Visual cortex is not just processing what we are seeing trough our eyes, there is also feedback from higher brain regions back to the visual cortex. So when yo

Visual cortex is not just processing what we are seeing trough our eyes, there is also feedback from higher brain regions back to the visual cortex. So when you are dreaming, your visual cortex activates. Things get more messy though. For example when they take images from cat's visual cortex, they are much clearer because the cat is anesthetized and visual cortex only processes data from eyes. If cat would be awake, it would make reading the image very hard to read. Relevant research with video recording trough much of processing: http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/ http://newscenter.berkeley.edu/2011/09/22/brain-movies/