Monday, May 21, 2012

Dream On

Can you tell from the title I'm an Aerosmith fan? Okay enough fun and games,on with the real deal. I have always had vivid dreams and they are usually pretty strange. I guess because of this I was wondering how blind people dream,do they see in their dreams? And if not how do they dream? There is not a terrific amount of information on this subject,but there are several references to a blind film critic named Tommy Edison featuring a YouTube video where he answers the question,not terribly informative but as I said not a lot of info on this subject.
The following is what I managed to scrape together. People blind from birth do not see in their dreams instead it is much like in their waking hours where they rely on smell,sound,taste and touch, but mainly auditory. This is also true for people that go blind before the age of 5. If you go blind between 5-7 it could go either way and from 7 on there will be some images but they usually fade as the dreamer ages. The people that go blind later in life can experience visually intense dreams for years,but the longer they are without sight the less frequent these dreams become. Blind people have very little or no rapid eye movement (REM) during the deep sleep stage in which we have vivid dreams. That doesn't mean they aren't dreaming,just they their eyes aren't involved. 60% of blind people dream of transportation issues,as they are obstacles in their waking lives. Sighted people have dreams with sounds but rarely the other senses.
Another interesting thing I found was that people who grew up with black and white television sometimes dream in black and white. I have heard several people claim that they dream in black and white and I can barely believe it, being one that has dreams with many colors that usually stay with me when I wake up.

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