Hello again everyone. If a person has been blind since birth, How do they dream?

Question

If they have never seen anything before what kind of images would be in theire dreams. Everyone dreams. Dont they?

Answer 1

Hello,

(ANS) Blind people dream just the same as sighted people, why? because dreaming during REM (rapid eye movement sleep states) it is totally normal, dreaming is a fundmantal psychic process that is required by the human brain inorder to process & make sense of our daily experiences. The dreaming process will draw against any of our basic 6 senses, so actual sight isnt totally required for dreaming to take place within the brain.

**Also images are the common language of the brain, we visualise without almost being aware that we are doing that. Infact my guess is that blind people are probably very very good at visualisation, possibly even better at it than sighted people.

**In the human science's its now widely accepted that unless we sleep, rest & dream we put our mental health at danger. Sleep deprivation has been used as a form of torture, if a person is prevented from sleeping long enough they end up becoming psychoctic (go insane).

**Even if the person has been blind since birth they will still dream, perhaps they will dream about their time in the mother's womb??

IR

Answer 2

Of course everyone dreams. Just because someone does not see the things we do does not mean that they have visualizations in their head. Blind people visualize sounds and and music --most often in wave lengths, its all in how your brain interprets information.

To say that a blind person can't have dreams is stupid. Blind people dream but just differently in how we do, They don't necessarily see whats happening in a life-like dream, but they experience it with sounds, feelings and in other ways.

Answer 3

Everyone dreams (blind people included) and in general, people's dream experience is similar to their waking experience. For those that were blind from birth, they do not have a lot of visual stimuli to draw on for their dreams, so they have dreams that are primarily auditory, tactile or even involve taste and smell. People who lose their sight very early (before age five) apparently experience no visual imagery in their dreams. Visual imagery is a variable for those who lose their sight between ages five and seven. People who lose their sight after age seven almost always have some level of visual imagery present in their dreams. They've done extensive studies and have also found that REM sleep is disturbed (not absent) in blind people, so they may actually dream less. Some people will say that they have no REM activity, but this is incorrect. Check out this research:
http://med.stanford.edu/profiles/frdActionServlet?choiceId=showPublication&pubid=116560&fid=3994
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt=AbstractPlus&list_uids=11924026&query_hl=9&itool=pubmed_docsum

Answer 4

Yes, everyone dreams but dreams are different to each individual. Why dont you interview this person and ask questions about their dreams maybe they can see but then again no one knows for sure about anything

Answer 5

If the people were born blind, they have no REM and no visual imagery; the dreams consist of impressions from the other senses -- touch, hearing, smell, and taste. If the people were sighted and then became blind, they have REM (if the eye muscles have not yet atrophied), and their dreams contain visual imagery -- but these visual dreams might cease to occur eventually

Answer 6

If the person is blind since birth, he or she can't visualize anything. Dreams can have sound, though.

Answer 7

I heard that when you are blind, you can't dream with seeing anything. It's going to be just black until you wake up since it requires eyesight to dream perfectly. It could just be audio for dreaming.

Answer 8

Yes, dreaming is a necessary part of our sleep. I'm fairly certain that the vision-impaired can imagine what things look like, from hearing them, feeling them, having them described to them, etc.

Answer 9

when you read a book do you know what the characters look like, no u dont, you visualize them from the details from the book- just like that blind people visualize from what people describe to them or from what they touch n feel

Answer 10

They probably dream in terms of feelings and sounds, not pictures.