Many of us can tell you what déjà vu is in our own words. However, few people know what this phenomenon is associated with and whether it is a separate disease.
What does it mean
Most adult men and women have already encountered circumstances when, upon finding themselves in a new environment, they began to experience a strange feeling that they had already been there before.
Sometimes meeting a stranger makes you think that their face is very familiar. It seems like all this has happened before, but when?
To find out the cause and essence of this phenomenon, it is worth finding out the meaning of the word “ deja vu " The translation from French means “already seen.”
The definition in the Large Modern Explanatory Dictionary says that this condition is a mental disorder, which consists of the feeling that everything experienced now is exactly repeated and takes place in the past.
- This phenomenon was first described at the end of the 19th century. Cases of deja vu are found in the works of Jack London and Clifford Simak. Manifestations of recurring circumstances can be observed in the films “Groundhog Day”, “The Adventures of Shurik”.
- It was found that most often the feeling of a familiar situation occurs in people aged from 15 to 18 years old, and from 35 to 40 years. This syndrome is not experienced by children under 7-8 years of age due to unformed consciousness. Doctors, psychologists, physicists and parapsychologists are still trying to figure out what this phenomenon means.
- There is a term called reverse déjà vu - jamevu . It means "never seen." A person, being in a familiar environment with familiar people, can feel newness, as if he had never been here and did not know those around him.
Why does the deja vu effect occur?
Doctors and scientists explain the causes of déjà vu in different ways.
Philosopher Bergson believed that this phenomenon is associated with the bifurcation of reality and the transfer of the present to the future. Freud saw the reason in the person’s memories, which were repressed into the area of the unconscious. Other researchers have associated the phenomenon with random experiences in fantasy or during sleep.
None of the theories answer the question “What is déjà vu and why does it happen?”
Recent studies by American specialists have established that a certain sector of the brain, the hippocampus, is responsible for the development of this condition. It contains proteins that are responsible for pattern recognition. At the same time, brain cells are able to store memories of any place a person has been to.
A group of researchers from the Czech University found that déjà vu syndrome is associated with acquired and congenital brain pathologies. In their opinion, the main organ produces false memories of what is happening due to its easy excitability, in particular in the area hippocampus .
There are other hypotheses that justify the presence of déjà vu:
- Esotericists rely on the theory of reincarnation and believe that the sensations of déjà vu are associated with the consciousness of our ancestors.
- In the event of a stressful situation, our brain invents new solutions based on its experience. This is due to intuition and the body’s protective reaction.
- Some researchers claim that the déjà vu effect is related to time travel.
- According to another version, déjà vu is the result of a well-rested brain. The organ processes information too quickly, and it seems to the person that what happened a second ago happened a long time ago.
- In reality, the situations may be simply similar. Actions resemble past events because the brain recognizes similar pictures and compares memories.
- One theory suggests that the brain is capable of confusing short-term memory with long-term memory. In this way, it tries to encode new information into long-term storage, and a feeling of déjà vu is created.
Some manifestations of this phenomenon make one believe in the transmigration of souls. So, Madonna Having visited the Beijing Emperor's Palace for the first time, I felt that I knew absolutely every corner of it. After this, she claimed that in a past life she was a subject of the emperor.
There is a more attractive theory to explain déjà vu. It is believed that each of us has our own path in life and our own destiny. For a particular individual, ideal situations, certain places, meetings and people are destined.
All this is known to our subconscious and can intersect with reality. This means only one thing - the path has been chosen correctly. Today, this phenomenon has been little studied, and not a single scientist can say exactly why déjà vu happens.
Frequent déjà vu = illness?
This phenomenon can be observed not only in healthy people.
Many experts argue that patients who experience a constant feeling of déjà vu are sick or have other mental illnesses.
The pathological effect is accompanied by the following symptoms:
- Frequently experiencing the same situation (several times a day);
- the appearance of déjà vu a few minutes or hours after the incident;
- a feeling that the event took place in a past life;
- the feeling that a repeating situation has happened to other people;
- increased duration of pathological sensation.
