Can your brain create imaginary people when you dream?

[Anonymous]

So lately I've been dreaming of the same guy (someone I've never met before). He has the kindest eyes I've ever seen and always helps me out of a dilemma in my dreams. Like one time I missed my bus and he offered me a ride home and was very easy to talk to. I honestly have a crush on this person I keep dreaming about. Is it possible for the human brain to conjure up someone entirely nonexistent, or have I subconsciously seen this person on the street in passing, on the bus, etc? Please let me know what you think & I read somewhere that if you keep seeing a certain person in your dream that you are getting closer to meeting your soul mate/twin flame? Any insight on that would be greatly appreciated :) Thanks in advance

Updates

+1 y

Thanks for all the responses :) but most of you didn't answer the last part of my question about soul mates & twin flames :)

[Hello_callmeally]

No, your brain can't create a person on its own. It uses faces you've seen before. Doesn't matter if you remember or not, yiur brain uses a lot of them in your dreams without you noticing it. This means you have seen this person before. The people in your dreams that you dont know are people you've for example have seen walking around town, or in a store. Its the same as colors. You can't imagine a new color, thats impossible. It may not seem like it, but you can't think of a new face. So this person is someone you have seen somewhere but probably for such a short time that you can't remember. But your brain can give them personalities. Perhaps you know someone who has the same voice and personality or something?

[FleurBonjour2728]

I read somewhere that your brain can't create faces that you haven't seen before so every person/ face you dream of, you've probably seen before in real life even if you don't know them. You could have seen this person in passing. The face you did not create, but everything else behind this person is totally fictionalized by your subconscious.

[DivaMonae]

Personally I haven't experienced what you're going through but i bet you can relate to this song... Enjoy :)

https://youtu.be/2f1g6qsa05E

[Other_Tommy_Wiseau]

it's said that you can't, but I don't know if that has any validity. i'm not psychologist, but how the hell do you test for that? especially between all the random faces you see directly and indirectly over time in life, it's really hard to believe that your subconscious can retain all those faces. i've lucid dreamed and there have been faces and people that i've seen that i don't recall when i wake up. I don't know if i've seen them in my life. maybe i have seen them, maybe i haven't. maybe i mixed and matched parts of faces. but this is in the same way that i've dreamt about stuff like aliens, spaceships, etc. I don't know where i've seen them, but i sure as hell haven't seen an alien before (or have i?) ;)

[abzence]

One idea is that this person in your dreams is actually an aspect of yourself. You are finding the way back to yourself and discover the kindness and love that you always possessed, but perhaps forgotten.

It's quite possible to create "new" people since you have probably seen thousands of variations of noses, ears, lips, eyes, etc and creating someone out of all these pieces wouldn't be very hard for the brain to do. You've chosen the most appealing aspects and put them together into one person.

[ChromAzonyx108]

Yeah, I believe that's possible. Your brain can create imaginary people but if you look into it you'll probably find that the person is just an amalgamation of people that you already know.

If you take something like a gryphon, for example, it isn't a real creature but it is a combination of a lion and an eagle, both of which do exist. Another example is a centaur, which is just a combination of human and horse.

When you break things down into it's constituent elements you shouldn't find anything new.

[Willy_Cee]

Mine has, but only a handful of times. For some reason the made up person is someone I'm having relations with.

Our maybe my brain does it more often then I realize, I just tend to only remember the made up ones more because for some reason I'm fucking them.

[Chief16]

Nope. Your dreams always occur in familiar places with familiar faces. Since we can only interpret our dreams instead of actually detailing them, we become unreliable narrators. As we express what the dream means not what it actually is. So to answer your question, nope, your brain cannot just dream up an imaginary character. It has to be someone or something you've seen, heard, read or even felt about. All about the senses. This.

[Krillanr]

The brain consolidates information when you sleep, the dreams are due to activity in the brain as different sectors of information activate and deactivate.

Dreams don't last as long as they seem to, usually only seconds or minutes out of the entire night are spent actually dreaming.

[MelParks]

I don't know about the soulmate/twin flame thing but you are correct in that if you're dreaming about a person with very defined features, it's very likely you've seen them before sometime in your life.

[HK3546]

I think I've read somewhere that the mind can't imagine new faces so that would mean you've subconsciously seen them somewhere

[ZionOrtov]

Your brain usually utilizes scenarios and objects that you are already familiar with, otherwise it takes objects and people and alters them or generates new variables to establish new people or objects.

[DiegoO]

Albert Einstein once said, the logic can care you from A to B but imagination will care you everywhere. That we can apply to dreams. Our mind is very powerful, it can create imaginary people, just take as reference someone whit schizophrenia.

[genericname85]

i´ve read some scientific paper that claimed you could not create faces you didn´t already see somewhere. i kind of think we do sometimes see unknown faces in our dreams.

[LastFlowers]

I remember reading somewhere that your brain cannot create new people, and everyone in your dream is someone you've seen before. So I don't think so.

[Mesonfielde]

Yeah, it can; it can piece other people together into a single mold. OR it might just be a face you've seen and a personality you've seen elsewhere.

[Anonymous]

No, the brain can not create imaginary people unless you have actually seen them in real life or in passing, some even believe that people you see in your dreams could be those you have met or knew in a past life, but who really knows.

[Omar5881]

Actually nope the people u see in the dreams u must have seen in rl even if u didn't notice them maybe ur eye glanced them for a milli second but the human mind isn't creative enough to imagine a new human face

[banana5]

your brain can not imagine a face you have seen this person even if its a glance out the corner of your eye

[Memora]

I wish I knew the answer however my theory is maybe we do create a person who looks like a person we have seen in real life just improved.

[YunggRoosterr]

Lmao iv made up girls i n my dream all the time.. sex ferns real too.. hate to wake up

[Anonymous]

No every face in your dreams you have seen before somewhere but you have infact seen them. Brains do not have the capability to create a person

[Halfemtee]

Yaeh i mean mabey but i Doubt it