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Why do people experience déjà vu? – Atharova P., 10 years, Bengalu, India
Have you ever felt that strange feeling that you had previously experienced the same exact situation, although it’s impossible? Sometimes it may even seem that you rely on what has already happened. This phenomenon, known as Déjà VU, has been perplexed for a very long time by philosophers, neurologists and writers.
Since the end of the 1800s, many theories about what can cause Déjà vu have begun to emerge, which means “already visible” in French. People thought it was due to mental dysfunction or perhaps the type of brain problem. Or maybe it was a temporary hiccup otherwise for normal human memory. However, the topic has recently not reached the field of science.
Move from paranormal to scientific
At the beginning of this millennium, a scientist named Alan Brown decided to review everything researchers wrote about Déjà vu by then. Most of what he could find had a paranormal taste associated with supernatural – things like past life or mental abilities. However, he also found research that interviewed permanent people about their Déjà vu experience. Of all these documents, Brown was able to figure out some of the main conclusions of the Déjà VU phenomenon.
For example, Brown found that about two -thirds of people were experiencing Déjà vu at some point in their lives. He found that the most common Déjà VU trigger is a scene or place, while the other common trigger is a conversation. He also reported clues for about about a century of medical literature about a possible relationship between Déjà VU and some types of seizures in the brain.
Brown’s review included Déjà vu’s topic in the field of more basic science, as it appeared in both the scientific journal that scientists studying cognition tend to read, as well as in a book dedicated to scientists. His work was a catalyst for scientists to design experiments to investigate Déjà VU.
Déjà vu testing at the Psychology Laboratory
Encouraged by Brown’s work, my own research team began experiments to test hypotheses on possible Déjà VU mechanisms. We have explored the hypothesis of almost a century, which shows that déjà vu can occur when your memory has a spatial similarity between the current scene and underestimated scenes. Psychologists called it a Gestalt’s cognitive hypothesis.
For example, imagine you are going to a nursing station in the hospital department to visit a sick friend along the way. Although you have never been to this hospital before, you have been shocked by the feeling you have. The main reason for this Déjà VU experience may be that the layout of the stage, including furniture layout and specific items in space, is the same layout as the other scene you have experienced in the past.
Perhaps the way there is a nursing station – furniture, items on the counter, the way it connects to the corners of the hallway is the same as that of the greeting tables was arranged with signs and furniture in the hallway at the entrance to the school event where you attend. Based on the Gestalt’s cognitive hypothesis, if that previous situation with a similar layout as the current one, you may not come to your mind, you may be left with only a strong sense of cognition to the present.
To explore this idea in the lab, my team used virtual reality to engage people in the scenes. In this way, we were able to manipulate the environment in which people found themselves – some scenes shared the same spatial layout, and were different. As predicted, Déjà VU is more likely to have been on a stage where the same spatial layout of the elements was on the scene as they watched but did not remember.
This study shows that one factor in the Déjà VU may be a spatial similarity of the new scene to one in memory that is currently unable to head consciously. However, this does not mean that spatial similarity is the only cause of Déjà vu. It is very likely that many factors can contribute to what makes a stage or situation feel familiar. More research is performed to investigate additional possible factors related to this mysterious phenomenon.
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This article has been published from a conversation, non -profit, independent news organizations that provide you with facts and reliable analysis to help you give meaning to our complex world. It wrote this: Anne Cleary, Colorado State University
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Anne Cleary is a member of the Council of the American Psychologists Association.