Can anybody give me a scientific explaination of Deja Vu?

Question

I am a natural sceptic on most matters. However, I often get very strong feelings of Deja Vu, as if I live one entire day over exaclly as it occurs.

Answer 1

Various studies indicate that 50 to 90 percent of us can recall having had at least one such déjà vu incident in our lives. We experience a vague sense of having encountered a situation before, identical in every detail, even though we can't say when the first event took place. Usually the sensation lasts only a few seconds. Teens and young adults stumble on the dreamlike state more often than older adults, yet people of all ages experience déjà vu, especially when they are either fatigued or overly aware because of stress. A few people sense the inverse of déjà vu, called jamais vu. When they encounter a familiar person or place, they nonetheless insist they have never seen the individual or scene before.


The term "déjà vu"--French for "seen already"--may have first been used in 1876 by French physician Émile Boirac. For much of the 20th century, psychiatrists espoused a Freudian-based explanation of déjà vu--that it is an attempt to recall suppressed memories. This "paramnesia" theory suggests that the original event was somehow linked to distress and was being suppressed from conscious recognition, no longer accessible to memory. Therefore, a similar occurrence later could not elicit clear recall yet would somehow "remind" the ego of the original event, creating an uneasy familiarity.
Many who have experienced déjà vu share the conviction that the phenomenon must arise from some mystical power or as a sign of a past life and reincarnation. They reason that because logical thought and clear perception reign immediately before and after an episode, some paranormal force must be the only plausible explanation.

Scientists, unsatisfied with such conjecture, have long sought clues about the physical causes behind déjà vu, but investigation has proved elusive, because déjà vu never announces itself in advance. Scientists have been forced to rely mostly on the recollections of test subjects. But enough accounts have been examined to allow experts to start defining what déjà vu is and why it arises.

Not Hallucination
One place to start is to distinguish déjà vu from other unusual perceptual experiences. The scenes are not hallucinations, for example, which involve heightened awareness of visual, auditory or other sensations triggered by internal brain imbalances, whether from mental illness or narcotics such as LSD. Fausse reconnaissance--"false recognition" or "false memory"--is not the same either; this condition often appears during a phase of schizophrenia and can drag on for hours.
Patients who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy also have experiences that resemble déjà vu. For example, a young male patient in Japan was convinced that he was constantly reliving several years of his life and marriage. Desperate to escape the cycle, he repeatedly tried to commit suicide. But this phenomenon differs from déjà vu in a distinct way: a person with temporal lobe epilepsy firmly believes his experience is identical to a past situation, whereas during déjà vu a person quickly recognizes it as illusionary and unreasonable.

Answer 2

Scientific research on the phenomenon of deja vu has shown that it is not really based on anything in the physical world. It feels real, as if you are remembering something, although you know this experience is new. Actually, what is happening is that there's been the equivalent of an electrical short in your brain. A tiny connection was either made or failed to be made between neurons. So, people who have epilepsy, which is a physical problem something like an electrical storm in their brains, have the feeling of deja vu very often. It's because of the misfiring of the neurons, though, nothing psychic or supernatural.

Answer 3

In recent years, déjà vu has been subjected to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. The most likely candidate for explanation, according to scientists in these fields, is that déjà vu is not an act of "precognition" or "prophecy" but is actually an anomaly of memory; it is the impression that an experience is "being recalled" which is false. This is substantiated to an extent by the fact that in most cases the sense of "recollection" at the time is strong, but any circumstances of the "previous" experience (when, where and how the earlier experience occurred) are quite uncertain. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the "unsettling" experience of déjà vu itself, but little to no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstances they were "remembering" when they had the déjà vu experience, and in particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the present) and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past).

Answer 4

The brain is composed of millions of neurons which serve to send messages across. As new information comes to brain it is stored temperarily but if the person revises the new informatio/image etc in his mind it gets permenant and stored in the Cortex remembered by the p[erson forever. Something which you see in your dreams does not save on the cortex but when you see something similar to that is recalled to you ...this is what they call deja vu.

Answer 5

I have deja vu a lot also. I have no idea why it happens. Its the weirdest thing, I hope you find an answer I'd like to know too!

Answer 6

Maybe they are un-remembered dreams that coincide with the moment.

Answer 7

its a very common feeling so dont worry. i think i would be more scared if it didnt happen

Answer 8

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