Talk About A Deja Vu Moment!

So have you ever had that feeling before like you have been somewhere before, even though you definitely haven’t? Or you simply feel a sense of similarity in a situation, but can’t explain it? Most people have, but write it off to “just something strange” and don’t give it a second thought. But what they didn’t know was that there are actual sciences behind this, even though it is a bit of a “cloudy subject”.

Déjà vu was first used in the writings of a French psychic researcher named Emile Boirac, in his book “L’Avenir des Sciences Psychiques” (meaning “The Future of Psychic Sciebces”). However, he never studied this phenomenon in depth, and it was actually a man named Sigmund Freud who really studid this, and theorized “that these experiences resulted from repressed desires or memories related to a stressful event that people could no longer access as regular memory”, which is called “Paramnesia”.(Info from http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/extrasensory-perceptions/deja-vu2.htm.) Many scientists simply say that this is simply a mental malfunction. Scientists have also credited déjà vu to side effects of certain drugs, such as amantadine (used for the flu or treatment of Parkinson’s Disease) or phenylpropanolamine (used as a decongestant for allergies or the common cold).

There have also been studies of what déjà vu means in terms of brain function. Scientists credit this to the fact that your brain may be causing this for several varying reasons. One theory is that it is a malfunction from the brain’s “continuous attempt to create whole sensical pictures out of very small pieces of information”. Many don’t know how powerful the brain is in terms of how just a miniscule experience (ex. Smell, touch, or sound) that will bring up a library of past experiences, which could ultimately lead to an apparent déjà vu experience.

Another theory says that there are actually errors in the brain in the perceptive and cognitive process. “Sensory information is rerouted on its way to memory storage and, so, is not immediately perceived. This short delay causes the sensation of experiencing and remembering something at the same time, a very unsetting feeling”. (info from http://serendip.brynmawr.edu/exchange/node/1682.)

Interestingly, there are really three different kinds of déjà vu, which makes you realize how much this has actually been studied without our knowledge! They are: Deja Senti, Deja Vecu, and Deja Visite.

Deja Senti deals with the feeling one gets when they feel something presently that they felt very similarly in the past, or something simply “already felt”.

Deja Vecu is a feeling that something happening currently that is identical to an event in the past, and a “strange idea about what is going to happen next”.

Lastly, Deja Visite has to do with feeling like you have already been to or in a place that you definitely have never been before, or where you know a lot about the geography of a place that you have never actually been to, which has been known to happen in some cases! (see first link for more info from this source).

There are, of course, other perspectives on what triggers déjà vu, such as the general idea that spiritualists have. Spiritualists tend to think that déjà vu can be credited to past lives and reincarnation. This meaning that people have déjà vu moments because, in a past life, they went to the place, or had the experience that they are then having within a new life and body. This, obviously, is very hard to explain, or study, but is still an interesting concept!

Overall, there are tons of varying ideas about what causes déjà vu, and is always an uncommon, yet intriguing experience when it happens to us! Who knows, maybe we were someone completely different in another life? Maybe even someone famous! At least, it’s fun to think about!