What is going on in the brain when we experience déjà vu?
—Jennifer Cashen, Carrboro, N.C.
Paul Reber, a psychology professor at Northwestern University, answers:
Although scientists have not pinpointed exactly what goes on in the brain when a person experiences déjà vu, they can make good guesses based on models of memory. All theories of memory acknowledge that remembering requires two cooperating processes: familiarity and recollection. Familiarity occurs quickly, before the brain can recall the source of the feeling. Conscious recollection depends on the hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, whereas familiarity depends on regions of the medial temporal cortex.
When these cooperating processes get out of sync, we can experience déjà vu, the intense and often disconcerting feeling that a situation is familiar even though it has never happened before. This feeling can occur when a brand-new situation is very similar to other events stored in our memory. For example, a Texas airport may seem vaguely familiar to you even though you have never been to Texas. It is possible the airport is strikingly similar to a single event stored in memory—perhaps you recently saw the airport in a movie or magazine. It is also possible that many memories of visiting similar airports create the sensation that you have been to this one. Déjà vu is a stronger version of this kind of memory error.
The best evidence for a neural mechanism for déjà vu, which around 60 percent of people experience at least once, comes from studies of patients who experience it chronically. In 2005 cognitive neuropsychologists at the University of Leeds in England described two patients with recurring and persistent feelings of déjà vu. The patients refused to read a newspaper or watch television because they felt as if they had already seen it all before. They found it difficult to shop for groceries because they thought they had just purchased those items. The researchers discovered that these patients had damage to their frontal and temporal regions. Harm to these areas likely caused the patients’ familiarity circuitry to fire frequently, even when they were in a novel situation. In undamaged brains, déjà vu likely occurs because of processing errors in these same regions.
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34 Comments
Add CommentWhile 'processing errors' may indeed explain the majority of these experiences one particular event in my past suggests to me that there may be more to it in some cases.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWhile walking down a street with 2 close friends many years ago all 3 of us stopped on the same step, turned to look at each other and at exactly the same time said, D�j� vu.
Fits of laughter followed and much conversation about the strange experience.
I doubt that we all experienced 'processing errors' at the same time.
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Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this"Most subjective evaluations of d�j� vu in the literature suggest that it is a common experience, and the survey data back this up. Across more than 50 surveys conducted across 120 years, about two thirds of respondents have experienced a lifetime d�j� vu. Although there is considerable variation, the incidence tends to be higher in more recent surveys, and in those with younger respondents. If one has experienced d�j� vu, it is highly likely that there have been multiple experiences. These experiences are rated as seldom to occasional, and tend to occur ever one to six months. The general physical setting is the most likely trigger for a d�j� vu experience, although spoken words (ones own and others) is also a frequent cause. Stress and fatigue may make the experience more likely to occur and d�j� vu occurs primarily indoors, while recreating/relaxing, and in the company of friends. The experience typically lasts under 20 s, and is more likely in the afternoon or evening, and toward the end of the week. Surprise, curiosity, and confusion are typical reactions to d�j� vu, although a wide variety of positive and negative reactions are experienced. Time also seems to slow down during the illusion.
"D�j� vu is experienced by a higher proportion of younger than older persons, and the frequency of d�j� vu among those who do experience it decreases with age. The illusion is more likely in individuals who (a) have more education, (b) have higher incomes, (c) travel (vs. dont), and (d) remember their dreams (vs. dont). D�j� vu is less common in individuals of conservative (vs. liberal) political persuasion and among those with fundamentalist (vs. moderate) religious beliefs." (Brown, "The Deja Vu Experience," p187-8)
I have a recurring experience that I've always called deja vu but which is very different from the common experience described here. Not only does a place or situation feel deeply familiar, I also feel that I know what is about to happen -- for example, who is about to come around a corner, or what somebody is about to say. This sensation seems to be associated with periods of high stress. Any ideas what might cause this? Unusual activity in the temporal lobe?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisSo, what are you suggesting happened? Magic?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's pretty obvious that deja vu occurs when they change something.. in the matrix.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt's pretty obvious that deja vu occurs when they change something.. in the matrix.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this@khb99: whoa, I just had the strangest... wait a minute...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWow! Didn't I just read this yesterday?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThere is no scientist, theoretic physicist, muser, or anyone who understands awareness, consciousness or even how our senses turn our solid reality into anything. Quantum Mechanics has theories and hypothesis but no one knows anything. For in our short existence there is only one absolute and that is CHANGE.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDeJaVu or just a universe that is only real to our finite ability to understand absolutely nothing.
