Deja vu.Could someone please explain how this happens?

Answer 1

Some psychoanalysts have put it down to fantasy or wish fulfilment. As it's so common, this is generally disregarded.
Psychiatrists have attributed it to a temporary glitch in the brain during the processes of perception and cognition. This split-second delay in awareness is said to be responsible for the impression that you are experiencing and remembering an event at the same time.
Many para-psychologists believe it is related to a past-life experience.
Scientists, who are learning more and more about the brain all the time, have come up with some - as yet unproven - explanations. For example, imagine your memory is a hologram: any point in the hologram has enough information to make up the whole picture - you only need a tiny piece. However, the smaller the piece, the fuzzier the picture will be. With your memory, you only need a detail - a phrase or a smell - to bring to mind a remembered scene. That's why you feel you've seen it all before.

Answer 2

You can think of your brain as consisting of nodes of memory or thought connected by lines. The more you experience, the more connections are made.

When you dream, your brain will randomly follow a path of connections, triggering a variety of memory and thoughts.

There is a node in your brain that represents the thought, "I remember this." When you have a deja vu experience, your brain accidently triggers that thought note, telling you that you remember something even when you don't really.

Answer 3

The memory part of your brain is a complex mostly unknown entity.
Some sientists believe the reason de ja vu happens is because of neuro transmitters in the brain taking a differant path to the portion of the brain that records information (memory bank).
i;e, your eyes see something when you go to a familiar place and the signal sent to your brain that tells it where you are is sent via the normal path, but the same signal sometimes travels via a slightly longer neuro transmitter. Thus creating the De ja vu effect, because your brain is now receiving the same signal twice within a millisecond of each other.

Answer 4

One plausible theory I've heard is that it's due to a disconnect between short-term and long-term memory. As I understand it, while you experience something, it is present in short-term memory, and afterwards it's 'backed up' to long-term memory. But if this process happens too quickly you can seem to remember something even as you're experiencing it. Very weird sensation.

Answer 5

In recent years, déjà vu has been subjected to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. The most likely explanation of déjà vu is that it is not an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather an anomaly of memory; it is the impression that an experience is "being recalled".[citation needed] This explanation is substantiated by the fact that the sense of "recollection" at the time is strong in most cases, but that the 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 circumstance(s) they were "remembering" when they had the déjà vu experience. 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).

Another theory being explored is that of vision. As the theory suggests, one eye may record what is seen fractionally faster than the other, creating that "strong recollection" sensation upon the "same" scene being viewed milliseconds later by the opposite eye.

Non-scientific Explanations

[edit] Parapsychology
Déjà vu is associated with precognition, clairvoyance or extra-sensory perceptions, and it is frequently cited as evidence for "psychic" abilities in the general population. Non-scientific explanations attribute the experience to prophecy, visions (such as received in dreams) or past-life memories.


[edit] Dreams
Some believe déjà vu is the memory of dreams. Though the majority of dreams are never remembered, a dreaming person can display activity in the areas of the brain that process long-term memory. It has been speculated that dreams read directly into long-term memory, bypassing short-term memory entirely. In this case, déjà vu might be a memory of a forgotten dream with elements in common with the current waking experience. This may be similar to another phenomenon known as déjà rêvé, or "already dreamed."

Not only is the link to dreams as they pertain to déjà vu the subject of scientific and psychological studies, it is also a subject of spiritual texts, as is found in, for example, in the writings of the Bahá'í Faith with quotes like "...perchance when ten years are gone, thou wilt witness in the outer world the very things thou hast dreamed tonight."[12] and "Behold how the thing which thou hast seen in thy dream is, after a considerable lapse of time, fully realized."[13]


[edit] Reincarnation
Those believing in reincarnation theorize that déjà vu is caused by fragments of past-life memories being jarred to the surface of the mind by familiar surroundings or people. Others theorize that the phenomenon is caused by astral projection, or out-of-body experiences (OBEs), where it is possible that individuals have visited places while in their astral bodies during sleep. The sensation may also be interpreted as connected to the fulfillment of a condition as seen or felt in a premonition. For further cases of remembering information from past lives, see Ian Stevenson.

Answer 6

it's when if feels like you have been somewhere before but you havent, thats deja vu

Answer 7

I feel like I have heard this question before....

Answer 8

Just wait till it happens again then ask yourself.

Answer 9

I've heard this question before.

Answer 10

i think it has to do with past lives or preminitory dreams.