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.
Same and also it makes perfect sense in dream but after waking up it is clearly wrong like equations won’t be balanced or units will be completely wrong.
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.
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.
All of my senses are as functional in dreams as they are awake.
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.
It’s different for different people. This is a “Do you have an internal monologue?” question.
That’s why I asked, wanted to hear people’s varied experiences
Yes for sound. But the times I remember, the sound usually is something real that was integrated in the dream.
I don’t smell but there is sound and feeling, and the visual experience is generally very realistic like if I were going about my day to day life, I can imagine fine but the visualizations in my dreams are often like ray tracing on ultra graphics. One that especially comes to mind, I dreamt I was in a dog fight and doing a bombing run in a space ship, and I looked behind me and watched each bomb explode in vivid detail one after the other. It was like better detail than in a movie in a way.
No smell in dreams for myself but yes sounds, although if being honest most the times the sounds are from voices ( not always).
Visuals are always there, and I don’t say sight because I sometimes see my dreams in 3rd person.
I’ve experienced touch but it’s selective, often more some kind of proprioception while I fall, fly, swim etc.
I’ve tasted things in dreams though, very few times but it’s there.
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.
