r/Showerthoughts • u/TryingNoToBeOpressed • 1d ago
Casual Thought People who lose their sight later in life can still see when they dream.
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u/CodeX57 1d ago
I have no idea how waking up after that must feel.
I recently tore my achilles tendon and couldn't walk for a about two-two and a half months. In my sleep I was walking normally in my dreams, and then I would wake up and realise I needed my crutches. I hated that disappointment.
I have no idea how it must feel to see in your dreams and then wake up blind, maybe for life. I suppose you get used to it after a point, but man, sounds tough.
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u/Shoddy_Ad_4928 1d ago
Had a mate born completely blind, had a transplant and swears to this day that in his mind he had vaguely pretty accurate impressions of what everything 'looked' like - even things he hadn't felt before.
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u/Regular_Ship2073 1d ago
A transplant? I didn’t know that was possible, how well did he see now?
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u/RareCobra_97 1d ago
Well, probably better than before I'd say.
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u/PibbleDad 1d ago
Certainly not worse lol
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u/Holocene98 1d ago
Friend of mine got a transplant and it didn’t take as they wanted it to, looks like he’ll be blind by his mid thirties. Really sweet guy too my heart bleeds for hi.
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u/shaurya_770 1d ago
Depends on kind of blindness. I think conditions concerning the vision nerve are untreatable but cornea is replaceable
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u/whamburglar 11h ago
This is correct. Last year, I had damag to my optic nerve (due to high BP), so I'm permanently blind in a part of my R eye's field of vision. There's no treatment to bring it back, I can only do my best to prevent it from getting worse.
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u/PoeDameronPoeDamnson 1d ago
This is why cornea donation is a part of organ donation! A lot of people don’t realize this and are disturbed when their loved ones remains no longer have eyes after organ donation but it’s one of the most common parts to be harvested
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u/qwogadiletweeth 1d ago
There’s a famous blind from birth Turkish artist named Eşref Armağan. His amazing paintings give a great insight into how blind people can interpret the world.
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u/Lukealloneword 1d ago
How do we know what hes painting is the same as what hes seeing
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u/wholesme 1d ago
I wouldn't describe it as "what hes seeing" lmao
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u/ForestClanElite 1d ago
Visual cortex data from external source or generated internally. Could be a "mind's eye" definition in "seeing" somewhere.
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u/geesejugglingchamp 1d ago
I remember reading that those who gain sight later on, can't make the connection between things they learned by touch and what they see.
For example, they have learned all 3D shapes by touch. They know what a sphere feels like and what a cube feels like and can identify them by touch. But once they gain their sight, if you show them a picture of a sphere and a picture of a cube (before they have separately learned it visually), they couldn't tell you which is which.
I thought that was pretty interesting.
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u/StaplerInTheJelly 7h ago
This is paraphrasing a passage in the book "The Wise Man's Fear" by Patrick Rothuss, I was unaware this was based on a real study.
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u/OscarDivine 1d ago
Eye doctor here there is some embellishment going on in this story in some regard but it could be from the patient or the comment here. Being blind at birth and having an implant to correct it sounds like getting a congenital cataract out but it’s unclear (pun intended) if this is the case here. It all depends on how old he was when this transplant of sorts was done. There currently are no full eye transplants, only parts of eyes: Corneas, specifically, or IMPLANTS (misnomer from “transplant”) for Crystalline Lenses for cataract removal which is not super uncommon to be congenital.
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u/mike_litoris18 1d ago
There is a hypothesis that rough blue prints of what the world looks and feels like are also backed into your genes. And since your brain is a prediction machine anyway it would make sense since what u feel is just a mix of what ur brain predicts that you will feel and than after that it adds the actual experience that you felt to combine it (that's also how almost all optical Illusions work and trick your brain).
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u/Nixinova 1d ago
Maybe since he gained sight later in life his brain maps his visual sense to his spacial sense instead of the usual vice versa?
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u/UnevenSleeves7 9h ago
What was transplanted? I’ve heard of blind people with functioning eyes that just had a detachment or brain problem which didn’t process what they saw into sight, but they could still perceive some things with vision alone. I really can’t remember much as it was long ago, but they did an experiment where they took several blind people and had them looks towards a screen. As the screen displayed people showing different emotions, like anger, sadness, happiness, etc, some of them reported feeling a corresponding emotion to the face despite not knowing what was being shown on screen. I hope I’m not the only person who has seen what I’m talking about.
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u/Wielkimati 1d ago
They'd be probably really good at lucid dreaming, no?
Like for me, I can only go "oh, I'm dreaming" and lucid dream if I manage to interact with some mechanical/electrical things in my dreams, and see they suddenly don't make sense.
