Pickle Dreams

When I was in high school, I desperately wanted to create a brain machine that could convert thoughts into images. The practical application was to be able to record a person’s dreams at night, so they’d would never forget a dream again. After finding out that the brain was basically a series of electrical impulses firing off in different parts, I assumed the science would be easy enough. Someone would just need to map out which parts fired off during different stimuli and record the electrical impulses being seen. By doing so, they could covert those impulses into a matching image.

I imagine that someone has attempted something like this before, and the fact that it’s never been done means it’s not as simple as I make it out to be. Imagine putting one hundred people in a room, hooking up their brains to monitors, and telling them to think about a pickle. Ideally, everyone’s brains should register the same electrical impulses for that same stimuli. But what if they didn’t? And what if the reason is that not everyone thinks of pickles the same way?

You might think of one of those large pickles that you get at a ballpark. I might think of a gherkin. Someone else might think of a spear. While someone else might think of a sweet pickle cut in slices with wavy ridges. To take that further, someone might imagine cheeseburgers when they think of pickles, which only complicates things. Someone else might have an emotional memory tied to pickles, like their grandfather growing cucumbers in his garden and canning pickles in his kitchen. It would be almost impossible to get consistent, repeatable results, because human thoughts are so complex and layered. Unless AI could analyze the results and find commonalities that overlap enough to guess “pickles.”

For now, our dreams will remain a mystery. But one day, we might finally be able to produce an image from a dream of a pickle, wearing a cape and saving a damsel in distress.