Non-rem dreams generally involve more mental thought than visual images so if we dream of a person we don't tend to see their faces clearly. Some REM dreams, which are usually longer and more bizarre, with visual images and sometimes complete narratives usually contain clearer images including the faces of persons.
First, our dreams are typically not vivid enough to distinguish the individual facial or body features that would be required to get a precise image of a dream person.
Faceless people in dreams symbolize loss of identity, or inability to accept someone the way they are, or one's desire to deepen one's knowledge of one's own personality or identity of others is important to oneself.
In my dreams, the people's faces are too blurry to identify them. Why is this? This is based on depth of the dream as well as ability to access certain types of memory as well as personal blocks that may hinder this access. In a conscious state we are used to information coming into our brain.
Still, in these instances you're not seeing yourself from an omniscient point of view; you're still in your body and having a first-person view of your dream world. Our best understanding is that you can't see yourself in your dreams because you're living your dreams out.
If you can't see yourself in the mirror, it suggests that you might be struggling with your sense of identity. You might be going through a big change or in a situation that involves you conforming to the beliefs of others.
It helps us prepare for events that can cause stress in our lives. And interestingly, we mostly dream about things that have been relevant for ages, since the time of our ancestors. And with mobile phones being a more recent development, we don't see it in our dreams.
It may seem that way, but it is impossible. It is believed that the human brain is incapable of “creating” a new face. Every person you dream of has been someone you have either known personally or merely came across looking through your friend's Facebook photos.
Some dreams are really weird. Even the really weird dreams may just be part of the brain's process of elimination-approach to problem solving, according to Stickgold. A lot of memory processing happens during sleep, he says. The brain is filing away new memories, deciding which ones to store and which ones not to.
Some of the oddities of dreams may be a manifestation of what happens when the brain makes metaphorical connections as we sleep. In waking life, we think in metaphors, knowing how to interpret them as metaphors. But when we think in metaphors during REM sleep, the brain can interpret those metaphors literally.
The answer isn't a simple yes or no. Some blind people see full visual scenes while they dream, like sighted people do. Others see some visual images but not robust scenes. Others yet do not have a visual component to their dreams at all, although some researchers debate the degree to which this is true.
While people blind since birth do indeed dream in visual images, they do it less often and less intensely than sighted people. Instead, they dream more often and more intensely in sounds, smells, and touch sensations.
In dreams, most things (and people) are symbols for certain feelings, relationships, or situations from waking life. That said, appearing in someone's dream could say less about you and more about the feelings or qualities that the dreamer associates with you.
Not only can people you've never met appear in your dreams, but it's often not as innocuous as it may seem. "When we dream about people we've never met, they could be a placeholder for someone we do not want to see, for whatever reason," Jeffrey notes.
Many people have had aphantasia since birth, but others have acquired it following a brain injury, or sometimes after periods of depression or psychosis. Some individuals don't dream in images, like Zeman's first patient, but others can, even though they are unable to visualise while they're awake.
Charcot–Wilbrand syndrome (CWS) describes dream loss following focal brain damage specifically characterised by visual agnosia and loss of ability to mentally recall or "revisualize" images.
Although some theorists have suggested that pain sensations cannot be part of the dreaming world, research has shown that pain sensations occur in about 1% of the dreams in healthy persons and in about 30% of patients with acute, severe pain.
tl;dr. Vivid dreams are dreams that feel like they're happening IRL. They can be good dreams (even sex dreams!) or nightmares. Sometimes they just happen, but other times they're caused by stress, anxiety, sleep disorders, medications, or pregnancy.
Sometimes, dreams seem so real and vivid, but how can we explain why our dreams feel so vivid and realistic? There are several factors that can contribute to this phenomenon, including being active in REM sleep, hormones and neurotransmitters, stress, anxiety levels, age and sleeping cycles.
Deep inside the temporal lobe of the brain, the hippocampus has a central role in our ability to remember, imagine and dream.
At times, dreams may occur during other stages of sleep. However, these dreams tend to be much less vivid or memorable. The length of a dream can vary; they may last for a few seconds, or approximately 20–30 minutes. People are more likely to remember the dream if they are awakened during the REM phase.
Such feats of dream manipulation may not seem possible to the same extent in our real lives, but they are not altogether absent. In fact, a number of people are able to experience something called lucid dreaming, and some of them are even able to control certain elements of their nightly dreams.
There is something in your life - either a person or a life situation - that is preventing you from speaking up, from seeking help, or generally limiting your options and abilities. It might in your best interests to examine your situation to understand who or what might be causing such debilitation.
There's a lot that experts don't know about why people dream and where dreams come from. However, the prevailing theory is that dreaming helps you consolidate and analyze memories (like skills and habits) and likely serves as a “rehearsal” for various situations and challenges that one faces during the daytime.
Even though you may “see” a text in a dream, it's unlikely for it to actually be written in a language you know or even to exist at all. The things we think we read in our dreams are actually just our own thoughts projected in your subconsciousness, so sadly, you can't read in dreams.