From: Floyd 2/09/99 13:16:11 Subject: Blind people and dreams post id: 34549 Blind people from birth have no mental record of visual stimulation so therefore would their dreams consist of touch and smell sensations. From: Eloise 2/09/99 13:21:53 Subject: re: Blind people and dreams post id: 34552 I think you are correct. They would dream in the same way they expierience life. Seeing people also dream about sound, smell and touch, we just so fixated on sight that we don't notice the other senses so much From: Winter 2/09/99 16:11:19 Subject: re: Blind people and dreams post id: 34651 People blind FROM BIRTH dreams in sounds. People blind not from birth but gradually usually dream in visions. From: helen 3/09/99 9:20:03 Subject: re: Blind people and dreams post id: 34852 one for the faq? bearing in mind that we still don't really have a very good understanding of what dreaming is, or why we do it - Blind people report dreaming as richly and in as much detail as sighted people do, but without the visual content. Even Helen Keller, who only became blind at about the age of 2, reported having very few dreams with visual imagery. Blind people report dreaming much the same way as they experience waking life: sound, touch, smell and taste, as well as the non-sensory experiences we all have in dreams - sensations of space or closeness, being up high, emotional reactions, etc. However, studies on dreaming suggest that the one thing most of our dreams do have in common is a kind of narrative structure: Even when people can only remember a fragment of a dream, they often report a sensation that "there was more to it than that". This is thought to fit in well with what we know about the areas of the brain that seem to be more active in dreaming (compared with NREM sleep): the anterior cingulate (attention), and the amygdala (emotion) particularly. What appears to be happening is that random patterns of neuronal activity in emotion- and attention-related areas are interpreted by the cortex in its usual information processing scheme, which seems to be story-telling or language-like: although there's nothing specifically visual about the information (i.e.: the visual cortex isn't any more active than during the rest of sleep), it makes most sense for sighted people to interpret it that way; obviously, blind people would interpret it differently. So in this sense, blind and sighted dreaming is cortically the same; I guess only a blind person who was cured in later life could give us the subjective version. :-)helen From: Chris (Avatar) 3/09/99 10:04:27 Subject: re: Blind people and dreams post id: 34860 Hmmmm.... the human capacity for constructing narratives. Reminds me of the following... "[Humans] have to know the cause of everything, have to make a story about everything. We [alien life form] don't even care why the way these humans do. We find out as much as we need to know to accomplish something, but they always want to know more than they need to know. After they get something to work they're still hungry to know why it works and why the cause of its working works. "Even when they're asleep they're not asleep! Earthborn animals do this thing inside their brains - a sort of mad firing-off of synapses, controlled insanity. The part of their brain that records sight and sound, it's firing off... while they're asleep, and even when all the sights and sounds are complete random nonsense their brains just keep on trying to assemble it into something sensible. They try to make stories out of it. It's complete random nonsense with no possible correlation to the real world, and yet they turn it into these crazy stories. And then they forget them. All that work coming up with these stories, and then they wake up and forget almost all of them. But when they do remember, they try to make stories about those crazy stories, trying to fit them into their real lives. They're practicing. They're doing it all the time. Coming up with stories. Making connections. Making sense out of nonsense." - The Hive Queen from Xenocide by Orson Scott Card I think the story telling is about the way we perceive linear time, and consequently the way we organise our memories and predictions according to a linear chronology - story telling in effect. Chris From: MikeE 3/09/99 11:12:52 Subject: re: Blind people and dreams post id: 34892 "[Humans] have to know the cause of everything, have to make a story about everything. We [alien life form] don't even care why the way these humans do. We find out as much as we need to know to accomplish something, but they always want to know more than they need to know. After they get something to work they're still hungry to know why it works and why the cause of its working works." .... a bit like religion Chris? (in the DreamTime ....) From: Jeremy 4/02/99 14:17:42 Subject: re: blind people + dreams post id: 319 I'll work this one through logically. It would be nice if someone could confirm the postulation... Since sighted people dream with smell, sound, taste and colour, it is feasible that blind-from birth people would not be deprived of