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 concepts.
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 correlate with the accounts of the volunteers' actual dreams.