déjà vu: Definition and Much More from Answers.com
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déjà vu
The term "déjà vu" (IPA:/de?a vy/) (French for "already seen", also called paramnesiafrom the Greek word "παρα"(para) for parallel and "μν?μη"(mnimi) for memory) describes the experience of feeling that one haswitnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by aFrenchpsychic researcher,Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L‘Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future ofPsychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate French concentrator at theUniversity of Chicago.The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling senseoffamiliarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", or"weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequentlyattributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sensethat the experience "genuinely happened" in the past. Déjà vuhas been described as "Remembering the future."
The experience of déjà vu seems to be very common; in formal studies 70% or more of the population report having experiencedit at least once. References to the experience of déjà vu are also found in literature of the past, indicating it is not a newphenomenon. It has been extremely difficult to invoke the déjà vu experience in laboratorysettings, therefore making it a subject of few empirical studies. Recently, researchers have found ways to recreate thissensation usinghypnosis.[1]
Types of déjà vu
According to Arthur Funkhouser there are three major types of déjà vu.[2]
Déjà vécu
Usually translated as ‘already lived,‘ déjà vécu is described in a quotation fromCharlesDickens:
“ We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it![3] ”
When most most people speak of déjà vu, they are actually experiencing déjà vécu. Surveys have revealed that as much as 70% ofthe population have had these experiences, usually between ages 15 to 25, when the mind is still subjectable to noticing thechange in environment.[4] The experience is usually relatedto a very ordinary event, but it is so striking that it is remembered for several years afterwards.
Déjà vécu refers to an experience involving more than just sight, which is why labeling such "déjà vu" is usually inaccurate.The sense involves a great amount of detail, sensing that everything is just as it was before and a weird knowledge of what isgoing to be said or happen next.
More recently, the term déjà vécu has been used to describe very intense and persistent feelings of a déjà vu type, whichoccur as part of a memory disorder.[5]
Déjà senti
This phenomenon specifies something ‘already felt.‘ Unlike the implied precognition of déjà vécu, déjà senti is primarily oreven exclusively a mental happening, has no precognitive aspects, and rarely if ever remains in the afflicted person‘s memoryafterwards.
Dr. John Hughlings Jackson recorded the words of one of his patients who suffered from temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsyin an 1889 paper:
“ What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. ... At the same time, or ... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person‘s voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as ‘Oh yes – I see‘, ‘Of course – I remember‘, but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions. ”
As with Dr. Jackson‘s patient, some temporal-lobe epileptics may experience this phenomenon.
Déjà visité
This experience is less common and involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. The translation is "already visited." Hereone may know his or her way around in a new town or landscape while at the same time knowing that this should not bepossible.
Dreams,reincarnation and alsoout-of-body travel have been invoked to explain this phenomenon. Additionally, some suggest thatreading a detailed account of a place can result in this feeling when the locale is later visited. Two famous examples of such asituation were described byNathaniel Hawthorne in his book Our OldHome[6] andSir WalterScott in Guy Mannering.[7] Hawthornerecognized the ruins of a castle in England and later was able to trace the sensation to a piece written about the castle byAlexander Pope two hundred years earlier.
C. G. Jung published an account of déjà visité in his 1952 paper On synchronicity.[8]
In order to distinguish déjà visité from déjà vécu, it is important to identify the source of the feeling. Déjà vécu is inreference to the temporal occurrences and processes, while déjà visité has more to do withgeography andspatial relations.
Scientific research
In recent years, déjà vu has been subjected to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. The most likelyexplanation of déjà vu is that it is not an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather an anomaly of memory; it is theimpression that an experience is "being recalled".[citationneeded] This explanation is substantiated by the fact that the sense of "recollection" at the time isstrong in most cases, but that the circumstances of the "previous" experience (when, where and how the earlier experienceoccurred) are quite uncertain. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the "unsettling"experience of déjà vu itself, but little to no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstance(s) they were"remembering" when they had the déjà vu experience. In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurologicalsystems responsible forshort-term memory (events which are perceived as being in thepresent) and those responsible forlong-term memory (events which are perceived asbeing in the past).
Another theory being explored is that of vision. As the theory suggests, one eye may record what is seen fractionally fasterthan the other, creating that "strong recollection" sensation upon the "same" scene being viewed milliseconds later by theopposite eye.
