A question for the ages. It's been going around for as long as I can recall, and it's time to settle this matter by making an approach myself... and of course doing a little research. Let's delve into the mind of a human that is blind. Of course I am no expert myself but some information tossed your way is better than nothing at all, yes?
Blindness is a condition involving the absence of visual perception due to neurological of physiological circumstances. Some people are blind from birth, some lose their sight as a child, and others lose their site as they grow old. For the sake of simplicity, I will only be covering TOTAL BLINDESS, in which the human in question has no perception of light. Yes, many people are partially blind... but that's a whole different realm. You can become blind in many different ways: chemical imbalance, poisoning, physical harm, genetic defects, etc. If you really want an idea of blindness i suppose you can close your eyes real tight and put your hand over them. You know what it's like to see darkness all the time.
I digress. Back to the question in question. If persay a child is born blind, how does the whole dreaming come into play? What do they see? What can they dream about?
It turns out my guess and the actual facts are right. Humans dream based on experiences and things they have seen and felt with all five senses. So when one get's taken away, dreams have no choice but to work with what they've got. When a person who has been blind all their life goes to sleep and dreams, he/she will only have auditory dreams. That's exactly right, they dream in sound. Kind of like listening to a radio when you fall asleep. Or when you fall asleep in class but you still manage to pay attention. No? Just me? Ok then.
OH BUT WHAT ABOUT THOSE WHO LOSE THEIR SIGHT as they live life? The brain extracts dreams, again, based on experience by the senses. Chances are, if a person who lost their sight at an early stage in life, they could only dream of what they could see before losing their vision.
When asked this question to a person who has been blind since a young age:
"Yes, blind people do dream. What they see in their dreams depends on how much they could ever see. If someone has been totally blind since birth, they only have auditory dreams. If someone such as I, has had a measure of sight, then that person dreams with that measure of sight. I still dream as though I can see, colors included. For people I've met since, their faces are just blurs or how I imagine they look. To me, someone like my mother looks forever 30. "
In Conclusion: suffice it to say, blind people do dream. They dream based on what they've seen, heard, felt, smelled, tasted. Though no one will ever really know i suppose... i mean it's not like blind people don't have an imagination right?
ta ta kids
