Do people who've been blind since birth dream?

I have no doubt that people sightless from birth dream—and probably quite richly. For even though they have never seen anything with their eyes, they have certainly had many things described to them, and that, plus natural human imagination, must give them plenty of imagery for their dreams.

I think not. Not in visions, at least.

I remember reading a book about dreaming. There was a chapter devoted to the dreams of blind people. I remember one dream recorded by a blind woman that said she dreamed that her sister’s face cracked and fell to the floor. She had the entire dream in sound. No visuals.

Here is a National Geographic article with some research on the subject.

Here’s an study that suggests that congenitally blind people can experience visual imagery in dreams, and can even draw representations of those dream images (see results starting on page 181 of the paper).

I remember this question.

Interesting, @keobooks and @thorninmud. Thanks for those links. @ibstubro Somehow Fluther did not alert me this time that a similar question had already been asked. But anyhow, some of those earlier answers may also be referring to people who may have been sighted at one point. I was wondering about individuals who have never seen anything in their lives.

This question was triggered after watching Iolanta, an opera by Tchaikovsky at the movies last night. It’s the story of a girl who was born blind, but her father, the king, did not want her to ever know what she was missing, so he forbade everyone around her from giving her any indication that she was blind or that she could not “see”.

I wasn’t being critical, @2davidc8, and it’s perfectly acceptable to re-ask a question after a while.
It literally just triggered a memory of previous discussion, so I added their 3 cents worth. There’s a decent percent of the members that don’t even open links, so no worries.

I don’t know why some people think blind people don’t dream. Even though REM means “rapid eye movement” the state is within the brain, not the eyes. Everyone dreams. I’m not sure, but I think all mammals dream.

What I wonder is.. what do people blind and deaf dream about? Smells? Tactile sensations?

I don’t think the congenitally blind can experience visual imagery in dreams. Their brains have not developed to process visual imagery and even if by a miracle their sight is restored they ‘see’ everything but can make no sense of it. The congenitally blind have an awareness of their surroundings in dreams as in real life but not a visual awareness.

@keobooks:

Before her teacher first came to her, Helen Keller, in her autobiography, stated ‘My dreams have strangely changed during the past twelve years. Before and after my teacher first came to me, they were devoid of sound, of thought or emotion of any kind, except fear, and only came in the form of sensations. I would often dream that I ran into a still, dark room, and that, while I stood there, I felt something fall heavily without any noise, causing the floor to shake up and down violently; and each time I woke up with a jump. As I learned more and more about the objects around me, this strange dream ceased to haunt me; but I was in a high state of excitement and received impressions very easily. It is not strange then that I dreamed at the time of a wolf, which seemed to rush towards me and put his cruel teeth deep into my body! I could not speak (the fact was, I could only spell with my fingers), and I tried to scream; but no sound escaped from my lips. It is very likely that I had heard the story of Red Riding Hood, and was deeply impressed by it. This dream, however, passed away in time, and I began to dream of objects outside myself.

More interesting information on the subject.