Key takeaways
- Yes, blind people dream.
- What they dream depends on when they lost their sight.
- People born blind generally dream through sound, touch, smell, taste and emotion rather than pictures.
- People who lost their sight later often still see images in dreams, and those images tend to fade over the years.
- In one study, people born blind reported more nightmares than people who lost sight later and sighted people.
As a blind individual, I often encounter questions about my experiences that differ from those of sighted individuals. One common question that people ask is Do blind people dream? It’s understandable to be curious about what it’s like to dream with blindness. In this blog post, I’ll be sharing my insights and experiences as a blind person, providing answers to some of the questions that I’ve encountered surrounding the topic of dreams and blindness. So if you’re a sighted person who’s curious about the dreams of blind people, or a fellow visually impaired individual who is interested in exploring the topic, let’s dive in!
Can Blind People Dream?
Yes, blind people dream. Dreaming comes from the brain during sleep, not from the eyes, so it does not depend on being able to see. What changes is the material the dreams are made from. That depends on whether a person was born blind or lost their sight later.
Do Blind People Have Visual Dreams?
It depends on when sight was lost. Researchers do not agree on every detail, so it helps to take the groups one at a time.
People born blind
Researchers disagree about whether people born blind ever have visual imagery in their dreams. Many studies find none. What they do find is that these dreams contain more sound, touch, taste and smell than the dreams of sighted people.
People who lost sight in early childhood
Researchers believe these people have some visual content in their dreams, more than people born blind and less than people who lost sight later. Studies use different age cut-offs, so there is no single age at which this changes.
People who lost sight later in life
Many keep visual dreams, with faces, places and sometimes colour. In a Danish study, the longer a person had been blind, the shorter, less clear and less colourful their visual dream images were. Touch and body sensation also become more prominent.
Can Blind People See in Their Dreams?
Some can and some cannot. People who lost sight later often see images in their dreams. People born blind generally do not experience pictures, but their dreams are still full of experience: the sound of a voice, the feel of a cane on pavement, the smell of a kitchen, and the emotion of a situation.
How Do Blind People Dream?
Dreams draw on memory and on the senses a person uses while awake. A person who has never seen has no visual memories to replay, so their dreams are built from sound, touch, smell, taste, movement and feeling. This is not a lesser kind of dream. It is a different one.
What Do Blind People Dream About?
Mostly what anyone dreams about: family and friends, work, travel, worries, and everyday situations. The difference is in how those scenes are experienced, with more sound, touch, smell and taste than in sighted people’s dreams. A conversation may be a voice and a feeling of where someone is standing, not a face.
If you want to go deeper into how the age of vision loss changes dreams, read Do people born blind dream differently from those who lose sight later?
Do Blind People Dream in Colour (Color)?
People who once saw may dream in colour, although the colours tend to fade the longer they have been blind. People born blind do not dream in colour as sighted people know it. They may describe their dreams in terms of sound, touch and feeling.
Do Blind People Have Nightmares?
In the Danish study, people born blind reported more nightmares than both people who lost sight later and sighted people. The researchers suggested this may be linked to more threatening experiences in daily life, such as collisions or getting lost.
Do Deafblind People Dream?
Yes, people with both vision and hearing loss still dream. Research on the dreams of deafblind people is limited, so there is not much that can be said with confidence about what they experience.
Are Blind People Blind in Their Dreams?
Not always. People who lost their sight later can see in their dreams, often for years. People born blind dream through their other senses, which means they are not missing something in their dreams but experiencing them in their own way.
Conclusion
Blind people dream, and the dreams reflect the senses and memories each person has. If your own dreams differ from what you read here, that is normal. The research describes averages from small groups, and every person’s dreams are different. If you are blind and want to share what your dreams are like, please leave a comment below.
References
- Meaidi A, Jennum P, Ptito M, Kupers R. The sensory construction of dreams and nightmare frequency in congenitally blind and late blind individuals. Sleep Medicine, 2014. PubMed 24709309.
