Being blind and seeing images in dreams

Can a person who is blind from birth see images in their dreams?

Originally posted by ivanhoe


Can a person who is blind from birth see images in their dreams?

of course not, dreams are just the rearanging of our memories manifesting in terms of sensory imput.

Originally posted by fearlessleader
of course not, dreams are just the rearanging of our memories manifesting in terms of sensory imput.

One theory is that deep sleep is when your brain repairs damage to iteself from free radicals and other toxins that builds up. Dreams are a system test when it tests that the repairs work ok. I don't think there would be much point in a blind person's brain testing sight, and it might not have all the functioning sight bits to test, having rewired them for use in extra sensitive touch, hearing, smell and taste functionality.

Originally posted by iamatiger
One theory is that deep sleep is when your brain repairs damage to iteself from free radicals and other toxins that builds up. Dreams are a system test when it tests that the repairs work ok. I don't think there would be much point in a blind person's brain testing sight, and it might not have all the functioning sight bits to test, having rewired them for use in extra sensitive touch, hearing, smell and taste functionality.

I don't think dreams work on the basis of rationality. If a person's blindness results from a defect in the eyes, optic nerves or one of the preliminary processing areas of the occipital region, then there's no reason why their mind wouldn't simulate visual input. However, a) they wouldn't know what anything looked like, so would probably only be able to imagine a jumble of lights and colours, similar to the abstract images generated by an acid trip; b) the occipital region would probably atrophy through disuse. An interesting case, however, might be that of a blind synaesthete: in his/her mind, the occipital system could be kept going by cross-wired input from the other senses, and this kind of false sight ought also to be present in their dreams.

Not like us but they will probably have dreams of a touch, taste, smell & sound orientation.

I use to work with someone who had been blind since birth, we worked together for a couple of years........ I use to provide IT support for him helping him with speech synth stuff on his laptop etc blah blah bore. Anywho, as we became friends this was one of the topics we discussed. He told me that he dreams all the time and that they were visual dreams, he explained that he still has pictures of what everything looks like in his mind (despite not having ever seen the object), he creates the pictures through his other senses. Although he did admitt that his pictures may not be as accurate as the real thing but pictures and dreams do exist in the mind of the blind.

Quite an amazing person, very inspiring to see someone with what I consider to be a big disability in life and to still have such a lust for life and a great attitude.

Off topic, Funny story: The first time I had to do a support job for this person I was informed that he was blind and required help with blah.... So I went to his office and on arrival found that he was not in. After completing the job, I found a post-it note and pen, scribbled a brief message and stuck it too his laptop to inform what I had done and to call if there were further issues. About an hour later he must have found the post-it note as everyone in the building received a mail from him requesting "If the person who left me (the blind guy) a post it note on my screen would kindly come back and read it to me".

From that day one we always laughed about it 😵