How do blind people dream?

[The_Warmth]

I'm talking about blind from birth. When they dream do they dream with visualisations, how would they recognize? Would their dreams consist of the other senses entirely then? Thanks!

[meegbear]

1. From The Straight Dope ...

Dear Cecil:

I have wondered about this for years--my friends now only roll their eyes when I wonder aloud. What are dreams like for people who have been blind from birth? Are there any kinds of images, or are they strictly sound, smell, and touch dreams? --Jane M., Chicago

Dear Jane:

Many great minds have wondered about this, Jane. Of course, so have many total prunepits, so don't jump to any rash conclusions.

While there may be exceptions, in general the dreams of the congenitally blind contain no visual elements and consist predominantly of sound plus smell, touch and the sense of movement.

Plotwise they tend to to be reality-based--e.g., a reprise of the events of the day--with less of the fantasy you find in the dreams of sighted people. There's also more conversation.

Persons who become blind after birth often see in their dreams, although it depends on (a) how old they were when they became blind and (b) how long it's been since. If you're blinded before the age of six or seven you generally see little or nothing in your dreams.

Dreams of people who become blind when older are often indistinguishable from those of the sighted, but as time goes on many "see" less and less.

To some extent, I gather, the lack of visual elements in the dreams of the blind can be counteracted by force of imagination. Helen Keller, who became blind at the age of 19 months, claimed to have "visions of ineffable beauty." These ran to things like pearls.

To my mind this betrays a certain want of ambition. A man's reach should exceed his grasp, right? So I'd want to see what I could work up along the lines of Jacqueline Bisset. But at least we know there's hope.

http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_310.html

[ThoughtCriminal]

4. Interesting answer

I have also wondered about that.

Next question:
How do Republicans sleep?

[lonestarnot]

6. Good fucking question!

[TwilightGardener]

7. Upside down, hanging from caves and attic rafters.

[WePurrsevere]

9. At least bats & their by products have a useful purpose

in the grand scheme of things ;) ... and certainly their positives far outweigh their negatives which is more then I can say for this cabal. x(

[TwilightGardener]

10. Yes: bats = worthy denizens of natural world. Batshit-crazy GOPers =

unnatural, harmful creatures of political world.

[Marie26]

8. Ambien

Some people say the whole Administration is on it.

[ncgrits]

2. My husband teaches visually impaired kids. . .

. . . and he's told me that many of his students have told him about auditory dreams. I don't know if they were blind from birth or not.

But he's also told me about a student who was blinded in an accident and he had had visual dreams for a long time until one night he dreamed he was in the accident (again) and when the rescuers opened the car door (in his dream) there was nothing there. And after that he never had another visual dream. He was sad about that at first, but later he kind of made peace with being blind. . . .

[lonestarnot]

3. Their sense of touch is keen. Wouldn't ya think that that is how they visualize?

[CrispyQ]

5. You might like this article:

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html

Mixed Feelings

snip...

See with your tongue. Navigate with your skin. Fly by the seat of your pants (literally). How researchers can tap the plasticity of the brain to hack our 5 senses — and build a few new ones.
By Sunny Bains


For six weird weeks in the fall of 2004, Udo Wächter had an unerring sense of direction. Every morning after he got out of the shower, Wächter, a sysadmin at the University of Osnabrück in Germany, put on a wide beige belt lined with 13 vibrating pads — the same weight-and-gear modules that make a cell phone judder. On the outside of the belt were a power supply and a sensor that detected Earth's magnetic field. Whichever buzzer was pointing north would go off. Constantly.

"It was slightly strange at first," Wächter says, "though on the bike, it was great." He started to become more aware of the peregrinations he had to make while trying to reach a destination. "I finally understood just how much roads actually wind," he says. He learned to deal with the stares he got in the library, his belt humming like a distant chain saw. Deep into the experiment, Wächter says, "I suddenly realized that my perception had shifted. I had some kind of internal map of the city in my head. I could always find my way home. Eventually, I felt I couldn't get lost, even in a completely new place."

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/esp_pr.html
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I love questions like yours!