I recently pondered this question. We aren’t sure what a person who was born blind dreams about. But what about someone who lost their sight at the age of say 20. Do they still continue to have visual dreams?
If so I think they look forward to dreaming every night. Their dreamworld may become more real to them then. Because it has all the details of waking life only they can see it. Assuming they can. I’m not really sure what they say about this one. Any ideas.
I think I read somewhere that people who lost their sight after birth do dream visually to some degree, but that it usually fades away with time. I think one exlanation was that the visual part of the brain might “weaken” with time since it doesn’t get any input from the outside world.
But I don’t think it’s impossible for blind people to dream visually. Since ordinary NDs often reflect what happens in real life, it seems natural that they would exclude sight for blind people. LDs might be a completely different case. Even if the visual part of the brain is left unused during the day, it’s still there and I don’t see any reason to why it wouldn’t be possible to use during the night.
And if it really works, imagine what great RC they could use if they developed lucid dreaming skills - every time they see they know they’re dreaming 
Anyone know of any studies that have been done? This would be so sad if blind people after time couldn’t have something so cool as a visual dream.
There is a near death experience of a woman blind from birth who visually sees during the experience.
and what does she see? Does it match with what is really out there?
I think that’s a beautiful article. She remembered what she saw that day during her NDE but for all we know what she thought was a cow was actually a horse.
She’s never seen it so how could she have known what everything was or who they were. I can uderstand that she became so knowledgable after being surrounded by true love. But not before. Unless that is the slide show she was given was detailed enough.
I don’t think it’s that hard to imagine what a blind person’s dreams would be like. Just think of how you would interpret the world with your eyes closed… objects still exist, events still happen, you still talk to people, go places, do things, and such. Only you interpret it all though texture, touch, space, sound, smell, etc.
I’ve also read a little about this and heard that people that have lost their sight after birth do dream visually less and less, but the implication was that it was because they were adapting to their new interpretation of the world. It makes sense. You dream about what you know.
To draw a comparison, it’s probably like how you may move out of a house, but for months afterward you’ll continue to dream that you still live there, and have a false awakening in the old place. But after a while your mind updates and you begin dreaming about your new place, though from time to time may dream about living in the old one.
So if they were to dream about having a conversation with a co-worker at lunch, if they were used to interpreting the world as a blind person then they would probably dream about it that way, just hearing the sounds, voices, feelings things, and such.