this. However, I find it inconceivable that a blind person would dream images in the same way that a person who has ever been sighted. Reason? Thinking, in the sense of what humans do is related not only to memory but to the acquisition and use of language and dreams will be a construct of memory and language. A blind-from- birth person would therefore dream with the same sensations that he/she experiences in everyday life. (Although rationality and causality would be thrown out of the window like it is in any dream) However, many blind from birth people do in fact have some sensitivity to light even if the rendition is very poor - so surely that would take part in the dreaming. From: Brendan 4/02/99 19:59:23 Subject: re: blind people + dreams post id: 394 This is an interesting question and one I've long been interested in...Jeremy's answer sounds as good as any I've ever heard. What I'd like to know, however, is what happens to a sighted person who then goes blind? Will they still be able to "remember" things they saw while sighted and experience these "sights" in their dreams? Best wishes, Brendan From: Jeremy 5/02/99 9:36:02 Subject: re: blind people + dreams post id: 422 "What I'd like to know, however, is what happens to a sighted person who then goes blind? Will they still be able to "remember" things they saw while sighted and experience these "sights" in their dreams?" Well, If you can find an honest account of Helen Keller's life, it will become apparent that her phenomenal achievements for someone deaf and dumb were only possible because she had a normal infancy past the age of... I think it was two years. Without this vital store of early sighted and hearing experience she would absolutely not be able to talk about the outside world in such descriptive terms. So this tells me that sighted people who lose their sight can still dream normally. If you are very interested in this kind of cognitive development - it would be an excellent idea to find a copy of "The Wild Boy of Aveyron". Harlan Lane / Paperback / Published 1979. This boy was deprived of social contact from birth and survived for years in the wild. It became apparent that he acted and behaved as an animal. His ability to acquire and use language was irreversibly destroyed, and yet he possessed many characteristics which suggested a high level of intelligence. It's a thought provoking account. From: clare 25/05/99 20:34:07 Subject: re: blind people + dreams post id: 13767 It is definate that some blind people can perceive light sources (but not images) depending on where the damage is in the central nervous system that causes them to be blind. One test showed that several blind people could accurately point to a light source when it was switched on even though they could not "see" it. It is something to do with the midbrain (?? i think - can't remember) that is a very ancient part of the brain (ie was a part of our development a long long time ago - long before true sight was developed). It was also shown that some people could distinguish between red/green lights (these people were blinded later in life though i think). Something that could be worth looking in to. From: David Rokerfeller 8/07/99 10:22:09 Subject: re: blind people + dreams post id: 22426 Answer Ask A Blind from birth person, what they see in there dreams From: Michael 28/03/99 9:06:10 Subject: re: Blind People post id: 5029 Very good question. I have actually asked that same question to blind people, and have not gotten a satisfactory response. What I theorise however is that we don't dream visually, but emotionally. We just put sensory padding to dreams, and the main sense is easiest to use. In the case of blind people, I think they would dream "using" other senses. People who have been able to see but then lost their sight describe the people in their dreams as getting less and less detailed as the years go on, as they forget complex things such as faces. About the best response to the question was "Well, I dream normally, it's just I bump into a things a lot less" Regards, Michael. From: rob 13/08/99 23:47:36 Subject: re: post id: 30684 I thought this would have been resolved weeks ago. I remember an inteview with a permanently blind person who said they didn't see when they dreamed they just stopped running into things. This makes sense sinse it now seems that the brain remaps other functions onto areas of the brain that are unused. With this assumption after someone has been blind for a long enough time the brain would remap other functions to the visual cortex. From: MichaelT 14/08/99 14:59:59 Subject: re: post id: 30763 Just some more info for ya... I read a bit about a fellow who went blind at a young age, and was now into his 40's. At first, his dreams were of real people, with real faces. As the years went on, he started losing the detail of the faces and could not remember what people looked like but still dreamt of people. I assume that as the 'memory' of the finer details are not updated, they get lost. Regards, MichaelT This forum is un-moderated. 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