What do the blind dream?

[LiviaOlivia]

I always wondered about the dreams of people blind since birth.



Robert Matthews: Q & A
(Filed: 11/01/2004)


<snip> "their precise nature depends on when the blindness was acquired. According to Professor J Allan Hobson of Harvard Medical School, author of the recently published Dreaming: an introduction to the science of sleep (Oxford University Press), people who are blind from birth make up for the lack of visual memories with dreams based around bodily sensations instead. In contrast, those who become blind in later life are often able to use the store of imagery built up earlier in life as the basis of especially vivid visual dreams."



http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected/main.jhtml?view=HOME&grid=P14&menuId=-1&menuItemId=-1&_requestid=20875

[mlawson]

1. If the blind from birth do dream about visual images, would that

help prove reincarnation??? I am not making a bad joke, BTW. I wonder about that.

[NJCher]

2. missing something

How would that prove reincarnation?


Cher

[MAlibdem]

3. It might

Because they should have no concept of vision. Tho reincarnation is bunk imo. a girl i dated loved the concept, maybe she'll cheat on me in a future life too, lol.

Read Pilgrim at Tinker Creek, by Annie Dillard for more on vision, especially "Vision".

[Rabrrrrrr]

7. Great book!

I'll always remember the moth body as candle wick.

Powerful writing.

[mlawson]

4. If there was no reincarnation, i.e., they came from 'nowhere' when born,

they would presumably have never seen anything before. So then how could they dream about visual images? If they had had previous lives, the dreams are what we call 'bleed throughs' from past lives, when they were sighted.

It's like when you dream you are with people you have never met, and seem to know them quite well. The theory is that you knew them in past lives, and in dreams you are reunited. It might sound off the wall, but think about it...

[LiviaOlivia]

6. Agreed

if there is/was never any "visual memory" one could dream in only sounds,smells,taste and touch.

edit-thanks lk

[LastKnight]

8. your not missing any...

thier are only 5 scentifically proven senses... the 6th sense refers to some sort of ESP(extra sensory perception) or something to the like.

-LK

[Beaker]

9. since memory is stored in the brain-

how exactly is it that memories are supposed to stick with the re-incarnated person?

[bubblesby2002]

5. I was a volunteer at the Canadian Institute for the Blind

for a long time and the CEO who lost his vision when he was in his 20's could still describe the green colours of Cathedral Grove (a forest park of huge fir trees) and the bright yellow of the sun. He said he dreamed in colour.

[peterh]

10. Only surmising….

But if I were blind, especially since birth and regardless of what I’ve heard…..I really think I would dream of a utopian environment….whatever that may encompass….