Usually, the glasses play a protective role. Sudden blindness total or near-total vision loss in one or both eyes is a medical emergency. In many cases, prompt diagnosis and treatment can…. What blind people see will depend on their visual impairment and whether they still have some vision.
Health Conditions Discover Plan Connect. Yes, Blind People Dream, Too. Medically reviewed by Elaine K. Luo, M. What do they dream about?
Can they see their dreams? Do they have nightmares? Things to keep in mind. The bottom line. Therefore, asking them about it is not useful. Instead, scientists have performed brain scans of people blind since birth while they are sleeping.
What scientists have found is that these people have the same type of vision-related electrical activity in the brain during sleep as people with normal eyesight. Furthermore, people blind since birth move their eyes while asleep in a way that is coordinated with the vision-related electrical activity in the brain, just like people with normal eyesight. Therefore, it is highly likely that people blind since birth do indeed experience visual sensations while sleeping.
They just don't know how to describe the sensations or even conceptually connect in any way these sensations with what sighted people describe as vision. With that said, the brain scans during sleep of people blind since birth are not identical to those of sighted people. While people blind since birth do indeed dream in visual images, they do it less often and less intensely than sighted people.
Instead, they dream more often and more intensely in sounds, smells, and touch sensations. We should keep in mind that a person blind since birth has never had the experience of seeing images originating from the external world and therefore has never formed visual memories connected to the external world.
The visual components of their dreams therefore cannot be formed from visual memories or the associated circuitry. Rather, the visual sensations must arise from the electrical fluctuations that originate within the brain. What this means is that people blind since birth probably do not experience detailed visual images of actual objects such as apples or chairs while dreaming. The blind volunteers used text-to-speech software. The questionnaire asked about several aspects of the dream: the sensory impressions Did you see anything?
If so, was it in color? Did you taste? Feel pain? Did you fail at something? Was it realistic, or bizarre? The questionnaire also asked whether the dream was a nightmare. All of the non-blind control participants reported a visual impression in at least one dream. In contrast, none of the participants who had been totally blind since birth did. For the group with later-onset blindness, the longer they had lived without sight, the less they saw in their dreams.
Just as there are many ways to take in the world, there are many ways to dream about it. Blind people dream, just as they live, with a rich mix of sensory information. About 18 percent of the blind participants both congenital and later-onset reported tasting in at least one dream, compared with 7 percent of controls. Nearly 30 percent of the blind reported smelling in at least one dream, compared with 15 percent of controls.
Rapid eye movements are reduced in blind individuals. Journal of Sleep Research, 28 6 , e National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke. Brain basics: Understanding sleep. Visual dream content, graphical representation and EEG alpha activity in congenitally blind subjects. Cognitive Brain Research, 15 3 , — Meaidi, A. The sensory construction of dreams and nightmare frequency in congenitally blind and late blind individuals.
Sleep Medicine, 15 5 , — Kerr, N. The structure of laboratory dream reports in blind and sighted subjects. The Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 5 , — Hurovitz, C. The dreams of blind men and women: A replication and extension of previous findings. Dreaming, 9 , — Learn more about Dreams.
Dreams By Eric Suni October 30, By Austin Meadows November 11, By Sarah Shoen October 7, By Sarah Shoen July 22, By Danielle Pacheco July 16, By Sarah Shoen July 15, By Danielle Pacheco July 14, Can Blind People Dream? By Tom Ryan June 29, How Do Dreams Affect Sleep? By Danielle Pacheco October 30, Load More Articles. Related Reading How Sleep Works.
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