Clearly my eyes aren’t* open and I cannot take in external visual stimuli in my dreams, however I experience them similar to the visual experience in my minds eye or imagination or whathaveyou. Similarly I feel like I experience something akin to touch or feel (like the occasional flying or falling dream, or the feel of grass or something).
I don’t recall having anything similar to smell or sound in a dream though (except occasionally hearing a real sound while waking up that wasn’t actually part of the dream) What’s your experience?
Yes to both, and I can also read in my dreams as well, which is popularly thought to be impossible. It’s not gibberish either but cohesive headlines in a newspaper or something. I am most likely abnormal in this sense since I also appear to have hyperphantasia, so what applies to me may not extrapolate to the general population!
I can read to, but the text changes each time I read it.
Smell and taste are pretty similar, right? I like eating in my dreams, so I dream about various malls and parties where I eat stuff. Today I dreamt about eating Fufu, fried rice, pizza and more
I’ve had the odd dream where I’ve vividly smelt something putrid, but I’d say every dream I have includes sound. I’ve had a couple of dreams where the world ended suddenly and I remember the almighty rushing noise and the sound of my never-ending sigh. I’ve dreamt a good few times about people I know speaking other languages they wouldn’t normally speak, too.
Can’t experience smell on dreams or IRL and I cannot recall a time where I’ve experienced sounds from around me outside of the dream, so I’m gonna have to say no. Definitely do have sounds in the dream, but they most certainly aren’t related to the real world at all. Touch also isn’t something I can ever recall feeling in a dream, so couldn’t say I’ve had that morph my dreams either.
Though I definitely have had those little dream like thoughts from when you are about to fall asleep and end up jerking your body plenty of times, even a few when I’ve been awake in the middle of the night. Not fun to have when your phone is held in hand and it just suddenly jumps into the air and you know you can’t catch it.
I have never thought about it for smell and sound but I cannot see in my dreams and feel like my eyes are glued shut. Sometimes during a dream I will try really hard to open my eyes and it causes me to wake up. I have aphantasia so it is probably related. I think my dreams are mostly in concepts
Very interesting! What about others sensations like falling or feeling a surface?
As a kid I’d have nightmares about falling off a cliff and definitely remember feeling it. I haven’t had a dream like that in a while though
Yes and in fact my dreams feel more real than my waking life. Don’t get me wrong, I know the difference, but my experiences there are just deeper. Not something I can explain with a few words.
Yes, smell and sound.
All of my senses are as functional in dreams as they are awake.
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A couple nights ago Jeff Jarrett gave me a large freezer sized Ziploc bag full of cocaine in order to help pay my rent.
I opened it up to make sure it was real and sneezed into it, getting all over me and my shirt.
Taste and smell were profound.
I don’t dream much, but I have definitely had sound involved when I do. Never had smell in a dream that I can recall.
I sure do! Just last night I woke up from a dream in which my downstairs neighbors were yelling only to discover they were actually yelling.
In the past I only remembered having dreams about 3-6 times a year and very little what they were about. I only needed 6,5 hours of sleep.
Then I had COVID something broke.
Now I dream almost every night and remember more what they are about. Compared to the previous it’s like whole another reality with all the bells and whistles. Now I need 7,5 hours of sleep.
I’m actually happy with the change.
Are you able to picture things in your imagination normally in your waking hours? For example, if I said picture a ball, how deeply could you describe it? Could you see the colors? Could you see the reflections? What is the material made of?
You mean do I have aphantasia? No. On the contrary. My parents parents tested me as a child, because I was a really introverted, emotionally calm and had trouble with writing. They were afraid that I was on the autism spectrum.
Turns out that I was just a calm kid with severe case of dysgraphic dyslexia with high average IQ. Only thing I was gifted in was spatial perception.
So yes, I can visualuze things in my minds eye and do 3D-sculpting, however I don’t think the reflection are really reflections. Just something I fool myself with. I can do some reflective designing if I focus, but something simple and nowhere in the “raytracing” level.
Dreams however tend to be more on a conceptual level. Even graphically. You just don’t mind because your consciousness level is lowered. When you reminisce your dreams after you’re awake, you automatically reconstruct it and fill the blanks to make it more compatible with your awakened state.
Smell, not that I remember. Sound, all the time. I’ll have conversations or hear people saying things, sometimes in different languages. Sometimes a word comes to mind that seems totally real, but usually it’s not. Some of the more detailed dreams have had storms, sirens, earthquakes (that eerie rumbling they have). Or even music.
I don’t know if I experience smell, if I do I don’t remember it, but sound is very vivid in my dreams. I usually remember the dialogue pretty well as soon as I wake up, and the people in my life sound like themselves even if they’re talking about total nonsense.
Also once I dreamed I was SpongeBob having a stroke so I had to hear everyone in Bikini Bottom speaking what sounded like gibberish to me :( m
Dying @ the spongebob dream (nightmare?)
Given the timing, I think it was inspired by the ending of the soap opera comic Apartment 3-G. The finale involved one of the main girls having some kind of psychotic break, but for whatever reason it coincided with the art style degrading horribly, so it was an incredibly confusing read. People appearing and disappearing from scenes at random, location changing from panel to panel, and everyone drawn so crudely you couldn’t always tell who was who. It was really hard tell when the character was supposed to be confused and when I was the one confused.
I guess the helplessness and horror of trying to follow a soap struck me so much I projected it onto SpongeBob.
