Thread: Do blind people dream?

I'd imagine they dream, but perhaps their dreams are more obtuse than ours

It would be hard to imagine them having dreams with specific visual things in them. Maybe they dream of touch and sound

maybe they dream of images that they think are what the world is like. maybe colors are more vivid and it is like a salvador dahli painting......

what happens if a blind person takes an hallucineginic drug?

Originally Posted by Eggs

It would be hard to imagine them having dreams with specific visual things in them. Maybe they dream of touch and sound

I wonder if hallucinogenic drugs works as well.

Audio and touch dreams? How do they know when the dream is over? I mean, they can´t really wake up.

Sounds, smells and touch. They can hear all of your wonderful threads using something like Narrator.

Originally Posted by overthepond

what happens if a blind person takes an hallucineginic drug?

Damn, we are wondering together.

Answer from somebody who has been blind since she was fairly young:

" Yes, blind people do dream. What they see in their dreams depends on how much they could ever see. If someone has been totally blind since birth, they only have auditory dreams. If someone such as I, has had a measure of sight, then that person dreams with that measure of sight. I still dream as though I can see, colors included. For people I've met since, their faces are just blurs or how I imagine they look. To me, someone like my mother looks forever 30. "

WHAT DO BLIND PEOPLE DREAM ABOUT?

ARK PILKINGTON: The dreams of the blind have been a keen area of study since at least the late 19th century. The blind psychologist Joseph Jastrow wrote about the dreams of the famed blind, deaf and partially dumb author Helen Keller in 1900. As a young child, her dreams were 'devoid of sound, of thought or emotion of any kind, except fear, and only came in the form of sensations. I often dreamt that I ran into a still, dark room, and that I felt something fall heavily without any noise, causing the floor to shake up and down and each time I woke up with a jump.' As Keller learned to perceive the world through her other senses, so the fear subsided. Generally speaking, most dreams are related to what we experience in our waking lives - unconscious anxieties, hidden desires, talking animals, that kind of thing. While there are bound to be exceptions, for people with unimpaired vision dreams are almost always visual, mostly with sound and in colour. Touch, taste and smell are less common because most people rely primarily on their eyes and ears to get around. Dreamers with partial or no sight will dream via their other senses, touch, sound, smell etc, while those with partial sight from birth will experience partial sight in dreams. Touch and vision help the brain to accurately identify objects by picking out edges, joins and contours.

How blind people dream is determined by the age at which they lost their sight. Studies have found that those who lose their sight before the age of about five will experience no visual imagery in their dreams, but those who lose it later might have visual dreams throughout their lives, though, over time, these tend to be replaced by dreams featuring the dominant senses. Those with non-visual dreams experience them through the same sensory signals that they would when awake. In one example, a woman describes being at a table a posh restaurant. She could 'feel' the table (although she'd never seen a table, she could identify one by touch) and could tell from the sounds - hushed voices, carpeted floor - that it was a classy joint.

In terms of subject matter, blind people, like everybody else, dream about the things that concern them most. One study found that worries about losing a guide dog was a common theme. From this we can perhaps assume that the the same rules apply to blind, or partially-sighted, people on hallucinogenic drugs.

I have sound dreams all of the time of course they have images relating to them, I would imagine that a blind person would dream as a blind person.

Neat RG.

yea. i would think they must dream about being able to see sometimes too tho.

The Dreams of Blind Men and Women

Damn it seems a lot of people are worried about blind people dreams. Funny is that I don´t remember sounds in my dreams.

Is there other curiosities about the blind?

Can vegiterrians eat animal crackers?

Originally Posted by LW83

Can vegiterrians eat animal crackers?

If they are made with only plant products, yes.

Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

yogi, why do people smoke?

Originally Posted by rockgazer69

yogi, why do people smoke?

Almost everything smokes when it burns, especially organic material.

Originally Posted by maniclion

Why did kamikaze pilots wear helmets?

It seems that without them, the pressure in their heads would make they lose conscience when descending so they would miss the target.

wow.

Originally Posted by Vieope

It seems that without them, the pressure in their heads would make they lose conscience when descending so they would miss the target.

Prove it.

Originally Posted by maniclion

Prove it.

Buy me a plane and tell me where you live. I would be more than happy to kamikaze your ass.

lol. eeek. n wasn't it Vieope who had the thing that can pinpoint our houses?