If, along with these symptoms, a person develops hallucinations, extreme anxiety and other symptoms , you should consult a psychotherapist to identify the causes of the disease.
It is important to be attentive to incomprehensible situations related to mental life. If there are disturbances in consciousness, you should contact a specialist who will identify the problem using modern diagnostic methods: MRI, encephalography, CT.
In medical practice, there are cases when a person who sought help due to frequent cases of déjà vu was diagnosed with the following pathologies:
- brain tumor;
Such mental disorders can lead to traumatic brain injury, vascular pathologies of the brain, drug use and.
If a healthy person has experienced the effect of déjà vu, then there is no need to worry. This phenomenon is not a mental pathology, it is just one of the functions of the human brain that is not fully understood.
Anyone, regardless of gender or nationality, experiences déjà vu from time to time. It often occurs against the background of emotional distress, depression, and insomnia. Therefore, doctors advise getting more rest, normalizing your sleep and avoiding stressful situations.
Video about this phenomenon:
Incredible facts
Everyone is familiar with the disturbing feeling of déjà vu, when, experiencing some sensations, it seems to us that we have been in this situation before.
Within a few seconds, we are firmly convinced that we have been in the present moment before, and this belief is so strong that we can almost predict what will happen next.
However, this amazing feeling passes as quickly as it comes, and we return to our reality.
Despite the fact that the actual cause deja vu has not yet been confirmed by science, more than 40 theories have been put forward trying to explain the phenomenon. We have collected for you the 10 most interesting ones that will make you think.
Deja vu theories
10. Mixing feelings and memory
This hypothesis attempts to explain the feeling of déjà vu by relating it to our sensory perceptions. A famous psychology experiment, Grant et al's study, shows that our memory is context dependent, meaning that we can remember information better when we place it in the same environment in which we learned it.
This helps explain déjà vu by showing how stimuli in the environment can trigger certain memories. Some landscapes or smells can push our subconscious to pull out from memory those periods of time when we have already experienced it.
With this explanation, it is also clear why the same déjà vu sometimes repeats. When we remember something, it increases the activity of our neural pathways, meaning we are more likely to remember something we think about frequently.
However, this theory does not provide an explanation as to why déjà vu occurs in the absence of familiar stimuli.
9. Double processing
Like the previous theory, this hypothesis is also associated with improper memory functioning. When we initially receive some information, our brain places it into our short-term memory.
If we return to this information, revise it, supplement it, it will ultimately be transferred to long-term memory, because it is easier to retrieve it from there.
Elements stored in our short-term memory will be lost if we make no attempt to “encode” them, that is, remember them. For example, we will remember the price of a purchased item only for a very short period of time.
This theory suggests that when a person experiences new information, the brain may sometimes try to write it straight into long-term memory, thereby creating the uncomfortable illusion that we have already experienced it.
However, the theory is a little confusing because it does not explain exactly when the brain malfunctions, although this may be due to small malfunctions that each of us has.
Deja vu effect
8. Parallel Universe Theory
The idea is that we live among millions of parallel Universes, in which there are millions of versions of ourselves, and in which the life of the same person follows different scenarios. This thought has always been very exciting. Déjà vu adds to the likelihood of its reality.
Proponents of this theory argue that the human experience of déjà vu can be explained by the fact that he experienced something similar a minute earlier, in a parallel Universe.
This means that no matter what you do while experiencing déjà vu, a parallel version of you is doing the same thing in another universe, and déjà vu in this case creates a kind of alignment between the two worlds.
While this theory is quite intriguing, it is not supported by the majority of scientific evidence, making it difficult to accept. However, the theory of the multiverse, according to which millions of different universes are constantly formed at random and only occasionally are created like ours, still supports this hypothesis.
7. Recognizing familiar things
To recognize some stimulus in the environment, we use the so-called recognition memory, which is known in two forms: recollection and familiar things.