I love how people SWEAR that they had a shared experience with three other people. There is NO WAY the person is making the experience up -- even subconciously. But hey...if there is scientific evidence supporting an explainable phenomena, well then, THAT isn't possible.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisNice
Saying "deja vu" isnt exactly deja vu...stepping on the same step at the same time...ummm...that is a much "deja vu" as all of Alanis Morissete's "ironic" instances in her song are "ironic"
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDidn't we do this last week some time?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI had a feeling I read this before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI feel like I read this before.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisActually, when I was a teenager, I used to experience Deja vu alot. It was very common for me. But now I rarely experience it. When you're a kid, it's a scary experience. I used to try and shake it off because it was an uncomfortable feeling. I would purposely try and do something different like walk the other way, or just start talking about a different subject just to get rid of that weird feeling. I can't imagine people who have it chronically, it must be maddening.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI think that when your brain receives an input for your senses it is somehow "time stamped" at the moment you become conscious of it.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisWe always know very clearly if an event occured "before" or "after" another.
I think when a familiar sequence of events (for example: traffic lights changing from yellow to red) are "time stamped" by your brain in the wrong order because one of them was delayed by a deep distraction or an other job your brain had to do, you end up with a clear memory of the events but your "reasonable" brain assumes it's happened before because everybody knows traffic lights change from yellow to red and not from red to yellow.
Your brain has a choice to, either assumed it's happened before or, that you need to re-consider and scrap a huge amount of memories accumulated by years of driving a car.
Which is easier? 1) it's happened before or, 2) re-format your hard drive...
What the author has described may explain some instances of deja vu, but certainly not all of them.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI have had numerous dreams of experiences that happened decades in the future, with people I did not yet know, in places I had never been. When, after thirty or so years have passed, and the "dream", or deja vu, finally comes to pass, it is an "ah ha!" moment for me.
The areas of the brain mentioned may have some function in these experiences, but to simply say that they are misfiring is absurd.
greetings clotho,
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisare you suggesting it was something 'paranormal' or 'supernatural' that occurred to you and your 2 friends?
there are any number of reasonable, solely material, scientific explanations for this, all that can have subtle, instantanious, and common effects:
1. there could have been an electromagnetic fluxuation from wiring in a building you were walking or overhead or under the sidewalk or from a large ore deposit underground.
2. there could have been a mild polarity varience from the geology in the greater area
3. the could have been some transitory pocket of gas or chemical from anywhere that you walked through or floated by you.
4. not to be trivial, but there are many drugs even specific strains of cannabis ("fits of laughter followed...") that invoke common experiences. certain mushrooms and payote are used ritually precisely to create a common 'trip' (see "Altered States" for starters)
sad but true, but this kind of assumption of something extraordinary or beyond natural happening to your special personal self is part of the reason people still cling to bronze age mythologies and fly planes into buildings or descriminate and oppress homosexuals and prevent them from marrying.
everything has to do with everything else, my friend.
I am glad that there seems to be a growing interest in what is commonly called "d�j� vu". However, I have some problems with what has been written here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) There are many forms of "d�j� experience" ( see www.deja-experience-research.org ). D�j� vu is not a unitary phenomenon with one explanation that explains all instances.
2) I know someone who says she has continuous familiarity and she leads a normal life. To call this "chronic" stamps it as being pathological. Something can be "abnormal" without being pathological. In my book, things are only pathological when suffering is involved. I would much prefer it if those doing research in this field would speak of pathological forms of continuous familiarity. Otherwise those like her will be afraid to speak about what they are experiencing and those of us interested in studying these phenomena will be the poorer for it.
Art Funkhouser (who is responsible for the www.deja-experience-research.org website)
I am glad that there seems to be a growing interest in what is commonly called "déjà vu". However, I have some problems with what has been written here:
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to this1) There are many forms of "déjà experience" ( see www.deja-experience-research.org ). Déjà vu is not a unitary phenomenon with one explanation that explains all instances.
2) I know someone who says she has continuous familiarity and she leads a normal life. To call this "chronic" stamps it as being pathological. Something can be "abnormal" without being pathological. In my book, things are only pathological when suffering is involved. I would much prefer it if those doing research in this field would speak of pathological forms of continuous familiarity. Otherwise those like her will be afraid to speak about what they are experiencing and those of us interested in studying these phenomena will be the poorer for it.
Art Funkhouser (who is responsible for the www.deja-experience-research.org website)
czetie - My Déjà vu experiences were very much as you describe. As mentioned, I experienced the sensation quite often many years ago as a teen; I can't remember the last time (no comments about failing memory, please).
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs you mention, I always felt like I was able to predict a sequence of events, although I also felt that the seemingly convincing premonitions were false.
This would seem to indicate that it is not a combination of conditions that precipitates the sensation of Déjà vu, but that some internal condition occurs that imparts the sensation to subsequent events, whatever they might be.
GREAT comment! I agree with your position on CHANGE and our inability to comprehend the universe we live in (one of an infinite number of universes by the way.)
