter:

Pallab Ghosh

Report

The idea of a machine recording² dreams sounds fanciful but a research team in California is to explore whether it might be possible, at least in a limited way.

A study by the team suggests that the activity of individual brain cells, or neurons, is associated with specific objects: for example when a volunteer was thinking of the actress Marilyn Monroe, a particular neuron lit up.

By showing volunteers a series of images, the team was able to identify neurons associated with a wide range of objects and concepts³.

The next step for the researchers is to see whether they can make sense of the brain waves of sleeping volunteers and if so, whether they correlate⁴ with the accounts of the volunteers' actual dreams.

Pallab Ghosh, BBC News