Recollection is when we recognize something we have seen before. Our brain retrieves and gives us the information that we previously encoded into our memory. Recognition based on familiar things has a slightly different nature.
This occurs when we recognize something but cannot remember if it happened before. For example, when you see a familiar face in a store, but you can’t remember how you know this person.
Déjà vu can be a unique form of recognition based on familiar things, which may explain such strong feelings about something familiar while experiencing it. This theory was tested in a psychological experiment where participants were asked to study a list of celebrity names and then a collection of photographs of celebrities.
The photographs did not include everyone who was on the list of names.
Participants were weak in recognizing celebrities from photographs alone if their names were not on a list they had previously seen. This could mean that déjà vu occurs when we have a faint memory of something that happened before, but the memory is not strong enough to remember where we remember a particular fact from.
6. Hologram theory
Hologram theory is the idea that our memories are formed as three-dimensional images, meaning they have a structured frame system. This theory was proposed by Hermon Sno and believes that all information in memory can be retrieved by just one element.
Therefore, if there is even one stimulus (smell, sound) in your environment that reminds you of some moment in the past, the entire memory is recreated by your mind like a hologram.
This explains déjà vu so that when something reminds us of the past now, our brain reconnects with our past, creates a hologram of the memory and makes us think that we are living that moment now.
The reason we do not recognize a memory after a moment of déjà vu is that the stimulus that causes the holographic memory to form is often hidden from our conscious awareness.
For example, you may experience déjà vu when you pick up a metal cup, because the feel of the metal is the same as the handle of your childhood favorite bicycle.
5. Prophetic dreams
In prophetic dreams we predict something that then happens in the future. And often people suddenly find themselves in a situation that they previously saw in a dream. Many people report having dreams about great tragedies long before they happened (for example, the sinking of the Titanic). This suggests that people really do have a subconscious sixth sense.
This might explain déjà vu. At the moment when we experience it, perhaps we have already dreamed about it. For example, you dreamed of driving along a certain road, and then you actually find yourself on this previously unfamiliar road.
That is, you remember this road based on some signs in order to find out later. Since sleep is not a conscious process, this explains why we do not understand the stimulus, but still feel that it is familiar to us (the road from the example above).
Feeling of deja vu
4. Divided attention
Divided attention theory suggests that déjà vu occurs due to subconscious recognition of the object in our déjà vu experience. This means that our subconscious mind remembers the stimulus, but we are not aware of it.
This theory was tested in an experiment involving student volunteers who were shown a series of pictures of different places and then asked to point to familiar photographs.
However, before the experiment began, the students saw photos of the same places that they had never visited. They saw the photos for a few moments, so the volunteers’ consciousness did not have time to remember them.
As a result, students were much more likely to “recognize” unfamiliar places whose photographs were remembered by their subconscious. This demonstrates how our subconscious is able to remember an image and allow us to recognize it.
This means that déjà vu can be our sudden awareness of a message that is received by our unconscious mind. Proponents of this theory believe that we often receive subliminal messages through the Internet, television and social networks.
3. Amygdala
The amygdala is a small area of our brain that plays an important role in human emotionality (most often it works when a person experiences anger or fear). We have two amygdalae, one in each hemisphere.
For example, if you are afraid of spiders, then the amygdala is responsible for your reaction and processing it when you encounter this creature. When we find ourselves in a dangerous situation, our amygdala kicks in to temporarily disorient our brain.
If you're standing under a falling tree, your amygdala may go into panic mode, causing your brain to malfunction. The amygdala can be used to explain déjà vu, given this temporary brain malfunction.
For example, if we find ourselves in a situation that has already happened to us, but with some changes, then the amygdala can provoke a panic reaction in us (for example, we find ourselves in an apartment whose layout we have previously encountered, but in this case the furniture is different) .
This panic reaction, a state of temporary confusion, is déjà vu.