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisDeJaVu is testament to our ability to recognize subtle or not-so-subtle similarities in experience. My DeJaVu experiences have included predictability, in verbally expressing to another what will happen next. Particularly a fourth grade playground experience in the morning, not the afternoon, and on a Monday, not late in the week, as "typical" DeJaVus go; I stepped on a twig and it broke; at the snap, I had a chill, everything was exactly as it had been at sometime before; I said to my friend next to me "Put that down" - of course he held nothing, and then the recess teacher said, "Put that down" to another child. I knew we would line up early, and I knew I would be behind a girl in a colored skirt, I forget the color over the years. But the experience was so intense; I have told this story over and over in my years and it was not a mistake, some mental error on my part - I certainly didn't see a picture of a playground and mistake mine for it - it was simply a part of reality I was fortunate enough to experience and remember. Same experience all over again? No, I don't think so, but so similar, so congruent will the moment that to call it other than real is to demean the parallel experience.
How any scientist can call this an error, some kind of mental mistake is beyond my sense of reality, given that they know almost absolutely nothing about the true nature of things. They think that the world is a solid place with macro occurrences, whereas some of us support the notion of energies. That's all. Energies. Pack them tightly and they appear to be solid, but they're not - it's all empty space and tiny pockets of energy. Understanding the mind is by definition impossible because you are using a mind to analyze it! The carrot discovering itself? I don't think so. Energy and change. Stop trying to figure it all out - you're missing so much!
KiKi7 can kiss my DeJaVu. I swear I've read that before!
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisThis article offers little explanation as to the source of this phenomenon...only the location in the brain of such "experience" - not too enlightening. I like the other comments...I am more interested in research on what i have experienced, which a psychologist termed "Preja vu" which is the certain knowledge of an event as a dream...as the polling data suggests, this happened with more frequency as an adolescent that now as an adult---but have experienced a 'situation' and known for a fact that i 'dreamed' the event in the past...sort of a 'pre-cognitive' deja vu
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI would interested in any information on this time of experience, and especially among those who use/have used drugs a/o alcohol...as the incidences seem to be increased among those who use mind-altering substances
I always thought it was a Steven Hawking event. When a parallel universe intersects with this one, we experience a brief look into those other universes.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisEven stranger, and easier to study I would imagine, is jamais vu (never seen). Essentially, it is the sensation of something being unfamiliar even though you know it is. I have experienced deja vu a great many times in my life, but I've only experienced jamais vu twice. The first time I felt as if my place of work was unfamiliar. I saw everything as it was, but didn't feel as if I recognized it. The second was actually when looking in the mirror when suddenly I realized that I didn't recognize myself. I understood that I was looking at myself, I knew I had seen myself before, but I felt like I was seeing myself for the first time. It was EXTREMELY disconcerting.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIn any case, I would imagine they could discover the "seat of recognition" by studying those with chronic jamais vu in comparison to normal people and perhaps even those with chronic deja vu.
To me it sounds like like there is a memory search at various resolutions where recognition is a very low-res search and recall is a high-res search. Of course, I'm thinking in terms of pattern recognition.
Nathaniel, I have had similar experiences as well in feeling that something's wrong, or different when there shouldn't be any cause for the feeling. I can assure you that they were not drug-influenced, which I'm sure some skeptics assign as an explanation. The mirror-not-me feeling I felt was not a gross mis-identification, but a feeling that something was different but I never did figure out what. Other times were the same odd sense of difference, something was not-right. I consider this evidence of the infinite parallel universes theory, and now consciously and frequently try to make a conscious change in my world. Not anything like instant world peace - too many variables - but something like less conflict in my life, or better health for someone, or just a better day. We have no idea about the true nature of experiences, but if I experience something I consider real in my world then that is exactly what it is, and not some chemical error in a brain cell.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisabscence of evidence is not evidence of abscence. evidence however. i had deja vu recently. i had a powerful feeling and became very objective. like i was standing as the lone observer of a murder. deja vu seemed to me a dizzy-tinged misidentification of VETIGO. i merely IDENTIFIED the sudden experience as something in memory. Powerful, and at the same time, otherworldly. Memory/ Vertigo.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisnat and promyth. i am a zen buddhist. i meditate and practice the 5 mortal precepts.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisoften i have the experience of continuity in time. that is, time is not moving. time and space are one.
more like yours. i have experience of everything being PERFECTLY REAL. when i look at it i see wood not just what looks like wood. or pottery not just looks like pottery. plastic too looks like it is made of carbon. Things identify themselves with the very elements they are made up of. i can examine things very meticulously because they are completely fresh and new. there is no direction to time. time and space are one. the heart beats.
it is like being in a totally new environment even though it is my own livingroom. this is i imagine like jamais vu. generaly after i vacuum.
Interesting article, thanks for sharing.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI don't understand how though, this explanation offers any insight as to the more 'visual' component of De Javu. That is to say, how is it that, a de javu can propagate visuals of an familiar experience before their actual occurrence?
thanks again- good read
tim
our brain is the most amazing organ.i don't think our scientests can give a clear description of it to us in recent time.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thiswow, your comment is smart. you must be a smart person.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisI agree with this article, but at the same time, I have had deja vu experiences where I was literally saying every single word along with the person, out loud. (not "hearing" it in my head). I don't know how to explain that one.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisperhaps Reincarnation.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thismaybe Precognition.