When Jerry Berrier dreams, he hears and touches and smells and talks, but he doesn’t see. Blind since birth, he rarely remembers his dreams, however, because his sleep has been so poor. Though physicians haven’t given him a formal diagnosis, scientists believe he suffers from a rare condition called non-24 sleep-wake disorder, or “non-24.” Steven Lockley, HMS associate professor of medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, is one of the lead researchers in an ongoing clinical trial investigating sleep disorders in the blind.