2. Reincarnation
The general theory of reincarnation is that before a person came into this life, he lived several more lives. While there are some intriguing stories of people who remember precise personal information about themselves from a past life, believers in reincarnation say that most of us move on to the next life without remembering the previous one.
Surely, everyone is familiar with such moments when it seems that a certain event has already happened, or we meet a person whom we have already seen before. But, alas, no one can remember how it happened and under what circumstances. In this article we will try to figure out why it happens. Are these games that the mind plays on us, or some kind of mysticism? How do scientists explain this phenomenon? Why does deja vu happen? Let's look at everything in more detail.
What does deja vu mean?
Literally, this concept is translated as “previously seen.” This term was first used by Emile Boirac, a psychologist from France. In his work “Psychology of the Future,” the author raised and voiced points that researchers had not dared to describe before. After all, no one knew exactly what déjà vu was and why it happened. And since there is no logical explanation for this, how can one broach such a sensitive topic? It was this psychologist who first called the effect the term “déjà vu.” Before this, such definitions as “paramnesia”, “promnesia” were used, which meant “already experienced”, “previously seen”.
The question of why déjà vu occurs remains mysterious and completely unsolved to this day, although, of course, there are several hypotheses.
People's attitude towards this
What do scientists say?
American scientists have conducted several studies to find out how the déjà vu effect occurs. They found that the hippocampus, a certain part of the brain, is responsible for its appearance. After all, it contains specific proteins that give us the ability to instantly recognize images. During this study, scientists even determined what structure the cells in this part of the brain have. It turns out that as soon as we find ourselves in a new place or pay attention to the face of a person, all this information immediately “pops up” in the hippocampus. Where did she come from? Scientists say that its cells create in advance a so-called “cast” of any unfamiliar place or face. It turns out something like a projection. What happens? Does the human brain program everything in advance?
How were the experiments carried out?
To better understand what we are talking about, let's find out how scientists conducted their research. So, they selected several subjects, provided them with photographs depicting famous personalities from different fields of activity, famous people, various landmarks that are known to everyone.
After this, the subjects were asked to voice the names of the depicted places and the surnames or first names of the people. At the moment when they gave their answers, scientists measured their brain activity. It turned out that the hippocampus (we talked about it above) was in a state of full activity even in those respondents who did not even approximately know the correct answer. At the end of the entire event, people said that when they looked at the image and realized that this person or place was unfamiliar to them, certain associations with what they had already seen before appeared in their minds. As a result of this experiment, scientists decided that if the brain is capable of additional associations between known and completely unfamiliar situations, then this is the explanation for the déjà vu effect.
Another hypothesis
As we have already said, there are several versions about what déjà vu is and why it happens. According to this hypothesis, the effect refers to manifestations of the so-called false memory. If during the functioning of the brain malfunctions occur in certain areas of the brain, it begins to mistake everything unknown for what is already known. According to experts, false memory does not “work” at any age; it is characterized by certain peaks of activity - from 16 to 18 years, and also from 35 to 40.
First splash
Scientists explain the first peak of false memory activity by the fact that adolescence is very emotionally expressed in all respects. People at this time react quite dramatically and sharply to current events. The lack of much life experience also plays a significant role in why déjà vu occurs. This is a kind of compensation, a hint. The effect manifests itself when the teenager needs help. In this case, the brain “turns” to a false memory.
Second splash
The second peak occurs precisely at this turning point in a person’s life, when nostalgia for the past is felt, there are certain regrets or a desire to return to bygone years. This is where the brain comes to the rescue again, turning to experience. And this gives us an answer to the question: “Why does deja vu happen?”
Psychiatrists' point of view
It must be said that this hypothesis differs significantly from the previous ones. Doctors do not doubt for a second that the significance of déjà vu cannot be ignored, because it is a mental disorder. And the more often the effect appears, the more serious the matter becomes. They argue that over time this will develop into long-term hallucinations that are dangerous both for the person himself and for those around him. Doctors, after conducting research, noticed that this phenomenon occurs mainly in people suffering from all kinds of memory defects. Parapsychologists do not exclude another version. Thus, they tend to associate déjà vu with the reincarnation of a person after death into another body). Naturally, modern science does not accept this version.