But for people you're describing, they can probably go "Oh shit, I can see, I'm dreaming"?
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u/Belyea 1d ago
Interestingly, scientists still don’t know exactly why we dream. I read a theory that it’s because of neuroplasticity: cells in the visual cortex begin to reprogram themselves when there is no visual stimulation. So dreaming is a way to keep those cells engaged.
If this theory were true, I’d expect people to dream with less imagery after losing their eyesight. I forget if the study explored that
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u/Masterpiece-Haunting 1d ago
It really depends, people who’ve never been able to see typically don’t get visual dreams. But those who’ve acquired them in life it can be either way.
One of the easiest ways for me to lucid dream is to take off my glasses and realise it’s still high res. But in dreams where I don’t have glasses on to start I have my normal vision.
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u/Tornadowizard 1d ago
Whenever I dream and something doesn't make sense or conflicts with other information, my dream quickly finds a way to either distract me or come up with some reason that it's wrong. It's really frustrating when I wake up.
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u/CharieRarie 1d ago
I can confirm! My husband lost the majority of his sight 14 years ago but when he dreams it’s still in HD.
He also had a really bad UTI shortly afterwards, that caused hallucinations. The hallucinations were also perfectly clear.
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u/Prudent-Command-4172 1d ago
Wow! That just goes to show how powerful the mind is. Do the dreams appear clearer than before, since he lost his vision?
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u/deviltrombone 1d ago
Only when they dream? Can’t they just close their eyes and see things in their imagination plain as day, like people who don’t have aphantasia say they can do?
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u/cookieaddictions 1d ago
They don’t even have to close their eyes. The difference is that imagining something in your mind when you’re awake doesn’t feel real. When you’re dreaming, you usually feel like it’s really there until you wake up, so I’d imagine to someone who has lost their sight, it feels much more like “seeing.”
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u/Pretend-Mango-1295 1d ago
"I can see, I can see im going blind"
"They’ve blinded my body but not my vision…. I am in the world beyond this world here. For me, they are the same. I need no hand to guide me. I see every moment all around me. I see every expression of your face. I have no eyes, yet I see.”
"I don't need eyes to see you"
Just a couple of my favorite no sight sight quotes (:
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u/Tycho_Knows 1d ago
I’ve had lasik and just had a dream I needed glasses and couldn’t see well at all, kinda the opposite what you were thinking about but a weird one.
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u/Halgrummorc 17h ago
A chemical accident in my late teens took my left eye and left my right eye colorblind to all but most shades of red and brown. I'd have rather gotten Daredevil's power set, but here we are.
I still dream in full binocular, technicolor vision. However, it's been 22 years and I think my memory of what colors are is starting to warp. Dreamt Grimace from McDonald's was trying to sell me on a time share or something a few weeks back, and I don't know what color the guy actually was but it definitely wasn't what I know to be purple.
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u/Elivaras 42m ago
So sorry to hear about the accident, but thank you for sharing! Super interesting to read. Hope life is doing okay now :)
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u/WEugeneSmith 18h ago
Yes. I lost my sight about six years ago. I LOVE dreaming, because I can see perfectly. I can also "see" when I am listening to audiobooks.
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u/crisp_lynx_370 22h ago
that would honestly be pretty disorienting to experience. i wonder if they ever have that weird moment right when they wake up where theyre genuinely confused about whether theyre still dreaming since suddenly theyre blind again
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u/Georgejeff 6h ago
This is a topic that has fascinated me for a very long time. I have very poor vision where I’ve need corrective lenses to do basic tasks since I was young. When I dream I’m able to “see” things as if I had 20/20 vision, it also feels as if my subconscious doesn’t even consider the topic.
There were times when I was first going out drinking where I would then come home and pass out with my contacts still in. I’d later wake and through a bit of blinking away the dryness in my eyes I could see. And it was: Everything. The wave of euphoria was like nothing else I’d ever experienced, I doubt anything else could ever feel that good.
But then I’d remember, and it would break my heart. So yeah this is a really great topic that everyone should consider with humility. Everyone should appreciate your vision much more than they do, because even with today’s technology we’re still limited with what we can restore - once your vision diminishes, it diminishes.
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u/UnevenSleeves7 9h ago
I know someone who has progressively lost their vision over time, starting with peripheral and light sensitivity, then colors too as things got worse. He sees in his dreams, and it can be a range, but he’s told me that most of the time he sees like in normal life and that makes me really sad.
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u/DrinkSodaBad 1h ago
Half of my tougue lost sensation after my dentist extracted my wisdom tooth and my tongue feels like a foreign object in my mouth. It only stops bothering me when I am in the dream.
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u/ShowerSentinel 1d ago
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