Dreams Like No Other

Dreams are mysterious. There are many theories and hypotheses on what they are and why they exist. But even given the science we have today, nobody can give us a straight answer still.

I posed this question to myself earlier. Can blind-at-birth people dream in color? Can deaf-at-birth people dream of sounds? What are their dreams like?

A quick Google search resulted in an answer I think makes a lot of sense.

Basically the author of the subject contented that, when blind-at-birth people dream, they are not capable of “seeing” in a sense that most people associate visiually seeing as. Other articles also mentioned that the notion of “color” and “sound” are not inherited in the genes. They are the product of experiments and experiences in a person’s life. Therefore a person who’s never seen any color or heard any sound will not have those memories in their brain.

On the other hand, deficiencies in vision is usually made up by other senses of the humand body. In the case of blind-at-birth people, their smell, touch and hearing senses are heightened in their dreams. And their dreams are more sophisticated that stimulate different parts of the brain more in a way that ordinary people simply aren’t capable of experiencing.

Languages are purely conceptual and inaccurate inventions of man. When we are able to see, the powerful sensation of vision (and associated visual “descriptions”) frequently overwhelms all the other senses. Even in dreams, visual elements are often the only thing we tend to remember when we wake up. Oddly enough, sometimes images we see in dreams can seem more saturated in color and definition than real life. And even more frequently, it’s the the feeling of the “atmosphere” in our dreams that’s longer lasting than anything else. Only rarely do we remember touch or smell from our dreams.

Blind/deaf-at-birth people’s dreams exist in a completely different realm. I can’t imagine how intensive certain “atmospheric” feelings are without the distraction of vision in dreams. I remember dreaming things that are so intense that I forgot I was dreaming. And that was with the benefit of being distracted by vision.

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