What other opinions exist on this matter?
For example, in the 19th century, German psychologists explained the effect simply as a consequence of simple fatigue. The thing is that those parts of the brain that are responsible for consciousness and perception, that is, a malfunction occurs among themselves. And it is expressed in the form of a deja vu effect.
American physiologist Burnham argued the opposite. Thus, he believed that the phenomenon in which we recognize certain objects, actions, faces is associated with complete relaxation of the body. When a person is fully rested, his brain is free from difficulties, worries, and thrills. It is at this time that the brain can perceive everything many times faster. It turns out that the subconscious is already experiencing moments that may happen to a person in the future.
Many people believe that they know how déjà vu occurs, believing that it is the result of dreams that we once had. or not - it’s hard to say, but such an idea also exists among scientists. The subconscious is capable of recording dreams that we saw even many years ago, and then reproducing them in parts (many consider this as predictions of the future).
Freud and Jung
To understand even better what déjà vu is, let's remember the film about Shurik, when he was so absorbed in reading notes that he did not notice that he was in someone else's apartment, nor the mustard cakes, nor the fan, nor the girl Lida herself. But when he appeared there consciously, he experienced what we call the deja vu effect. It’s just that in this case the viewer knows that Shurik has already been here.
Sigmund Freud at one time described this state as a real memory that was “erased” in consciousness under the influence of various unfavorable factors. It could be a trauma or an experience. Some force caused a certain image to move into the area of the subconscious, and later there comes a moment at which this “hidden” image suddenly comes out.
Jung connected the effect with essentially the memory of our ancestors. And this again leads us to biology, reincarnation and other other hypotheses.
It turns out that it is not for nothing that they say that everything in the world is interconnected. Maybe in this case it also doesn’t make sense to look for the only correct answer, if only because there is no guarantee that it exists? It’s not for nothing that even scientists have not put forward a version that could be fully proven and declared to the whole world that the answer has been found.
In any case, do not be alarmed if this effect happens to you. Take this as a hint, as something close to intuition. Remember the main thing: if there was something frightening or truly dangerous in the phenomenon, you would already know about it for sure.
For humanity, the déjà vu effect is a mysterious phenomenon. Appears suddenly and lasts a few seconds. I wonder why the deja vu effect occurs?
Being in a state of déjà vu, a person perceives current events as already experienced or previously seen. This applies to unfamiliar places that seem familiar for a long time or certain events when actions and words are known in advance.
People have been exploring this phenomenon since antiquity. According to Aristotle, the déjà vu effect is a kind of subconscious game that occurs under the influence of a combination of factors on the human psyche.
The phenomenon was actively studied in the nineteenth century. Psychiatrists have discovered a number of mental states similar to déjà vu. Among them, the jamevu effect is a sign of a mental disorder.
People experience déjà vu many times throughout their lives. Each manifestation of a mysterious phenomenon has certain symptoms. The person is sure that he was once in this place and experienced the event. He is well aware of the words he speaks and the actions of the people around him. In general, the manifestation of déjà vu strongly resembles the ability of psychics to foresee an event, but is characterized by a subconscious nature.
Deja vu comes and goes unexpectedly. The duration does not exceed one minute and does not affect consciousness and psyche. However, in medical practice there have been cases where frequent occurrences of déjà vu were closely related to a mental disorder.
Symptoms of the phenomenon can appear simultaneously with epileptic seizures. In such a situation, a person is unable to take control of the development of the phenomenon and the onset of a seizure. Therefore, individuals suffering from epilepsy or mental problems are advised to react less emotionally to the development of life events. As a result, the feeling of déjà vu will occur much less frequently.
The déjà vu effect is reminiscent of watching a movie. A person has seen a similar plot, but he is unable to remember exactly when and under what conditions. Some try to predict what is happening, but nothing works.