Links with disorders
A clinical correlation has been found between the experience of déjà vu and disorders such asschizophrenia andanxiety,[9] and the likelihood of the experience considerably increases with subjects having these conditions.However, the strongest pathological association of déjà vu is withtemporal lobeepilepsy.[10][11] This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience ofdéjà vu is possibly aneurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in thebrain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological)epileptic episode regularly (e.g.the sudden "jolt", ahypnagogic jerk, that frequently occurs just prior to falling asleep),it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneoussensation of memory.
Pharmacology
It has been reported that certain recreational drugs increase thechances of déjà vu occurring in the user. Somepharmaceutical drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated inthe cause of déjà vu. Taiminen and Jääskeläinen (2001)reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencingintense and recurrent sensations of déjà vu on taking thedrugsamantadine andphenylpropanolaminetogether to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting that he completed the full course of his treatment andreported it to the psychologists to write-up as a case study. Due to thedopaminergicaction of the drugs and previous findings from electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, &Halgren, 1994), Taiminen and Jääskeläinen speculate that déjà vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesialtemporal areas of the brain.
Memory-based explanations
The similarity between a déjà vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation.Thus, encountering something which evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered maylead to déjà vu. In an effort to experimentally reproduce the sensation, Banister and Zangwill (1941) usedhypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia suggestions for material they had already seen. When thiswas later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in three of the 10 participantsreporting what the authors termed paramnesias. Memory-based explanations may lead to the development of a number of non-invasiveexperimental methods by which a long sought-after analogue of déjà vu can be reliably produced that would allow it to be testedunder well-controlled experimental conditions.
Neural theories
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, it was widely believed that déjà vu could be caused by the mis-timing ofneuronal firing. This timing error was thought to lead the brain to believe that it wasencountering a stimulus for the second time, when in fact, it was simply re-experiencing the same event from a slightly delayedsource. A number of variations of these theories exist, with miscommunication of the twocerebral hemispheres and abnormally fast neuronal firing also given as explanations for thesensation. Perhaps the most widely acknowledged neuronal theory is the optical pathway delay theory which explains déjà vu asbeing the product of a delayed optical input from oneeye.Closely following the input from thefirst eye (when it should be simultaneous), this misleads consciousawareness and suggests a sensation of familiarity when thereshould not be one. Although intuitively plausible, this theory isuntestable due to the minute times involved in neuronal firing,and inconsistent with reports that blind individuals experience déjà vuin the same way as sighted individuals (O‘Connor &Moulin, 2006).
Non-scientific Explanations
Parapsychology
Déjà vu is associated withprecognition,clairvoyance orextra-sensory perceptions, and it isfrequently cited as evidence for "psychic" abilities in the general population.Non-scientific explanations attribute the experience toprophecy, visions (such as received indreams) or past-life memories.
Dreams
Some believe déjà vu is the memory of dreams.Though the majority ofdreams are never remembered, a dreaming person can display activity inthe areas of the brain that process long-term memory. Ithas been speculated that dreams read directly into long-term memory,bypassing short-term memory entirely. In this case, déjà vumight be a memory of a forgotten dream with elements in common with thecurrent waking experience. This may be similar to anotherphenomenon known as déjà rêvé, or "already dreamed."
Not only is the link to dreams as they pertain to déjà vu the subject of scientific and psychological studies, it is also asubject of spiritual texts, as is found in, for example, in the writings of theBahá‘íFaith with quotes like "...perchance when ten years are gone, thou wilt witness in the outer world the very things thouhast dreamed tonight."[12] and "Behold how the thingwhich thou hast seen in thy dream is, after a considerable lapse of time, fully realized."[13]
Reincarnation
Those believing inreincarnation theorize that déjà vu is caused by fragments ofpast-life memories being jarred to the surface of the mind by familiar surroundings or people. Others theorize that thephenomenon is caused byastral projection, orout-of-body experiences (OBEs), where it is possible that individuals have visited places whilein theirastral bodies during sleep. The sensation may also be interpreted as connected tothe fulfillment of a condition as seen or felt in apremonition. For further cases ofremembering information from past lives, seeIan Stevenson.
Related phenomena
Jamais vu
Main article:Jamais vu
Jamais vu is a term in psychology (from the French, meaning "never seen") which is used to describe any familiar situationwhich is not recognised by the observer.
Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer‘s impression of seeing thesituation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.
Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that theyalready know.
Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types ofamnesia andepilepsy.
Theoretically, as seen below, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of adelirious disorder or intoxication could result in a deliriousexplanation of it, such as in theCapgras delusion, in which thepatient takes a person known by him/her for a falsedouble or impostor. If the impostor ishimself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described asdepersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termeddepersonalisation (or irreality) feelings.
