What is Deja-vu ??

Question

I think this is the "six sense" as I used to have a lot of them when I was younger, and still have them to this day!

My feelings on this is that you know when your having one, cos everything seems to slow down a fraction, and you know exactly what happens next in a particular moment of a sequence of events...

Answer 1

Wow, I could have sworn you already asked this question.

Odors are the strongest creators of memory. It's said that deja vu is just smelling something that's really familiar, and the brain interprets this to be that the thing you are experiencing is familiar.

Answer 2

Here is a hypothetical example of Deja Vu, assuming that you are not an Eskimo! On your first trip EVER to some desolate village in northern Alaska, you are invited into an igloo. The moment you are inside, and see everything, you suddenly feel that you "already knew" where everything was. You obviously could not have known, but you have an instantaneous sensation that you "must have already been there" even though you know that was impossible.
Here is another potential example of what an actual deja vu might be. You are driving cross-country, and have never been to Utah before. You stop for gas, and need to use their restroom. As you enter, you find a full-size fireplace INSIDE THE BATHROOM! Now, no one expects to see a fireplace inside a public bathroom, so it would be an experience that you probably never experienced in any OTHER bathroom! And you had certainly never been to THIS one. And yet, you have the sensation that you had "been there before". THAT would be a Deja vu. Notice that you did not "predict" seeing anything unusual, and that you only had the Deja vu sensation AFTER actually seeing it. And that you could not possibly convince anyone that you had previously experienced that, because any listener would insist it was impossible.
In order for it to be a credible Deja vu experience, it needs to be some experience that is clearly different from any forgotten memory you might have had, which generally means something truly surprising. Also, since, by definition, there can be no external confirmation of a Deja vu experience, no one else could possible know and there are no actual evidence, it turns out that "credible" Deja vu experiences have only been believed when the witness had a character that was beyond any question. If that person had EVER been known to have told a lie, or even bent the truth, it is likely that no one would believe any claim of a Deja vu experience!
Please note that this is distinctly different from when you go up to a vending machine and you somehow "know" that a pop can will get jammed or will be dented or something (which is probably Precognition). Also note that ANY experience that involves more than a fraction of a second cannot be Deja Vu (and it likely to be Precognition or Clairvoyance).

Answer 3

What is Deja-vu ??
I think this is the "six sense" as I used to have a lot of them when I was younger, and still have them to this day!

My feelings on this is that you know when your having one, cos everything seems to slow down a fraction, and you know exactly what happens next in a particular moment of a sequence of events...

Answer 4

About the 'fireplace in the bathroom'. At some time in the past, perhaps there stood an old cabin in it's place with a cozy fireplace where the modern bathroom is now located. When you walk in the modern bathroom and suddenly in your mind see not a toilet but a fireplace, perhaps you are a 'time traveler' and have stepped back into another dimension briefly, to a time long ago when you were a cold hungry traveler and stopped at the cabin to rest. If you think, I know I have been here before, and have the distinct feeling for a second or two that you have, then I would say that would be termed 'deja vu'.

Answer 5

Here's a very, very short scientific answer:

When an event enters your brain it goes to two different places to be stored as a memory. One location is for short-term, the other for long-term memory storage. Once in a while an error occurs and the event goes to the long-term storage first, so when the SAME event get shunted from the short-term storage it discovers that same event already there. So we end up feeling like "this is so odd! I know this has happened before!" No it hasn't, it just seems like it has. And that friends and neighbors is Deja-Vu.

It does sort of take the fun out of it though, doesn't it??

Answer 6

Deju -vu is the sense that you've experienced the exact same thing that you are experiencing now, before. I've read that it's been suggested that sometimes there is just the minutest delay longer than usual between what we see and our brain's interpreting it giving us the sense that we've experienced it before.

Answer 7

The term déjà vu (French: "already seen", also called paramnesia) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously.

Answer 8

the reenactment of a former period in time that you personally have experienced. this includes all relating sounds, scents, emotions etc. you know precisely what is about to happen in the next few nano seconds. you slow down and experience this for as long as is needed.

Answer 9

French word deja –now and vu-see but the meaning you've seen it somewhere else.

http://www.yepcool.com/page17.html

Answer 10

it's when you get that weird feeling that the moment you're in has happened before. Like you repeated it. I get them all the time and they still freak me out to this day