Scientists have divided opinions about the déjà vu effect. Some claim that the human brain is capable of encoding time, others claim that the phenomenon represents a situation where a person saw a sequence of certain events during sleep. When he sees similar circumstances in reality, he has this effect.
You can spend hours looking at the causes of the phenomenon. It cannot be said that a phenomenon is good or bad. Until scientists agree, déjà vu will continue to remain unknown and mysterious.
I'll give you some useful advice. Usually this game of consciousness is safe for the human body. If relapses become more frequent, she needs to pay more attention and consult a doctor.
Deja vu effect in a dream
Have you seen a place in a dream that you have already visited, but not in real life? These sensations are a manifestation of the déjà vu effect in a dream, which has been exciting the minds of scientists for one hundred and fifty years. The luminaries of science, explaining the phenomenon, put forward various reasons for its appearance. In this article I will consider three of them.
The first reason: echoes of the past
Dreams reflect a person’s personal experience gained in a previous life. The phenomenon of transmigration of the soul. After such dreams, people remembered things that they could not even guess about. For example, one traveler, who decided to relax in the summer in another country, had no problem finding in an unfamiliar territory the ruins of a castle in which, according to his dream, he worked as a butler.
Some psychiatrists argue that dreams can actually reproduce events that a person experienced in a past life.
Second reason: forgotten memories
Scientists who do not believe in the transmigration of souls explain the phenomenon of déjà vu in dreams by forgotten memories. We are talking about childhood impressions or minor events that were once recorded. During sleep, such “memoirs” rise from the depths of memory and burst into consciousness.
The third reason: the gift of prediction
According to the third reason, deja vu in a dream is a prediction, and not memories stored in the depths of memory that have surfaced. The future is formed in the subconscious, and the finished picture of upcoming events is reflected in dreams.
The theory says that a person can penetrate both the past and the future in his thoughts. When a person sleeps, he sees what his strongest emotions are directed at. This could be career success, a vacation on the seaside, or a breakup with your significant other. Experiences are caused by dreams, which instill confidence that the event seen has already happened. This is a prophetic dream phenomenon that will help prepare for an upcoming test, joy or success.
It is not uncommon to dream of something familiar - a person, a building or a city, but you do not remember it. It is possible that memories lost in memory were reflected in the dream. If you see a similar dream, study the history of your ancestors, find old photographs or collages. This will help you find the answer to night deja vu.
If aspirations and desires are reflected in a dream, most likely, in the near future you will find yourself in a situation reminiscent of the dreamed plot. Some believe that such dreams are the key to managing life and modeling the future.
Each of us has heard about such a feeling as déjà vu, and most have experienced it. The feeling when you have already seen it, been here, talked to someone, all this has already happened... We can remember in detail rooms that we have never been to before, people we have never met before and things like that. Why is this happening? How does it appear? Many people ask these questions, but the answers to them are still shrouded in darkness.
Article outline:
It's deja vu...
The term “deja vu” (d?j?vu – already seen) was first used by the French psychologist Emile Boirac (1851-1917) in his book “Psychology of the Future”. Previously, this strange phenomenon was characterized as “false recognition” or “paramnesia” (memory deceptions due to impaired consciousness), or “promnesia” (synonymous with déjà vu).There are also several similar phenomena: deja vecu (“already experienced”), deja entendu (“already heard”), jamais vu (“never seen”). The effect is the opposite of deja vu - jama vu, it is typical when a person does not recognize things familiar to him. This effect differs from memory loss in that this state occurs quite suddenly; for example, your friend, while talking with you, may suddenly seem like a completely unfamiliar person to you. All the knowledge you had about this person simply disappears. But the phenomenon of jamavu is much less common than deja vu.
It is quite difficult for scientists to study these effects, since they, in turn, relate exclusively to human sensations and feelings. From a physiological point of view, the cause of all these phenomena is in the brain. It is very difficult to experiment in this area, since even the slightest intervention can make a person disabled, deaf, blind, or worse, paralyzed.
