A MAN WHO IS BLIND FROM BIRTH HOW CAN HE SEE DREAM
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blind people do indeed dream in visual images. For people who were born with eyesight and then later went blind, it is not surprising that they experience visual sensations while dreaming. Dreams are drawn from memories that are stored in the brain as well as from brain circuitry that is developed while experiencing the outside world. Therefore, even though a person who lost his vision may be currently blind, his brain is still able to draw on the visual memories and on the related brain circuits that were formed before he went blind. For this reason, he can dream in visual images. What is more surprising is the discovery that people who were born blind also dream in visual images.
The human experience of vision involves three steps: (1) the transformation of a pattern of light to electrical impulses in the eyes, (2) the transmission of these electrical impulses from the eyes to the brain along the optic nerves, and (3) the decoding and assembly of these electrical impulses into visual sensations experienced in the brain. If any one of these three steps is significantly impaired, blindness results. In the vast majority of cases, blindness results from problems in the eyes and in the optic nerves, and not in the brain. In the few cases where blindness results from problems in the brain, the person usually regains some amount of vision due to brain plasticity (i.e. the ability of the brain to rewire itself). Therefore, people who are blind since birth still technically have the ability to experience visual sensations in the brain. They just have nothing sending electrical impulses with visual information to the brain. In other words, they are still capable of having visual experiences. It's just that these experiences cannot originate from the outside world. Dreams are an interesting area, because dreams do not directly originate from the outside world. Therefore, from a plausibility standpoint, it is possible for people blind since birth to dream in visual images. However, just because blind people have the neural capacity to experience visual sensations does not automatically mean that they actually do. Scientists had to carry out research studies in order to determine if people blind since birth actually do dream in visual images.
At this point, you may be wondering, "Why don't we just ask the people blind since birth if they dream in visual images?" The problem is that when you ask such people this question, they will always answer no. They are not necessarily answering no because they actually do not have visual dreams. They are saying no because they do not know what visual images are. A girl with eyesight visually recognizes an apple because at some point in the past she saw the apple and ate it, and therefore is able to connect the image of an apple with the taste, small, shape, and touch of an apple. She is also able to connect the image with the word "apple." In other words, the visual image of an apple becomes a trigger for all the memories and experiences she has previously had with apples. If a girl has never personally experienced the visual image of an actual apple, then seeing an image on an apple in a dream for the first time has no connection to anything in real world. She would not realize she is seeing an apple. As an analogy, suppose you have never tasted salt. No matter how much people describe salt to you, you do not know what the experience is really like until you experience it personally. Suppose you were all alone and you came across a bag of very salty potato chips in an unlabeled bag. When you eat the chips, you would experience the taste of salt for the first time, but you would not know that that is what you are experiencing, because you would no other previous experiences or connections with it. Similarly, people blind since birth have no experience of connecting visual sensations with external objects in the real world, or relating them to what sighted people describe as vision. Therefore, asking them about it is not useful.