[Jason]

Jason  asked the Naked Scientists:
   
I haven't finished the latest show about fusion and dreaming but I wondered if anyone has hypothesized that black and white dreaming is a temporary side effect of black and white tv. That is to say that humans by virtue of seeing in color naturally dream in colour.

That might explain your older blind friends dreaming in colour; they weren't exposed to tv of any kind as children. One might suggest that those in developing countries might be surveyed to find of they, having been exposed to no tv, dream in color. We might find not that colour dreams are associated with colour tv but that black and white dreaming is a phenomenon found only in those exposed to black and white tv as kids.

Jason

What do you think?

[lyner]

You'd have to ask people who were adults in the 1940s if they dreamed in B/W, i.e. not having been influenced by TV. but I guess photographs would also contribute to memories and they have been around in B/W for much longer.

A lot of our well established memories are, in fact, false / distorted by later input, including images seen after events so I guess your hypothesis makes sense.

[exton]

I don't know if i buy it. Even if you watch black and white television, *most* of your time is still spent seeing real life in full color. Unless there's something particularly special about the activity of watching television - and until someone suggests something plausible and specific, i shall assume that there isn't - watching B&W tv shouldn't produce consistently B&W dreams.

[tangoblue]

strangely enough we had this conversation in physics a while back.  It went on for ages but the really short answer is NO.

[techmind]

I'm sure we've had similar threads before. I think the hypothesis is rubbish.
Other hypotheses you hear include that we only ever dream in black and white.

Could you actually say with confidence whether the last dream you had was colour or b/w?
Often I couldn't. It may be irrelevant. But occasionally I have dreams where the colours are particularly striking and make a deep impression on me - so I know I dream in colour.

I bet the origin is something to so with someone, once, thinking of dreams as being "like a movie in their head". Pah!

Dreams are substantially built around experience, albeit with some weird distortions of reality and maybe some fantasy thrown in.