What do blind people dream?

[hongi]

Especially people who are blind from birth. Do they see images? I can't think how they could...

[Eternal_Freedom]

That's a fascinating question. I shall email some of my blind friends and ask them.

But going off instinct, I would say they dream sounds and feelings but not images. AFAIK dreams are the brain's way of processing all the random shit you experience during the day. So if they don't experience images in the day, tey won't dream them.

Of course, if they are blind from birth and do dream images they have no way of recognising them.

[Broomstick]

From talking to blind people I've known over the years, none of whom were born blind (they lost their sight in teens or adulthood), they do dream in images. The longer they've been blind the fewer images they report, so the guy who was blinded in his teens that I met in his late 30's might have dreams with no images at all, just sound/touch/smell, most of the time. The lady who started losing her sight in her late 40's said she frequently dreamed in images still.

Of course, there's different levels of being blind. You might have no useful vision on a practical level but still perceive light/dark differences or even color. Whatever level of vision is retained is likely to show up in dreams.

I have never (to my knowledge) met someone blind from birth, so I have never had the opportunity to ask about that experience.

[Serafina]

I would like to point out that a number of my dreams (and therefore, presumably of other non-blind people) are entirely without images as well, depending on the nature of the dream (if images are not relevant to the content, they might not appear). After all, visual sensory input is only one of many, and it is far less relevant in dreams than in daily life.

[Lord of the Abyss]

Helen Keller mentioned that she dreamed of pearls, or at least visions that she called pearls having no memory of what a pearl actually looked like.

[Eternal_Freedom]

According to my friends Craig and Chris, identical twins who are both blind from birth, they do not dream of images, but rather sounds, tactile feelings and smells.

For reference, both of them were born with severe glaucoma which totally destroyed both optic nerves, so they don't even distinguish light from dark.

[hongi]

Thank you, that's amazing info.

[Kuroneko]

Though it should probably not be assumed that their dreams of sounds, tactile feelings and smells are quite like you would have sans vision. Sighted people tend to associate spatial distances and orientations with vision*; people blind from birth still have a functioning visual cortex that seems to serve those functions, with corresponding perception without an actual image.

*Or perhaps I'm overly generalizing. Whenever I try to orient myself in a room in relationship to other objects, a faint image invariably comes up in my mind. Perhaps some sighted people might be able to suppress this, but I've not been able to.

[Rye]

I remember looking this up in the past, people blind from birth-4 years old don't dream of any imagery, people who lost their sight after the age of 4 or so frequently do.

Sighted people tend to associate spatial distances and orientations with vision*; people blind from birth still have a functioning visual cortex that seems to serve those functions, with corresponding perception without an actual image.

Of interest (I hope this is viewable where you are):