Another stupid question

[meowth08]

What do/can inborn blind people imagine?

Given that they have not seen anything in the world.
They don't even know how the color red actually looks like.

 

[transistor495]

They imagine a different world based on their 'touch experience', should be a kind of three dimensional dark world only

Just sit in complete dark for sometime and touch experience objects around you, you can visualize something close to that ;-)

 

[BioniC187]

I've always wondered this. But to an extent, i think its possible for them to know what color is.
Like in their minds they imagined the color red. but they don't know it is actually called red.
For example, some people are gifted to taste or hear color. When they close their eyes, their brain creates a color based on the taste or sound that they receive.
So it may be possible to know color in general

 

[rjs9163]

The blind people have their other senses like touch and brain working faster than the normal individual though they do not have eyes to see the color they can still make mental images of the color as Bionic said and can identify the color.

 

[jpanhalt]

@meowth88

Visual perception by blind people has been an active area of research for many years. It would be a mistake to lump all causes and extents of blindness together in a single answer.

The answer to your question depends depends on some definitions. First, being born blind is also called congenital blindness. If you want to do some reading on that yourself, that would be a better search term.

Second, you need to define what you mean by blindness. The term is applied to people who are "legally" blind to those who lack even the perception of light.

Finally, one form of congenital blindness is cortical blindness. Those individuals have anatomically normal eyes, but the defect(s) are in the visual cortex. Is that what you mean by your question?

The principal children's hospital associated with the University of Pennsylvania is often referred to by its acronym, CHOP (Children's Hospital of the Uni. Pennsylvania). That university has been a leader in gene therapy. Here is a feel good article from CHOP on treatment of a specific type of blindness that should brighten your day:

https://www.chop.edu/news/children-with-congenital-blindness-can-see-after-gene-therapy.html

If you will better define your question, I will try to find some research articles on the subject.

John

 

[atferrari]

In the orginal movie about Hellen Keller there is a moment when a reference to perceiving colors in a special way is made, IIRC. Watched it more than 30 (40?) years ago