“The feeling that you have already experienced something that is actually happening for the first time”
Britannica Dictionary definition of DÉJÀ VU
Déjà Vu is a phenomenon that the majority of us have all experienced in our lives: the feeling that, for a fleeting moment, we are reliving a situation that has already happened. But after the moment passes, our reasonable brains decide that it was all just a temporary hiccup in the mental processing of our daily experience. According to WebMD, only 60-70% of people experience Déjà Vu in their lifetime, and generally when they are 15-25 years of age. I have personally experienced this phenomenon over 10 times during my youth, but it’s been quite some time since the last occurance. Déjà vu is reportedly very hard to study because of its brief, unannounced occurence. The phenomenon also has no witnesses or physical manifestations other than the subject noticing it and exclaiming: “hey, déjà vu!” As a redult, studies on Déjà Vu depend on personal accounts and recollection for data. Although there is very little conclusive research on the matter, my goal in this inquiry post is to research and underline the leading explanaition for Déjà Vu.
The term Déjà Vu was coined by Emile Boirac, a French psychic researcher who was the first to investigate the phenomenon, though he did not have the background to perform in-depth research. Sigmund Freud continued work on Déjà Vu, assimilated the phenomenon into his theories: he concluded that the experiences were caused by repressed desires or fragments of a stressful event, lost in the subject’s long-term memory. Freud’s theory, named paramnesia, became the standard explanaition for most of the 20th century. Before the advent of brain-imaging software, Déjà Vu was thought to be closely associated with spirituality; many philosophers and writers have linked it to past life experiences, ESP, and even alien abductions. As a result, Déjà Vu became an undesirable psychological subject for scientists to study.
The leading study on Déjà Vu was performed in 2006 by the scientists of Leeds Memory Group, who attempted to effectively recreate the phenomenon inside a lab; the scientists attempted to implant false memories in the subjects by using hypnosis. First, the conscious subjects would be shown 24 common words. After being hypnotised, they were told that when they saw a word in a red frame, they would feel that the word was familiar. After being taken out of hypnosis, the subjects were presented with a series of words in frames of various colours. Over half of the subjects reported that they experienced a peculiar sensation when presented with the words in the red frames, several claiming that it felt the same as Déjà Vu.
Featured Image: Faris Mohammed at: Unsplash
This study reveals that Déjà Vu is a two step process: initiation and recall. It also tells us that it is possible to separate these two processes, as the scientists of Leeds Memory Group were able to accomplish with the hypnosis experiment. Through this, the scientists concluded that Déjà Vu is a memory phenomenon. They explain that someone experiencing Déjà Vu encounters a situation that is similar to a past experience except that they cannot fully recall the actual memory. Consequently, their brain latches onto the similarities between their current experience and fragments of the memory. The feeling of familiarity that results is the phenomenon of Déjà Vu.