It's a question that is often asked to deaf people. For late-deafened people like me, people often ask if our dreams stopped featuring sound after we lost our hearing. And, if so, did the sound return to our dreams after we got cochlear implants.
When I became totally deaf, my own dreams stopped featuring sound. Did sound return to my dreams after I got cochlear implants? No. At least I don’t think so. Thing is, with 100% silence at night, you do tend to sleep pretty deeply. I only occasionally remember my dreams, and sure enough, they are all silent.
Except for the last nine weeks …
The difference? I’ve been wearing an alternating processor each night, thus giving my brain access to sound.
My dreams feature sound once more. I seem to constantly be having conversations with people in my dreams, or listening to environmental sounds. It could just be the broken sleep at the moment that’s making them more vivid, but I believe the presence of sound makes my dreams easier to recall at the moment also.
Something for the neuroscientists amongst us to ponder perhaps ...
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That's really interesting! Maybe dreams really are based on small inputs from the outside world. I actually could not tell you right now if my dreams have sound or not, I mostly remember them as very visual things, but I could be just not remembering the sound part, or not noticing...
ReplyDeleteYeah it's hard for me to confirm a positive correlation as well, for the same reason. Can only really say for certain that they definitely feature sound now - mainly conversations with people. Might have a chance to explore this a bit more, down the track!
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