The secret world of dreams could soon be cracked open. Innovative neuroscientists have already begun to figure out the thoughts of awake people – now, a team reckon they can use similar methods to tap into dreams.

To find out whether dreams could be read in the same way as waking thoughts, Michael Czisch and Martin Dresler at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich, Germany, and their colleagues turned an array of brain-monitoring technology on lucid dreamers.

"A lucid dream is simply a dream in which you realise you're dreaming," says Dresler. The rare ability to "wake up" while still in a dream and be in control of their actions – and their dreams – makes lucid dreamers a real asset to dream researchers: they are the only people who can reliably, and in real time, communicate what they are dreaming about – usually with eye movements.

After tracking down six individuals who claimed to be able to have lucid dreams almost nightly, the team used both functional MRI scanning and near-infrared spectroscopy to observe each person's brain activity as they clenched a hand while awake. They then compared this with the activity associated with imagining clenching the same hand, and clenching the hand in a lucid dream.....