"You had to be there." It's usually the expression you use when you're trying to tell your friend about last night's dream, in which you climbed Mount Everest, won the lottery and became president of the world. But now Japanese researchers have developed an algorithm that can actually help "see" people's dreams.

Dream reading may sound like something from the distant future, but the Kyoto, Japan-based researchers' findings were published Thursday in Science, the Smithsonian reported. The team concluded that visual experiences during sleep can be uncovered to a certain extent by using a learning algorithm.

Using an MRI machine, an EEG, learning software and a library of online images, the researchers tried their special algorithm on test subjects during rounds of sleeping. What they found is they could measure brain activity during dreams and correlate that information with images, as further explained in the video above.

The system still can't visualize exactly what you were dreaming about, but can do things like distinguish between a person and a place. This current method only had 60% accuracy, but the scientists hope to develop this technology further.

Do you think this advancement is fascinating or a bit creepy? Let us know in the comments.

Thumbnail image via iStockphoto, jawphotos