Do blind people dream the same way as people who have vision?

Question

I'm doing a science project about blind people, mainly whether or not they dream and if so is it the same way we dream? I'm not necessarily looking for facts so much as I'm looking for opinions but facts'd be cool too.

Answer 1

well the reason why we have dreams is because of REM (rapid eye movement)

we have dreams because of what we have experianced and what we have done in our lives. its usually through sight we get ideas to dream about. usually we have our imagination to bring together things we have seen, done, listened, too and then combine them into a story or a moment in our minds.

and it depends whether the person was blind at birth or blind because of an accident or genetic failure.

blind at birth usually means they don't know how the world is like., they can barely infer what they feel, hear, smell, and taste.

other than that they are blind to the world. not unless they have  the will to percieve what we see through our eyes. then they could imagine what it is to "see" the world around us. only a few have met this feat.

blind because of an accident or a genetic failure is a different story. through experiances they could infer the world around them

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Answer 2

Blind People dream in sound and touch...which I think would make the dreams seem more real.

Answer 3

Thats an interesting question. I have recently wondered a similar thing about babies. I have read that they may dream while still in the womb, but what could they possibly dream about with such limited experience in life? They could only dream about womb stuff.

I would guess that blind people (who were born blind) dream about the world in the way that they experience it. Sounds, touch, and smells.

You would have to ask a blind person to get more.

Answer 4

I never thought of that.

Dreams are a replay of what we see and experience in our waking times. Even in premonition dreams our mind uses things we know and have seen.

Someone blind from birth .......... wow........ I guess they would dream in images of some kind. Perhaps more abstract, in shapes and images that their mind has stored over the years to explain objects, people and other things to them. A blind person can feel a face and know if it is pretty or not ..... therefore you would think that his mind has made a pleasing image for the face. I would think that they do not dream as seeing people do but do dream in a way that they are accustom to "seeing" things in waking life.

Answer 5

I had always wondered about that same question and when I finally got the opportunity to ask a blind person I received my answer...

Blind people dream the same way as they are while they are awake, sightless... Their dreams consist of sounds, smells and feelings of touch and taste... Basically with their other senses...

Answer 6

I strongly advice you buy the book "The Story of My Life" by Helen Keller.  She blind AND deaf, but her ability to dream and her understanding of brightness and darkness got manifested through the overtones of the things she would touch with her hands.

My opinion is anything we never get to experience with our eyes and ears gets replaced by our imagination, which involves the use of senses we don't have and even possibly senses that none of us know exist. So being blind you can still imagine color and you may actually have a tiny tiny tiny amount of residual vision to see brightness vs. darkness.

Answer 7

It depends.

A person who is completely blind and has been all their life has no concept of sight and so will usually dream in the terms of the world they understand...sound, touch, scent, taste.

Answer 8

well i guess that depends on if they were born blind or if they became blind because they wouldn't know what anything looks like if the were born blind so they can't dream like we do

Answer 9

suppose you close your eyes and think of a flower all the colors come into your mind and they form the picture of a rose or a lilly........ but if a blind person dreams of a flower which he has not seen then his mind tries to picture many things other than a flower and that thing may be more beautiful than a flower.............. so what am tryin to say is that a blind person do dream and their dreams are more beautiful and more innovative than our dreams

Answer 10

yes they do.  i know a person who is blind, they have nightmares very often

i listed a link that talks about this topic quite thoroughly

Answer 11

I think you  would have to ask  a blind person. Of course if they had their vision in the past...I'm sure they do. If they never had their vision...then I'd be really interested to know what people look like to them in their minds..and animals and trees etc...I guess they can feel them...but what if they could never feel anything?  This question has been asked before...and I still don't have the answer. Maybe someone on here has a relative who is blind and they can ask them. I guess there are things we've never seen before...usually people describe them to us. I guess you'd have to be pretty isolated to not have anyone around to help you feel things or to describe things to you. What if you were deaf too...like Helen Keller? I read that she "sensed" a spirit around her. When she was told about Jesus..she said it must have been him.

Edit...If spirits come to us in dreams...then it seems like a blind person would be able to see them, doesn't it.!?

Edit..angel..My dreams are sure not a "replay"... I usually have nightmares.

Answer 12

This is a very good question.

Blind people don't see things the same way we do because their brain has never processed vision data taken in by the eye.  However, we aren't really seeing the things we see in our dreams since the information isn't being fed from the eye.  So we are creating a cognitive image of what we experience in our dream.

So I guess the question is, what sort of cognitive images do the brains of blind people produce when they have no visual references on which to base these things?  I don't know the answer to that question, but I am curious to find out.  Perhaps our brains just fire randomly and we interpret the dreams in terms we are familiar with.