{"id":31429,"date":"2022-10-03T04:28:00","date_gmt":"2022-10-03T04:28:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/?p=31429"},"modified":"2022-10-05T12:20:56","modified_gmt":"2022-10-05T12:20:56","slug":"what-is-deja-vu-psychologists-are-exploring-this-creepy-feeling-of-having-already-lived-through-an-experience-before","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/what-is-deja-vu-psychologists-are-exploring-this-creepy-feeling-of-having-already-lived-through-an-experience-before\/","title":{"rendered":"What is d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu? Psychologists are exploring this creepy feeling of having already lived through an experience\u00a0before"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Anne Cleary<\/a>, Colorado State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Curious Kids<\/a> is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Why do people experience d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu? \u2013 Atharva P., age 10, Bengaluru, India<\/strong><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

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Have you ever had that weird feeling that you\u2019ve experienced the same exact situation before<\/a>, even though that\u2019s impossible? Sometimes it can even seem like you\u2019re reliving something that already happened. This phenomenon, known as d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/a>, has puzzled philosophers, neurologists<\/a> and writers<\/a> for a very long time<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Starting in the late 1800s, many theories began to emerge<\/a> regarding what might cause d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu, which means \u201calready seen\u201d in French. People thought maybe it stemmed from mental dysfunction or perhaps a type of brain problem. Or maybe it was a temporary hiccup in the otherwise normal operation of human memory. But the topic did not reach the realm of science until quite recently.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Moving from the paranormal to the scientific<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Early in this millennium, a scientist named Alan Brown decided to conduct a review of everything researchers had written about d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu<\/a> until that point. Much of what he could find had a paranormal flavor, having to do with the supernatural \u2013 things like past lives or psychic abilities. But he also found studies that surveyed regular people about their d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu experiences. From all these papers, Brown was able to glean some basic findings on the d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For example, Brown determined that roughly two thirds of people experience d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu at some point in their lives. He determined that the most common trigger of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu is a scene or place, and the next most common trigger is a conversation. He also reported on hints throughout a century or so of medical literature of a possible association between d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu and some types of seizure activity in the brain.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Brown\u2019s review brought the topic of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu into the realm of more mainstream science, because it appeared in both a scientific journal that scientists who study cognition tend to read, and also in a book<\/a> aimed at scientists. His work served as a catalyst for scientists to design experiments to investigate d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Testing d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu in the psychology lab<\/h2>\n\n\n\n

Prompted by Brown\u2019s work, my own research team began conducting experiments aimed at testing hypotheses about possible mechanisms of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. We investigated a near century-old hypothesis<\/a> that suggested d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu can happen when there\u2019s a spatial resemblance between a current scene and an unrecalled scene in your memory. Psychologists called this the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"brightly<\/a>
Maybe the layout of a new place is very similar to somewhere else you\u2019ve been, but that you aren\u2019t consciously remembering. FS Productions\/Tetra images via Getty Images<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

For example, imagine you\u2019re passing the nursing station in a hospital unit on your way to visit a sick friend. Although you\u2019ve never been to this hospital before, you are struck with a feeling that you have. The underlying cause for this experience of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu could be that the layout of the scene, including the placement of the furniture and the particular objects within the space, have the same layout as a different scene that you did experience in the past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Maybe the way the nursing station is situated \u2013 the furniture, the items on the counter, the way it connects to the corners of the hallway \u2013 is the same as how a set of welcome tables was arranged relative to signs and furniture in a hallway at the entrance to a school event you attended a year earlier. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, if that previous situation with a similar layout to the current one doesn\u2019t come to mind, you might be left only with a strong feeling of familiarity for the current one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To investigate this idea in the laboratory, my team used virtual reality to place people within scenes. That way we could manipulate the environments people found themselves in \u2013 some scenes shared the same spatial layout while otherwise being distinct. As predicted, d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu was more likely to happen<\/a> when people were in a scene that contained the same spatial arrangement of elements as an earlier scene they viewed but didn\u2019t recall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This research suggests that one contributing factor to d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu can be spatial resemblance of a new scene to one in memory that fails to be consciously called to mind at the moment. However, it does not mean that spatial resemblance is the only cause of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu. Very likely, many factors can contribute to what makes a scene or a situation feel familiar. More research is underway to investigate additional possible factors at play in this mysterious phenomenon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Hello, curious kids! Do you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer? Ask an adult to send your question to CuriousKidsUS@theconversation.com<\/a>. Please tell us your name, age and the city where you live.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

And since curiosity has no age limit \u2013 adults, let us know what you\u2019re wondering, too. We won\u2019t be able to answer every question, but we will do our best.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Anne Cleary<\/a>, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Colorado State University<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This article is republished from The Conversation<\/a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Anne Cleary, Colorado State University Curious Kids is a series for children of all ages. If you have a question you\u2019d like an expert to answer, send it to curiouskidsus@theconversation.com. Why do people experience d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu? \u2013 Atharva P., age 10, Bengaluru, India Have you ever had that weird feeling that you\u2019ve experienced the same […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":44,"featured_media":31430,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[42,3410],"tags":[6689,6786,1161,4751,228,10248,12688,12687,4391],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31429"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/44"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31429"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31429\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31440,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31429\/revisions\/31440"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31430"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31429"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31429"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lifeandnews.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31429"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}