Is it possible for a deaf person to imagine a song?

[Skhandelwal]

What I am trying to get is that if a person is born deaf, can he come up w/ songs? I know if he reads them, then he can see that they have to have a pattern and in that sense, he can come up w/ them but can he come up w/ songs that he can feel?

 

[Rade]

Visit a home for the deaf and ask them, or, perhaps someone that is deaf and a member of PF will provide feedback.

 

[zoobyshoe]

... but can he come up w/ songs that he can feel?

If a person is completely deaf from birth, then no. They wouldn't have the means to form any good idea of what it is like to percieve sound with the ears at all, much less grasp the special case of music.

 

[KingNothing]

Can we "imagine" sounds that are 30khz in frequency, or imagine what it's like to actually SEE colors out of our normal spectrum? No, we can't - but those are things that some animals CAN perceive, and they are really there.

 

[mattmns]

Interesting question! When I read something I often "hear" myself speaking the words in my head, can/does a deaf person do the same?

 

[edward]

Deaf people can feel the vibrations and the rhythm of music by putting their hands on a speaker.

 

[MeJennifer]

If a person is completely deaf from birth, then no. They wouldn't have the means to form any good idea of what it is like to percieve sound with the ears at all, much less grasp the special case of music.

I would not be too sure about that.
A deaf person can still feel vibrations, probably much better than those who can hear.
While the range is more limited, the principle of a song in the audio spectrum is not essentially different than a song in the spectrum that we can feel. Sure he would not be able to imagine sound as we hear it, but he could certainly imagine higher vibrations.

 

[tribdog]

I read an article recently, don't remember where, but there's no evidence that loss of one sense heightens the others. Blind people don't hear better and deaf people can't feel vibrations better than those who can hear. There is some evidence that someone who is born deaf and blind has a heightened sense of taste, but that is debateable because I totally made that up. The first sentence is true though.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I would not be too sure about that.
A deaf person can still feel vibrations, probably much better than those who can hear.
While the range is more limited, the principle of a song in the audio spectrum is not essentially different than a song in the spectrum that we can feel. Sure he would not be able to imagine sound as we hear it, but he could certainly imagine higher vibrations.

Whatever tingling tactile experience a person has from music it is nothing like hearing it with the ears. I can feel vibrations and there is no way I could ever mentally get from that to an accurate model of the experience of hearing. A faster vibration would still be imagined in terms of the sense of touch. The person has no frame of reference whatever about what it's like to sense air vibrations with the dedicated sense of hearing we have.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

If the person is deaf from birth, and by "imagine a song" you mean that they can imagine the sound, then no, they can't. However they could imagine the vibrations that they feel from the music.

An interesting question, let's say in some alternate universe all humans on that Earth are deaf, or they don't have ears or something. What would they make of sound waves? (lets say they don't have mouths either xD).

 

[Cyrus]

If the person is deaf from birth, and by "imagine a song" you mean that they can imagine the sound, then no, they can't. However they could imagine the vibrations that they feel from the music.

An interesting question, let's say in some alternate universe all humans on that Earth are deaf, or they don't have ears or something. What would they make of sound waves? (lets say they don't have mouths either xD).

Well, what do you make of vibrational waves when you feel them? You probably think something is shaking nearby, not making lovely sound. (something like heavy machinery)

 

[MeJennifer]

Well, what do you make of vibrational waves when you feel them? You probably think something is shaking nearby, not making lovely sound. (something like heavy machinery)

It depends, vibrators, tibetan meditation bowls, gamelan sounds, monastery gongs, taiko drums, reggae music etc, all of those are in part about the vibrations.

 

[tribdog]

of course deaf people can imagine a song and music. It is ridiculous to think they can't. They probably won't be right, but they can still imagine.

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

I think it was tacit in this discussion that it had to be correct.

 

[Cyrus]

of course deaf people can imagine a song and music. It is ridiculous to think they can't. They probably won't be right, but they can still imagine.

How would they imagine something they can't sense. You cant.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I think it was tacit in this discussion that it had to be correct.

I was interpreting the OP to be asking if they could arrive at an experience as emotionally moving to them as music is to us.

...but can he come up w/ songs that he can feel?

I just don't think so. You have to be able to hear the details and nuances: the specific qualities of the instruments and voices, and the layers of harmony. Vibrations on the skin aren't close.

 

[MeJennifer]

A speaker for the deaf:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4377428.stm"

 

[Gelsamel Epsilon]

A speaker for the deaf:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/london/4377428.stm"

What if they're playing in a concert and they stuff up, or go a bit off tune or off tempo >.>; those vibrato things better be good.

 

[tribdog]

How would they imagine something they can't sense. You cant.

extra dimensions, imaginary numbers, zoobyshoe's sense of humor, dark matter. I do it all the time.

 

[Blahness]

What cyrus is saying is that you can't properly emulate the sense of hearing without ever having it.

You can't imagine exactly what the 4th spatial dimension would look like, because you've never seen it.

