Thread: Black and white dreams

it really depends on the person who experiences it.. The subconcious can play tricks on us... so who knows anything is possible guess

I decided to do some 10-second-research on my own about this, and this seems like a pretty solid theory I found in a link on google, written by a person who was refuting the theory supposedly supported by experts that people dream in black and white:

"In dreams, things which aren't relevant are just UNSPECIFIED, and there are no alarm bells to flag up that something is MISSING. So, when you're flying on a magic carpet, you can't necessarily say which shoes you might have been wearing.

But not being able to tell what shoes you had on does not imply you were barefoot. This is what happens with the COLOUR situation. In a dream, where the colour of something is relevant, you see colour, but where the colour is not relevant, there is NO COLOUR INFORMATION. But that doesn't mean it's in black&white."

I've had dreams where i lived in a b/w slapstic comedy world

First, I must postulate why and how colors are brought into dreaming:

Colors are typically utilised to amplify images within dreams. Every colors has a certain empathy associated with it and certain objects and scenarios in the world are always associated with a certain color (ie. The Red Cross). Thus, when we see certain depictions within our dreams, our memories will immediately impart the colors into the dream because we believe that they should be there. When the colors are empathetic, it is to portray a certain feeling (ie. Red = anger). Also, colors are implemented into dreams by our memories of the colors, they are not received or projected visually, they are simply memories. The best way to elucidate this is to ask this question, "When you remember things you did years ago, do you usually remember them in color?" The answer, typically, is no - unless the color played a significant role in the memory. This is the same case with dreams, as dreams are the manifestation of thoughts and memories (in the psychological aspect...).

If the individual had sight before the age of five, it is possible to have the rare experience of seeing a color or even a visual dream. Otherwise, if the blind individual was born blind - they will not even have visual dreams.

In the research conducted by the University of California, the participants in the study were 15 congenitally and adventitiously blind men and women, ages 24 to 73, with 11 of them between the ages of 44 and 60 (M=46.2; SD=12.5). The ten women and five men in the study were chosen from a larger pool of 16 women and nine men gathered by Hurovitz (1997). They were selected because they contributed at least six recent dream reports that were not labeled as "earlier," "recurrent," or "childhood" dreams over the two-month period they recorded their dreams. In all, they provided 372 dream reports, 236 from the women, 136 from the men.

Participants whom are congenital blind and totally blind claim that 0% of their dreams were visual, and that 52% of their dreams consisted of taste/ smell/touch (gastatory, olfactory, tactile). There is not even a question whether or not they see color because they do not see at all.

What about the colorblind?

Also, I should first postulate that the colorblind are this way because of alterations within their retina - their cone photoreceptors, which are responsible for receiving color from the visual hemispheres. For people whom have alterations within their photoreceptors from birth, it is likely that these individuals mix up certain colors for other colors, that we normally see, ie. seeing blue instead of red (please ignore all philosophical debates on whether or not one color is determinate and blah blah blah.. shut up).

The colorblind are still able to dream in color just as much as any other individual, just their colors will be altered. Of course, if the individual was born without any cone photoreceptors, then they will not dream in color for they have never seen a color. The mind is not capable of spontaneously creating such environments within the dream world becuase dreams work entirely on cognition and recent memories. I have yet to find any experiments on the colorblind, but I will post immediately if I do.

What about the visual cortex of the blind?

In a study at the deparment of anatomy and neurobiology at the University of Washington, subjects took part in functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and were required to generate a verb to nouns. In one experiment, blind subjects read the nouns through Braille (Braille task); in a second study, blind and sighted subjects heard the nouns (auditory task). The principal finding from both studies was that blind people had activation foci in visual cortex that corresponded to visually responsive regions noted previously in sighted subjects (3).

Two-dimensional, flattened views of z-score statistical parameter maps for visual cortex BOLD responses in early and late blind subjects.

In blind subjects, both tasks evoked extensive bilateral excitation in the lateral visual occipital lobes and Brodmann areas of the brain. This ment that when the blind heard a word, it was not only received through the auditory complex but also precipitated excitatory activity throughout the visutopic areas. The results are significantly more active than those of subjects that had vision.

What does this mean? I'll eluciate this very easily:
Your mom screams at you from behind you and you look at her immediately. How you know that she is behind you is the activity of the brain which is drastically increased within the blind as they not only received auditory information, but assimilate a milieu within their mind of their environment. Try picturing what Daredevil see's... only, no vision at all, it is more or less "empathetic". Hopefully that explains it well..

No way, blind people can imagine what vision is like!

This argument is arguable.

Dream about Heliotrophics. You probably can't because it is not real, it is just something I made up while writing this. This is how blind-born individuals perceive vision. Replace heliotrophics with vision.

Can you please tell me what heaven looks like? (Ignoring the argument of it's existance..) Imagine all you like, you don't know what it actually is - same concept applies to blind people and imagining vision.

Also take into consideration that the majority of you reading this thread have no clue how it is like for blind people to dream like - invert that thought, because that is the samething that blind people think of you. Can you dream what a blind person dreams? How can you, if you are not blind and never have been?

Another point (from CT) is imagine what the color tryuipe is like. Don't know what I'm talking about? Can't do it? Exactly.

Furthermore, the meyer's loop (the information line responsible of relaying information received from the lateral geniculate nucleus (LGN) from the retina, to the occipital lobe) of the blind are nearly, and sometimes completely, inactive. If this loop is not utilised within the youth of the blind individuals life-time, the pathway becomes "lazy" and loses strength as the mind see's (no pun intended) that the loop is not necessary and truly gives no information to cortex. This is the reason why several blind people have a "lazy eye" or their eyes are simply not aligned whatsoever. My point in this is that blind individuals with an inactive visual pathway begin to utilise their visual cortex in association with other senses, primarily auditory. (See Reference 3)

References
1 - Dreams of the Blind, Richard C. Wilkerson, Website.
2 - The Dreams of Blind Men and Women, University of California, Website
3 - Visual Cortex Activity in Early and Late Blind People, Journal of Neuroscience, University of Washington, Website
4 - Malach et al., 1995; Sereno et al., 1995; Tootell et al., 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998; DeYoe et al., 1996; Engel et al., 1997; Hadjikhani et al., 1998
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I'm aware of colour in my dreams but it's not like I'm 'seeing' them. I don't think I've ever had an obviously monochrome dream.

I'm guessing it isn't really about seeing though, is it? It's like...a thought, and so we know what colour it is, but...gah...dreams confundulate me.

Originally Posted by Siиdяed

I'm aware of colour in my dreams but it's not like I'm 'seeing' them. I don't think I've ever had an obviously monochrome dream.

I'm guessing it isn't really about seeing though, is it? It's like...a thought, and so we know what colour it is, but...gah...dreams confundulate me.

You pointed it out correctly. You do not receive external stimuli while unconscious - your RAS is salient to these stimuli but utlimately your sensory processing is isolated. Thus, your dreaming is the result of sporadic synaptic firing, essentially, within the cortex. As a result, memories, concepts, personality traits, etc. are illicited to your sensory reception as proper stimuli as it is no longer inhibited by monoamine oxidase inhibitors.
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You filled in my ...gah... perfectly there.

Thank-you.