The smell of your mom's cooking is in the air, your pet is cuddled up on the sofa, you hear the notification sound on your mobile, and feel the sunlight touching your skin. One popular theory from a neurological perspective is dual processing – in which information is stored and retrieved through different processes in the brain.įor example, you are sitting in your living room reading this article. Around 90 percent of the population has experienced deja vu at some point Image: Terry Papoulias/Zoonar/picture alliance Over the decades, scientists have come up with various theories about why and how it happens. We don't know how to trigger the episodes in a lab," said Spears. "It is difficult to study because it happens spontaneously. It’s also difficult for researchers to reach a conclusion, as deja vu is a difficult phenomenon to reproduce in a laboratory setting. Roderick Spears, associate professor of migraine research and clinical sciences at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island, agrees that there is no solid explanation of why and how deja vu happens. So what our brain has done is literally confused the present with the past," Giordano explained. "And if the speed of those interactions is a bit different, it then feels to us as if we're experiencing the present, as though we remember it. To view this video please enable JavaScript, and consider upgrading to a web browser that supports HTML5 video How our brains control and influence our hands must pass through the thalamus to the brain's cerebral cortex (the outermost layer) for further interpretation and processing. All information such as hearing, taste, touch etc. Giordano suggests the phenomenon could have to do with an area in the middle of the brain called the thalamus. But there's a possibility that these signals could get mixed up." This way, it will be able to essentially plan the future. "Our brain basically works like a time and space machine," Giordano told DW. "It takes everything in our present and relates it to something similar or dissimilar in our past. "Deja vu is literally a person's subjective experience of repeating a particular set of events, activities, thoughts and feelings, even though that has never in reality occurred before," Giordano said.Īround 90 percent of the population has experienced deja vu and the frequency of it decreases as we age.īut do you know why exactly you get this spooky feeling sometimes? A real mystery in science ![]() ![]() "But there is nothing supernatural about it, and it is extremely normal to experience deja vu," said James J Giordano, professor of neurology at Georgetown University in Washington D.C. More recently, Sigmund Freud described this as a "recollection of unconscious fantasy coupled with a desire to improve the present situation." Carl Jung thought it was related to the collective unconscious, while modern Hollywood describes it as a ‘glitch in the matrix'. ![]() In 1876, Emile Boirac, a French philosopher and researcher, coined the term, which means "already seen."īut intellectuals have tried to explain the phenomenon as far back as Plato, who saw it as evidence of past lives. Have you ever moved to a new city, and somehow felt like it's familiar? Or met a person for the first time, but had the sense you’d met them before? Then you can count yourself among those who've experienced deja vu. Wait, have I met you before? Ah! Have I been here before? Also, sorry if you think you've read this before.
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