Exploring Deja Vu
Scientific study of the phenomenon of déjà vu has not been so active. In 1878, a German psychological journal proposed that the sensation of “already seen” occurs when the processes of perception and awareness, which generally occur simultaneously, in one case or another become inconsistent due to, for example, . This explanation has become one of the sides of the theory, which in turn suggests the reason for the appearance of déjà vu is the workload of the brain. In other words, déjà vu occurs when a person is very tired and peculiar malfunctions appear in the brain.Judging by the other side of the theory, the déjà vu effect is the result of a good rest of the brain. In this case, the processes occur several times faster. If we have the ability to process this or that image quite quickly and easily, then our brain, at the subconscious level, interprets this as a signal of what we have already seen before. As the American physiologist William H. Burnham, who was the author of this theory, wrote in 1889, “when we see a strange object, its unfamiliar appearance is largely due to the difficulty we have in recognizing its characteristics. But then, when the brain centers have finally rested, the perception of a strange scene may seem so easy that the sight of what is happening will already seem familiar.”
Later, Sigmund Freud and his followers took up the study of the déjà vu effect. The scientist believed that the feeling of “already seen” arises in a person as a result of the spontaneous resurrection of subconscious fantasies in his immediate memory. As for Freud's followers, they, in turn, believed that déjà vu is the result of the struggle of the “I” with the “It” and the “Super-I”.
Some people explain their déjà vu by saying that they have already seen previously unfamiliar places or things. This version is also not excluded by scientists. In 1896, Arthur Allyn, a professor of psychology at the University of Colorado Boulder, theorized that déjà vu is a reminder of fragments of dreams we have forgotten. Our emotional reactions to a new image may reproduce a false sense of recognition. The déjà vu effect occurs when our attention is suddenly diverted for a short period of time during our first encounter with a new image.
Also, the phenomenon of déjà vu is also characterized as a manifestation of false memory, that is, in the functioning of the brain, and to be more precise, in certain areas of it, some malfunction occurs, and it begins to mistake the unfamiliar for the known. The so-called false memory is characterized by age periods when the activity of this process is most pronounced - from 16 to 18 and from 35 to 40 years.
The surge during the first period is explained by the emotional expressiveness of adolescence, the ability to react too sharply and even dramatically to certain events, due to the lack of life experience. In this case, a person turns to fictitious experience for help, receiving it directly from false memory. As for the second peak itself, it, in turn, also occurs at a turning point, but this is already a midlife crisis.
At this stage, deja vu is moments of nostalgia, some regrets about the past, a desire to return to the past. This effect can also be called a memory trick, since memories may not even be real, but supposed, the past is presented as an ideal time when everything was still wonderful.
In 1990, a psychiatrist from the Netherlands, Herman Sno, suggested that traces of memory are stored in the human brain in the form of certain holograms. What distinguishes a hologram from a photograph is that each fragment of the hologram carries all the information that is necessary to reconstruct the entire image. The smaller such a fragment, the correspondingly blurrier the reproduced picture is. According to Sno's theory, the emerging feeling of what has already been seen occurs when some small detail of the current situation quite closely coincides with a certain fragment of memory, which in turn evokes an unclear picture of a past event.
Pierre Glaur, a neuropsychiatrist, conducted experiments in the 1990s and stubbornly insisted that memory uses special systems of “recovery” (retrieval) and “recognition” (familiarity). In his work, which was published in 1997, he argued that the phenomenon of déjà vu occurs in rather rare moments. When our recognition system is activated, but our repair system is not. Other scientists insist that the recovery system may not be completely disabled, but may simply be out of alignment, which in turn is reminiscent of the fatigue theory that was put forward much earlier.
