Faces in dreams - recognition or re-creation?

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Hey dreamers!

I was just reading the thread "i keep dreaming of this girl i never meet." In it there was some talk of whether or not dreams can create new faces, so I thought I'd give the question its own space...

I've heard from a few places that your mind does NOT make up new faces in dreams - that it simply remembers all the faces you have seen over your entire life, so that even though you may think you see someone completely new, they are just a face you don't remember.

But this doesn't make sense to me - I've seen friends (faces I recognize) have their faces distorted or somehow different from how they are in real life. The mind could also take aspects of various faces and put them together into a "new" face... while not completely new & original, it would still be different from any face you would see in the waking world.

That said, I agree that it might not be possible for your mind to COMPLETELY make up a new face...

What do you think?!?!?
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Walking on a dream... how can I explain?

[carriexmd]

I'm not sure what to think about this.

In my dreams, if a familiar person appears, I always recognize it is them, but never by their face. Very very rarely do I actually recall recognizing a familiar person's face-- it is always blurry, distorted, or just missing completely-- yet somehow I always just "know" who it is. I have not read the thread you posted about yet, but I think it's plausible to believe that we don't make up new faces, and what you said;

"The mind could also take aspects of various faces and put them together into a "new" face... while not completely new & original, it would still be different from any face you would see in the waking world."

I completely agree with.

But then I wonder to myself, what happens when you see a face that is non-human? Some creature of a sort, something you definitely have not encountered in waking life. Maybe we get our ideas from movies or TV, but still, those types of faces seem to occur far less in waking life, making it harder to create in dream life.

So basically all I’m saying is hey, I don’t know either But I like the idea of discussing it!

[joethfc]

I think we can randomise different features that we've seen before, allowing virtually infinite outcomes of different appearances.
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La vida es sueño

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