What exactly happens when someone experiences Deja Vu?

Question

is it like a lapse in their memory that makes them think they've relived the moment before? very weird, but awesome...

Answer 1

I have heard it explained as the two sides of your brain not processing the experience at exactly the same speed, one ever so slightly behind the other, making it seen as if you've expereinced it twice.

Answer 2

It is not a lapse in memory. That would be forgetting and remembering. Deja Vu is a strange feeling that you have been somewhere or done something before. You know that you haven't but, it some how seems and feels familiar. Science will never be able to explain what can't be explained. Especially when normal people that don't have a mental disability have experienced it at one time or another. Don't try to figure it out, just go with it!! :-)

Answer 3

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. The term was created by a French psychic researcher, Emile Boirac (1851-1917) in his book L' Avenir des Sciences Psychiques, which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate French concentrator at the University of Chicago. ...



The term déjà vu is French and means, literally, "already seen." Those who have experienced the feeling describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that shouldn't be familiar at all. Say, for example, you are traveling to England for the first time. You are touring a cathedral, and suddenly it seems as if you have been in that very spot before. Or maybe you are having dinner with a group of friends, discussing some current political topic, and you have the feeling that you've already experienced this very thing -- same friends, same dinner, same topic.
Related terms

Paramnesia - a disorder of memory: a) condition in which the proper meaning of words cannot be remembered; b) the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time -- called also déjà vu
Jamais vu - a disorder of memory characterized by the illusion that the familiar is being encountered for the first time

Source: Merriam Webster Medical Dictionary


The phenomenon is rather complex, and there are many different theories as to why déjà vu happens. Swiss scholar Arthur Funkhouser suggests that there are several "déjà experiences" and asserts that in order to better study the phenomenon, the nuances between the experiences need to be noted. In the examples mentioned above, Funkhouser would describe the first incidence as déjà visité ("already visited") and the second as déjà vecu ("already experienced or lived through").

As much as 70 percent of the population reports having experienced some form of déjà vu. A higher number of incidents occurs in people 15 to 25 years old than in any other age group.

Déjà vu has been firmly associated with temporal-lobe epilepsy. Reportedly, déjà vu can occur just prior to a temporal-lobe epileptic attack. People suffering an epileptic seizure of this kind can experience déjà vu during the actual seizure activity or in the moments between convulsions.

Since déjà vu occurs in individuals with and without a medical condition, there is much speculation as to how and why this phenomenon happens. Several psychoanalysts attribute déjà vu to simple fantasy or wish fulfillment, while some psychiatrists ascribe it to a mismatching in the brain that causes the brain to mistake the present for the past. Many parapsychologists believe it is related to a past-life experience. Obviously, there is more investigation to be done.

Here are some interesting links:

Skeptic's Dictionay: Deja Vu
Time Magazine: Been There Done That
How Time Works
How Time Travel Will Work
How Your Brain Works

Answer 4

Deja vu is having the feeling that you've experienced the situation you're presently in before or you've been to a place before but can't remember when how or what. What exactly that means hasn't been determined. Some think(have to believe in reincarnation for this to be possible) that its a memory from a past life, some think that a duplicate of us exists on another plane of reality and the memory is a instant of a glimpse into that other reality plane of existence and so on and so on for am sure there are other theories. I think that because so much is stored in our brain-sounds,smells,experiences, all that is seen,heard,tasted and so on through our senses and sll the impressions of other peoples' real and fictional that we are exposed to-books,TV,movies and so on and what we are told by other people -all we are exposed to since day1 is stored in the brain. Once in a while something jars a memory recall -either a smell,sound,or the environment itself that makes it familiar to us but try as we want we can't recall. More than likely haven't been there but just a memory connection, a association with.

Answer 5

Just like light bending by large massive planets and sound echos
across valleys, so do memory cells cause events and places to seem familiar at times and like a scratched record the memories replay or pop up again making one feel like it has happened again.

Some people can have foreshadowing dreams and the subconcious mind puts them away untill a very similar moment happens causing the subconcious to flash back and make the connection, then the subconcious dream crosses into concious and we seem like re-living the moment but it was just a premenition or a memory echo.

deja_vu A noun 1 deja vu
the experience of thinking that a new situation had occurred before
Main Entry: dé·jà vu
Pronunciation: "dA-"zhä-'vü, -'v[ue]
Function: noun
Etymology: French, adjective, literally, already seen
1 a : the illusion of remembering scenes and events when experienced for the first time b : a feeling that one has seen or heard something before
2 : something overly or unpleasantly familiar

Answer 6

I get deja vu a lot. Sometimes I can be at lunch with some friends of mine and then I get a picture in my mind (that lasts for a very small amount of time) and I see something that I dont remember doing before. Like, I saw that I would be at the mall and I'd see somebody looking at the clothes or shoes in my same area. Then a day or two later, I find myself doing what I saw. It's weird and not only do i THINK I've relived something. I FEEL in my heart as I have. I'm not a physco, just a person who gets images of stuff in their head occasionally.

Answer 7

I just had a talk about this the other day. Deja Vu is NO coincidence. You know the dreams you can't remember, or don't know you had, Deja Vu is kinda like a predicted situation. My Grandmother had a dream when she was 19 and then only 1 or 2 times after that, about a big white house, like a plantation home. Well when she was 45, she moved to Alabama and saw the exact same house.

Answer 8

Really it is just a glitch in the matrix. Seriously it happens when something familiar has come into your life. My experience has been crazy with it for the last year and a half. Places, people, and a certain school I have attended all have been apart of my experience. It can be frightening. It really is all emotions rolled into one. I wouldn't say a lapse in memory. It is life's or whatever you believe telling you. You are right where you need to be. No matter the situation. I'm not saying full on psychic power anything. Just accept it and move on. Happens to a lot of people. Learn from it and grow.

Answer 9

Deja Vu is the art of having a past life memory experience and /or a dream come true experience.

You may walk into a house and have the realization that you have been there before. You may meet a person and know that you have met them before.

You may of dreamed that you were doing something or something was going to happen and then realize that you knew about it before it happened.

Deja vu is the experience of familiar surroundings, events and people. You meet a person and know you know them from somewhere or met them before. That is deja vu.

You go to another country, buidling ect. and know you have been there before that is deja vu.

You have a conversation with a person and realize you had it before ( in a dream) that is deja vu.

Hope that helps you some.

Answer 10

Its this moment in time when you feel that exactly the same thing had happened before, be it that you truly have or you actually haven't. There is this one theory whereby it claims that your spirit roamed lifts out of your boy when you're sleeping and go forward in time or even backwards. You know that feeling you have when you wake up feeling like you are on your way to falling off some place high? Well this theory claims that is the experience whereby your spirit comes back into your body. And the deja vu is felt because you (or rather your spirit) had wandered in the future and you feel that its very similar.
I have had MANY of these before. There was this one time I went hiking for the very first time in Malaysia.. I had NEVER been there before but when I reached on top of the mountain and saw the view, I had actually heard and saw a Golden Retriever coming to my left. And I felt uncannily like I've seen this but yet I've NEVER been up there before... Strange eh?

Answer 11

I'm not sure if my interpretation of Deja Vu is the same as yours, but for me when it happens, I for a fraction of a second know what's going to happen before it does. Most of the time it's almost instant where as you don't have time to react to what is going on, but a few times in my life I've been able to know what was going to happen a few seconds before hand. That was really weird! When I've had normal Deja Vu, my brain interprets it as having had a dream some time in the past and remembering it just before the event happens.