Zooby's humour is kind of like matter traveling the speed of light, though... It's pointless to try to imagine it. :tounge2:

 

[zoobyshoe]

extra dimensions, imaginary numbers, zoobyshoe's sense of humor, dark matter. I do it all the time.

A zoobie humor speaker for humor-impaired dogs:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/london/437887.stm"

A new device is helping humor-impaired canines to "hear" zoobie jokes through vibrations, 200 years after the technique was used by Beethoven as he lost his sense of humor.

 

[Skhandelwal]

If deaf people can hear bass, they can hear bass based music, by which, they can make up rhythm, by which they can get some examples for songs possible, by which, they might be able to make bass based songs.

 

[Yonoz]

I once saw a dance performance by a deaf ensemble. They would have a guy stamping a steady beat on the floor and they moved like they could imagine the song very well.

 

[zoobyshoe]

If deaf people can hear bass, they can hear bass based music, by which, they can make up rhythm, by which they can get some examples for songs possible, by which, they might be able to make bass based songs.

Can deaf people hear bass?

They can feel bass, when it's loud enough, just like you or I can, as a kind of tingling vibration on the body. Likewise if they put their hand on someone's throat while that person is speaking they can feel the vibrations through sense of touch.

That is all the ability a deaf person has to "feel" music: the same ability you or I have to feel it.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

What does a deaf person experience if they have an auditory hallucination?

 

[zoobyshoe]

What does a deaf person experience if they have an auditory hallucination?

People born deaf don't have auditory hallucinations. Schizophrenic deaf people seem to see or somehow sense disembodied hands signing.

----

If you ever saw the film "At First Sight", based on a true story, you may recall that after the blind guy had the operation to correct his eye problem, he nevertheless couldn't see coherently for a long time because the neurons dedicated to sight hadn't ever been trained to make useful sense of the kinds of patterns they were now percieving.

Likewise a person deaf from birth would not accidently imagine music or speech as we know it. They have no store of neuronal habits to draw upon to do so.

 

[Alkatran]

Wouldn't it depend on why they were death? If they're missing the necessary parts of the brain, then no. But if it's just an ear problem, then it's entirely possible they can imagine (really simple) sounds.

Have they ever put a cochlear implant on someone who was death from birth?

 

[zoobyshoe]

But if it's just an ear problem, then it's entirely possible they can imagine (really simple) sounds.

It's like tribdog said; they can try to imagine what sound must be like but the chance of it coming anywhere close is about nill.

Imagine there is a sense you don't have, called, say, the sense of troob. The exterior organs of troob are the eyebrows. To you eyebrows are ornamental, and maybe they help keep dust out of your eyes, but other people explain to you that they are constantly "troobing" the environment around them with their eyebrows and receive all kinds of information about it that is unavailable from sight, hearing, smell, and touch.

Now, as you grow up you would go through many periods of wondering what it was like to be able to troob. You would often ask people if they could explain it to you in terms of the senses you do have, but, of course, they can't because troobing is as different from the senses you do have as sight is to touch, or any other sense.

Now, they can explain to you that troobing is nothing less than a direct reaction to the Earth's magnetic field, and they can show you a compass to prove it has a magnetic field, but that explains nothing.

Once in a while you meet a more patient person who tries to explain that troobing doesn't provide specific information about direction and location per se, but creates a "depth and separation and resonance" that enriches people's experience of location. "It's roughly, roughly analagous to the different way differences in air moisture make a person feel or the way sound changes when moving from outdoors to inside affects you, except it's much more intense and is triggered by smaller differences in body position. And the experience is such that it's important to people and they would feel much diminished if they lost the ability.

Now, you can take all that and imagine what it might be like to troob, but, really, anything you come up with is about guarranteed to be wrong.

 

[Ivan Seeking]

People born deaf don't have auditory hallucinations.

How can we know this?

 

[zoobyshoe]

How can we know this?

I'm assuming that by "auditory hallucinations" you are referring to the disembodied voices that torment schizophrenics and people in psychotic states. It should be obvious why they couldn't have such an experience.

If, instead, you are talking about what they might experience if the neurons dedicated to processing sound in hearing people were triggered from within by say, a simple partial seizure, then it's safe to say that what they experience wouldn't be anything like the "sound" we know. Those neurons haven't been trained by years of experience to fire in response to signals from the ear. There wouldn't be a set firing pattern in place for them to recreate in exaggerated form. As Monique used to be fond of saying, "Neurons that fire together, wire together," meaning, once a bunch of neurons have been induced to fire in a given sequence they tend to prefer that sequence in the future. We all have billions of billions of little "riffs" like this stored in our brains. A person born completely deaf would have no such "riffs" for sound to be erroneously triggered by any hallucinatory mechanism.

This is why I brought up the blind man who couldn't see properly for a long time after his eyes had been repaired. The problem, casually speaking, was his brain had no vision "riffs" to use to sort things out. Things like shadows completely baffled him.