Physiological explanation
But, despite everything, scientists were still able to figure out which parts of the brain are involved in the process at the time when a person experiences a feeling of déjà vu. It is worth noting the fact that different parts of the brain are directly responsible for different types of memory. The frontal part is responsible for the future, the temporal part is responsible for the past, and the main part, the intermediate part, is responsible for our present. When all these parts of the brain are doing their normal work, when consciousness is in a normal state, then the feeling that something is about to happen can only arise when we are thinking about the future, worrying about it, warning about it, or building plans. But not everything is as simple as we would like. There is an area in our brain (the amygdala) that directly sets the emotional “tone” of our perception. For example, when you are having a conversation with someone and see how your interlocutor’s facial expression changes, it is the amygdala that gives a signal in a matter of seconds about how exactly to react to this. In neurological terms, in fact, the duration of the “present” is so short that we don’t experience as much as we remember.
Short memory stores information for several minutes. The hippocampus, in turn, is responsible for this: memories, which in turn are associated with a particular event, are scattered across different sensory centers of the brain, but they are connected in a certain order by the hippocampus. There is also long-term memory, which is located on the surface of the brain, along the temporal part.
In fact, it is quite fair to say that the past, present and future exist in our brains, without having clear boundaries. When we experience something in the present, we compare it with a similar past and already decide how at the moment we should react to what is happening in the near future. It is at this moment that all the necessary areas of the brain are turned on. In the case when there are too many connections between short-term and long-term memory, the present can be perceived as the past, and in this case the effect of déjà vu occurs.
As an explanation for this phenomenon, one can also use global comparison models, as psychologists call them. A particular situation may seem familiar to a person because it quite strongly reminds him of a past event stored in his memory, or if it is similar to a large number of events held in memory. That is, you have already been in identical and quite similar situations more than once. Thus, your brain summarized and compared these memories, as a result of which it recognized a picture similar to them.
Reincarnation or reboot?
Many people are inclined to believe that deja vu has some mysterious, or even mystical roots. This happens due to the fact that scientists cannot really explain why déjà vu occurs. Parapsychologists explain déjà vu with the theory of reincarnation, in which case if a person lives not one life, but several, then he can remember some episodes of one of them.
The ancient Greeks believed in reincarnation, even the early Christians and the rather famous Swiss psychologist Carl Gustav Jung, who in turn believed that he lived two parallel lives. One life is his, and the second is the life of a doctor who lived in the 18th century. It is also worth noting that Leo Tolstoy also mentioned déjà vu.
Tina Turner, when she arrived in Egypt, suddenly saw quite familiar landscapes and objects, and remembered that during the time of the pharaohs she was a friend of the famous Queen Hatshepsut. The famous singer Madonna experienced something similar during her visit to the imperial palace in China.
Many people assume that “what has already been seen” is genetic memory. In this case, the awkward feeling of déjà vu is explained as a memory of the life of one's ancestors.
Many psychologists believe that this phenomenon may simply be a function of human self-defense. When we are in an awkward situation or in a place unfamiliar to us, we automatically begin to look for some familiar things or objects, this is done in order to somehow support our body at a time of psychological stress.
The phenomenon of déjà vu is quite common. Experts have found that 97% of people have experienced this feeling at least once. There have also been some rather unique cases. When a person experiences a feeling of deja vu almost every day. Mostly this feeling is accompanied to some extent by a slight feeling of discomfort, but sometimes it can be scary.
Psychiatrists also claim that frequently occurring déjà vu can be caused by a symptom of temporary lobar epilepsy. In many cases this is not dangerous. In addition, some ongoing research has shown that déjà vu can be induced artificially, either through hypnosis or through electrical stimulation of the temporal lobes of the brain.
Even physicists are trying to explain this amazing phenomenon. There is a kind of ecstatic concept according to which the past, present and immediate future happen simultaneously. Our consciousness, in turn, can only perceive what we call “now.” Physicists explain the phenomenon of déjà vu by some disruption in time.
Despite the fact that this phenomenon is strange and mysterious, since it does not pose any danger to a person, it means that each person himself can explain directly to himself why this or that situation or object seems familiar to him. Perhaps you once saw him briefly on TV or simply read about him in a book.