The Timesonline reports:
“Chris Moulin, of theUniversity of Leeds, asked 92 volunteers to write out "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory inSydney lastweek he reported that 68 per cent of the volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. Dr Moulin believes that a similar brain fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in someschizophrenia patients: that a familiar person has been replaced by an impostor. Dr Moulin suggests they could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.[1] ”
Presque vu
Presque vu (from French, meaning "almost seen") is the sensation of being on the brink of anepiphany. Often very disorienting and distracting, presque vu rarely leads to an actual breakthrough.Frequently, one experiencing presque vu will say that they have something "on the tip of their tongue."
Presque vu is often cited by people who suffer fromepilepsy or other seizure-related brainconditions, such as temporal lobe lability.
L‘esprit de l‘escalier
Full article atL‘esprit de l‘escalier.
L‘esprit de l‘escalier (from French, "staircase wit") is remembering something when it is too late. For example, a clevercome-back to a remark, thought of after the conversation has ended. Another example for this is when you‘re about to take a testand you know everything, but, when it begins, you forget all that you‘ve learned; after taking the test you remember absolutelyeverything that you had forgotten while taking it.
Popular references
Television At the end of the third episode of the third season of the television seriesLost, Hurley claims to experience déjà vu whenJohn Locke makes a speech of saving Jack, Kate and Sawyer fromThe Others. The déjà vu experience he claimed was due to the fact that Desmond spoke of this speech (while apparently disoriented) with Hugo "Hurley" Reyes just minutes before it happened.
An episode ofScrubs in season five titled,My Déjà vu, My Déjà vu, the main character J.D., while going through the storyline of the episode, has many experiences of déjà vu. All these experiences allude to things that have happened in previous episodes and are sometimes even direct copies of the scene line-for-line.
An episode ofU.S. Acres (in theGarfield and Friends cartoon) centers on déjà vu, showing the characters realizing their actions are occurring repeatedly. In another episode, Orson is organizing his bookshelf. After getting a book called "Déjà vu: the sensation that you are doing something that you‘ve done before", he gets another book with the same title, and another, and another, until someone interrupts him.
AMonty Python sketch featuresMichael Palin hosting a documentary on deja vu. The program continually restarts, making Michael Palin‘s character anxious that he is suffering from deja vu.
TheStar Trek: The Next Generation episodeCause and Effect has the crew experiencing deja vu while caught in atime loop.
In theBuffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Becoming, Part One",Buffy experiences a déjà vu when a pencil rolls down a desk. She re-enacts the event, resulting in finding afloppy disk containing information that turns out to be very valuable.
The first season finale ofCharmed, "Déjà Vu All Over Again", the sisters deal with a warlock who works with a time demon to keep resetting the day when he fails to kill the sisters. Phoebe Halliwell, who has the ability of premonition, senses the repetitions and helps the other sisters, Prue and Piper, in recognizing the situation.
In theX-Files episode Monday, a woman experiences the same Monday repeatedly because her boyfriend blows up a bank with a bomb during a robbery because agentsFox Mulder andDana Scully were not able to stop the explosion. The only way Mulder could stop the bomb is by recognizing and acting on his feelings of déjà vu.
In the episode Speak No Evil in the animated seriesMy Life as a Teenage Robot while Jenny is attempting to put out a fire a giant globe rolls off (which is reminiscent of an earlier scene). Jenny says in an accented voice Deja Vu.
Movies In the1980 horror classicThe Shining, the hotel‘s caretaker Jack expresses a feeling of déjà vu, stating that he feels he has been to the hotel.
The1993 filmGroundhog Day documents a rather pertinent (to the main character, at least) representation of this phenomenon. The character also asks the Hotel Manager if she ever has deja vu
Déjà vu is a1989Polish-Soviet comedy film byJuliusz Machulski.
In the1999filmThe Matrix, the character of Neo experiences déjà vu when he sees a black cat go past twice in a row. Trinity explains to Neo that "a déjà vu is usually a glitch in the matrix" which occurs when the machines change something inside the matrix (seesimulated reality).
Despite its title, the2006 filmDéjà Vu directed byTony Scott and starringDenzel Washington in fact explores the subjects of space/time "worm holes" and time travel.
MusicVan Halen has a song titled Take Me Back (Deja Vu) on their albumBalance
Dionne Warwick had a Top 20 hitsingle, "Deja Vu" in1979.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded a song called "Deja Vu" for an album of the same name in 1970. The song‘s recurring theme was David Crosby singing "... and I feel like I‘ve been here before."
