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 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.
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.
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.
I don’t actively recall smell or taste being a feature so I guess probably not. Every other sense I definitely have, though.
On the general subject of things people say can’t happen in dreams beyond senses, I can also read, feel pain, see color, urinate without doing so in real life, and die.
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.
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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.
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.
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.
I’m sure on everything except smell. I was surprised too.
I’ve recently been trying to train myself to lucid dream frequently. The first thing anyone will tell you is to keep a dream journal, and holy shit does it help. Started journaling them on the 2nd of January, and even just a week later I started having very vivid dreams every night. All senses included; and as of a couple days ago, fairly critical thinking (mental math). I haven’t managed to have a “lucid dream” yet, but I’ll get there.
For the sake of completeness, a lucid dream is a dream in which you’ve become aware that you are dreaming. Whether you can control the dream or feel that it’s vivid is a separate concern.
Pretty cool stuff.
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.
Yes for sound. But the times I remember, the sound usually is something real that was integrated in the dream.
Now I’m thinking about it, “make sense” to not have sound in your dreams. As your eyes are shut down, keeping your ears available to detect danger seems an advantage to be selected. And that fits with my experience where the sounds I can remember were real.
But there are others known examples of sound inside dreams: musicians! Many songs were written in dreams:
- Yesterday (Beatles)
Purple Haze (Jimi Hendrix)[Inspired by a dream, not “composed” in a dream]Sweet Dreams (Are made of this) (Eurythmics)- Devil’s Trill Sonata (Tartini)
Edits: corrections
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.
