SAEDNEWS: In most cases, “blindness” does not mean that a person cannot see at all. A totally blind person is someone who cannot see anything. However, a legally blind person is someone who suffers from severe visual impairment.
According to Saednews, In most cases, “blindness” does not mean a person cannot see anything at all. Total blindness refers to someone who sees nothing. Legal blindness, however, describes individuals with severe visual impairment. They may still have some vision, but it is extremely limited. People affected by conditions such as glaucoma, cataracts, and diabetes-related eye damage often fall into this category. This article focuses on individuals who are completely blind in one or both eyes.
“What do you see?” This is a question blind people often get tired of answering. Their answer is: “nothing.” But this “nothing” is not black or any kind of visual darkness—it is literally the absence of visual experience.
Explaining this to a sighted person is like trying to explain color to someone who has been blind since birth. Just as a blind person cannot truly understand color, a sighted person cannot fully grasp what “nothing” looks like in blindness.
There is, however, a way to approximate this experience. If you close one eye and focus with the other, then close both eyes while maintaining attention, the result is not blackness—it is the absence of any visual input. This is closer to what many blind individuals describe.
In 1923, Clyde Keeler, a student at Howard University, discovered that the pupils of blind mice still constricted when exposed to light. At the time, scientists already knew that humans and mice detect light using two photoreceptors in the retina. However, in blind mice, these receptors were inactive.
Keeler later found that there is a third type of light-sensitive receptor. Unlike retinal receptors, it does not send visual information to the brain’s image-processing centers. Instead, it sends signals to other brain regions not directly involved in vision.
In another study conducted at the University of Montreal, three blind participants were placed in a room while lights were turned on and off. When asked whether the light was on or off, they answered correctly most of the time.
Emotions are often transferred between people through facial expressions and behavior. This is why we smile when others smile or yawn when someone else does. Blind individuals also experience this phenomenon.
Even without sight, they can detect and respond to emotional cues in others.
In one experiment, researcher Marco Tamieto studied two blind individuals who had lost vision in one eye due to damage in the visual cortex—the part of the brain that processes visual information. When shown images of smiling and frowning faces alternately to their seeing and non-seeing eyes, they responded more quickly to images shown to the damaged eye than expected. This suggests that facial emotion recognition can occur even without conscious visual awareness.
Most knowledge about near-death experiences comes from people who report having “died” briefly. Some describe moving through a dark tunnel toward a bright light, while others claim to see familiar or unfamiliar people.
Interestingly, some blind individuals report similar experiences. In some cases, they describe regaining vision after leaving their bodies.
In the 1990s, Dr. Kenneth Ring studied 21 blind individuals who had near-death experiences. Fifteen of them reported visual experiences during this time, three reported seeing nothing, and three were uncertain.
Nightmares are linked to stress and emotional experiences in waking life. Research suggests that people blind from birth experience nightmares four times more frequently than sighted individuals.
A study analyzing the dreams of 50 people—both blind and sighted—found that blind individuals, especially those born blind, experienced more emotionally intense dreams. Their dreams often involved social challenges or accidents.
People blind from birth do not see visual imagery in dreams. Instead, their dreams are built from sound, touch, smell, and taste. Those who became blind later in life may still experience visual dreams, though this tends to fade over time.
At age 29, Milena Channing became blind after a stroke. Later, she discovered something unusual: she could see movement.
She reported seeing flowing water in the shower, steam rising from hot coffee, and her daughter’s hair moving—but not the objects themselves. Researchers believe the stroke may have damaged parts of the brain responsible for recognizing static objects while leaving motion-processing areas intact.
Over time, she found motion easier to perceive and even used a rocking chair to enhance her experience of movement.
Many blind individuals experience Charles Bonnet Syndrome, a condition involving visual hallucinations. Unlike psychiatric hallucinations, people with this syndrome are aware that what they see is not real.
It is most common in those who recently lost vision and typically lasts up to a year and a half, though in some cases it can continue for several years.
While people blind from birth do not experience visual imagery, those who lose vision later in life sometimes report seeing colors or flashes of light.
One individual, Damon Rose, who lost his sight in childhood, reports vivid and constantly changing colors. He describes them as bright, dynamic, and sometimes overwhelming—yet he never perceives darkness itself.
Some blind individuals learn to navigate using echolocation. By producing sounds and listening to how they bounce off objects, they can determine distance, size, and position.
This technique is similar to how bats and dolphins navigate their environments, allowing blind individuals to “see” the world through sound rather than light.
