title: Access an element in a Multidimensional (3D and 4D) array
body: <p>I have the following problem: I have a matlab database (.mat) with structure 4x17x4 and 5 fields. The fields inside are "field_a", "field_b", "field_c", "field_d", "field_e". In matlab is quite easy to extract an element from it but I need to find a solution in python. In matlab I do this: </p>
  
  <pre><code>data = {database(:,1,1).a}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>How can I extract "data" in python?
  What I have done by now is to load matlab database in python:</p>
  
  <pre><code>fnameSISO["States"] = sio.loadmat('databaseSISO_states')
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>But when I try to extract data it doesn´t work:</p>
  
  <pre><code>data = fnameSISO["States"][:,1,1]
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Furthermore I tried to load the database with:</p>
  
  <pre><code>fnameSISO["Loo"] = np.asarray(sio.loadmat('databaseSISO_states'))
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>It doesn´t work either. </p>
  
  <p>What can I do in this situation? If I save the database in a json file will I be able to extract the elements I need?</p>
  
  <p>Thank you in advance.</p>