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?
I don’t remember my dreams very well in general, so I don’t remember hearing sound in them either but I’m pretty sure I can hear sound. Somehow I’m able to talk with people in my dreams, after all. When it comes to smell, I have no idea, I don’t remember smelling anything in my dreams at all.
I think hearing and smell might just be things we simply don’t remember well from dreams. We get the vast majority of information from what we see, so that’s the first thing we’d remember. The only times I remember feeling something in dreams is when I got stabbed with needles, shot and that one time I dreamed that I smoked when I was a kid (even though I’ve never done that before). The reason I remember those is just that they left an impression of some sort. With hearing or smell, I think it just doesn’t leave an impression or is special in any way, so we simply don’t remember it.
Does this mean no one speaks in your dreams?
I don’t recall a dream conversation! I will add that I’m not particularly in touch with my dreams (I know some people keep a journal and such). None of the handful of ones I can recall include speaking though.
Sound, definitely at times. More commonly when outside sounds (traffic, construction, etc) get incorporated into my dream. I feel like sometimes I experience knowledge of sound in my dreams (responding to things that would require hearing it in IRL, like speaking) but don’t actually remember hearing anything, because dream logic.
Smell is more rare in my dreams, and I don’t think I’ve ever experienced any very lovely smells in my dreams. But I have smelled a horrible rotting smell in my dreams before.
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.
I rarely remember my dreams, like very rarely. But I’m pretty sure there is sound in them because there’s a weird thing happening to me: I don’t dream exclusively in my native language, the rare occasions in which I remember a dream, I can tell in which language people were speaking. And I can recall the voices and the sounds happening in them.
All of my senses are as functional in dreams as they are awake.
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.
Yes, smell and sound.
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.
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
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’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.
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
It is IMPOSSIBLE to feel smells while sleeping! This is human nature and the reason why people die if there is a fire in a room while they are sleeping. Learn biology at school… though. A biological fact, if you will.
