Could a Blind Person Dream in Colour If They’ve Never Seen Before?
Dreams are a mysterious and fascinating phenomenon, often reflecting our experiences, thoughts, and emotions. But what happens when someone has never had visual experiences? Do people who are blind dream in colour, or do they experience dreams in other sensory modalities? This article explores the nature of dreams in individuals who are blind, considering scientific research, neurological insights, and first-hand accounts.
How Do Dreams Work?
Dreaming primarily occurs during Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, a phase of sleep characterized by intense brain activity. Theories on why we dream vary, but common explanations include:
Memory processing (dreams help consolidate memories)
Problem-solving (dreams help us work through real-life issues)
Neurological randomness (dreams result from the brain processing information in a semi-random way)
For sighted individuals, dreams are often highly visual, likely because vision is the dominant sense for most people when awake. But for those who have never seen, do dreams include visual elements?
Dreams in People Who Are Blind
1. Dreams Depend on When Blindness Occurred
Research suggests that the content of dreams in blind individuals depends largely on whether they were born blind or became blind later in life.
People who become blind later in life (after the age of about 5–7) often continue to dream visually, sometimes for decades after losing sight.
People who are blind from birth (congenitally blind) do not experience visual dreams. Instead, their dreams are composed of other senses: sound, touch, smell, taste, and emotion.
Studies have shown that people who were blind from birth report no visual elements in their dreams but described dreams rich in auditory, tactile, and emotional content.
2. Non-Visual Dream Sensations
For individuals who are blind from birth, dreams are multi-sensory experiences, often emphasizing the senses they rely on most in daily life. Some reported elements include:
Hearing: Voices, music, environmental sounds, and even complex conversations.
Touch: Feeling the texture of surfaces, objects, and even people in dreams.
Smell & Taste: More prominent than in sighted individuals' dreams, possibly because blind individuals rely more on these senses.
Kinesthetic Awareness: A heightened sense of movement, balance, and space, allowing them to "navigate" dream environments.
In other words, while congenitally blind people do not dream in images or colours, their dreams are just as vivid—just in different ways.
Neurological Basis: Why No Visual Dreams?
Dreaming involves activating the same neural pathways used during waking experiences. For people who are blind from birth, the visual cortex does not develop in the same way as in sighted individuals. Instead, their brains rewire to process information differently:
The occipital lobe (normally responsible for vision) is repurposed for touch and hearing, enhancing these senses.
Brain scans of congenitally blind individuals show increased activity in auditory and tactile areas during REM sleep.
Since they have never received visual input, their brains simply do not generate images in dreams because they have no visual memories to draw from.
Can a Blind Person "See" in Dreams if They Gain Sight Later?
There have been rare cases of people who were born blind or nearly blind and later gained sight through medical intervention. Some of these individuals reported experiencing gradual visual elements in their dreams post-surgery.
For example, a 2014 case study of a woman who received a corneal transplant in adulthood found that she began to experience flashes of light and simple shapes in dreams over time, suggesting that visual dream content can emerge when visual experience is introduced. However, it remains unclear how long-lasting or detailed these dream visuals can become.
Do Colours Appear in Dreams of the Blind?
If a person has never seen colour in their waking life, they cannot perceive colour in dreams. Instead, dreams are structured around the senses they use daily.
However, people who became blind later in life sometimes continue to dream in colour. The colours they perceive in dreams often correspond to their last remembered experiences of sight, meaning their dreams may reflect the visual world they once knew. Over time, however, their visual dreams may fade or transform into predominantly non-visual experiences.
First-Hand Accounts from Blind Individuals
Interviews and research on blind individuals' dreams often reveal fascinating insights:
One congenitally blind participant in a study described a dream where he "felt" running water and "heard" birds chirping but had no concept of what the visual aspect of these elements would be.
A person blind from the age of 10 reported still dreaming visually, but the images in dreams grew less defined over the years.
Another blind dreamer described a dream where they were in a forest: "I could feel the wind on my face, hear the rustling trees, and smell the damp earth, but I had no idea what the trees 'looked like'."
These accounts support the idea that the content of dreams adapts to one's lived sensory experiences.
Simply Put
The ability to dream in colour depends entirely on past visual experience.
If a person became blind later in life, they may continue to dream in colour for many years.
If a person was born blind, they do not dream in colour (or visuals at all) but instead experience dreams through sound, touch, smell, taste, and movement.
Even though their dreams lack imagery, blind individuals still report rich, immersive, and emotionally intense dream experiences, proving that vision is not a prerequisite for a vibrant dream life.