Thread: Can people blind from birth see in their dreams?

This question pops up every couple of months. The answer is no.

Here is a scientific article about dreaming in blind people. Its main points are summarized here:

1. There are no visual images in the dreams of those born without any ability to experience visual imagery in waking life.

2. Individuals who become blind before the age of five seldom experience visual imagery in their dreams, although Deutsch (1928) reports some visual imagery in six schoolchildren who lost their sight before age five.

3. Those who become sightless between the ages of five and seven may or may not retain some visual imagery.

4. Most people who lost their vision after age seven continue to experience at least some visual imagery, although its frequency and clarity often fade with time.

I used to have a close friend who was blind from birth and he verified that this was true for him.

There was a guy on the British version of Big Brother this year who was blind, and one of the other housemates asked him if he could see things in his dreams. He said that he could see things, but they were more like shapes than anything else, and sometimes he saw faces but that was rare. He also said that more often than not he didn't remember his dreams anyway.

The mind can't create something that was never there in the first place. It would be like, if I an be crude, a virgin having sex in an LD.

Originally Posted by Vismund Cygnus

The mind can't create something that was never there in the first place. It would be like, if I an be crude, a virgin having sex in an LD.

Given some of the topics I've seen, I'm sure this has been attempted.

Who knows, maybe a small amount of them can, maybe not. Not every blind person in the world is asked this... one can never be 100% sure of most things.