"Déjà Vu" is also the name of anIron Maiden song, on the albumSomewhere In Time (1986), about this phenomenon.
"Déjà Vu" is a song byDog Fashion Disco on their 2003 albumCommitted To A Bright Future.
"Déjà Vu" is a2006 song byBeyoncé Knowles featuringJay-Z.
"Déjà Vu" is a song by theYeah Yeah Yeahs.
"Déjà Vu" is a song by theBrazilian singerPitty.
The bandAce of Base recorded a song titled "My Déjà Vu" on their 1995 album "The Bridge".
Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz recorded in 1997 a song titled "Déja Vu (Uptown Baby)." It containssamples fromSteely Dan‘s "Black Cow" andJerry Rivera‘s "Amores Como El Nuestro".
"Déjà vu" is a song byAustralian bandSomething for Kate.
Americansinger/songwriterJohn Fogerty wrote a song called "Déjà Vu (All Over Again)."
"Déjà Vu" is a 1988 song byYngwie Malmsteen.
"Déjà Vu" is a song written and performed byThe Bee Gees, on the album ‘This is Where I came in‘.
Alternative rock bandBrand New named their second album, released in 2003,Deja Entendu, meaning "already heard".
There is aNew Zealand rock band going by the nameDeja Voodoo.
"Déjà Voodoo" is a composition by virtuoso bassistMichael Manring off of his 1991 album Drastic Measures.
"Strange Deja Vu" is a song by the bandDream Theater from their concept album,Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory in which the lead singer has a dream where he walks through a house and sees himself in a mirror as a young girl, which later on the albums turns out is himself in a former life, and that he (as the girl, Victoria) was murdered.
"Miss Deja Vu" is a track byLootpack (West Coast purist revivalist Hip-Hop Crew) that appears on their albumThe Lost Tapes (2003)
Deja Vu is mentioned on the hip hop duo‘sPete Rock and CL Smooth famous song "They Reminisce Over You". They say "deja vu/tell me what cha gonna do/when they reminisce over you/".
"Jamais Vu" is a track onCatch Without Arms, an album by the progressive alternative band, dredg.
Comedy ComedianGeorge Carlin invented an alternate phenomenon he called vujà dé, or "the feeling that somehow, none of this has ever happened before!" a term already exists for this sensation -jamais vu.
The end of an episode ofMonty Python‘s Flying Circus is a repeating sketch about déjà vu.
The song titled "Sweat" by the band Tool refers to deja vu - "Seems Like I‘ve been here before, Seems like I‘m slippin‘ into a dream within a dream"
Comics Déjà vu is aSilver AgeBatman villain.
QuotesYogi Berra said, "It‘s like déjà vu all over again" (one of many famousYogiisms).
Literature Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time (depending on translation), a novel by Marcel Proust, which unravels the narrator‘s life by way of four moments of déjà vu, also known as involuntary memory experience recall. Through these moments, the narrator recaptures large portions of his forgotten past.
That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French, a short story byStephen King, which deals with a subject‘s horrifying déjà vu experiences.
Déjà vu, presque vu and jamais vu are mentioned inJoseph Heller‘s 1961 novelCatch-22 and play a large role inKim Stanley Robinson‘s 1996 novelBlue Mars.
In the novelChoke, the narrator often visits a nursing home/mental hospital and describes seeing, and eventually even feeling it for himself, jamais vu.
InLemony Snicket‘s A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival, In Chapter Five (Page 103) it references déjà vu and the page after is the exact same page.
Computer gamesDeja Vu is a computer game running on mac and other platforms.NES game published by Seika.
Deja Vu (and its sequel, Deja Vu The Remix) is a computer game for theZX Spectrum by Andrew Daly, apparently named for its similarity to certain older games.
Chrono Lord Deja in World of Warcraft is an enemy of players of the game and a part of a time-traveling flight of dragons named the Infinite Dragonflight.
InThe Secret of Monkey Island,Guybrush Threepwood states "Déjà vu" as he first sees the mysterious island of Monkey Island.
The InternetDeja.com (Deja News) was a web-basedusenet archive purchased byGoogle, and now called Google Groups, although it can still be accessed via www.deja.com.
Misc Déjà vu is a Giant Inverted Boomerang ("Super Invertigo")roller coaster byVekoma that is operating atSix Flags Great America,Six Flags Magic Mountain andSix Flags Over Georgia.
Deja Blue is a spring water bottled byCadbury Schweppes and sold throughout theUnited States.
A take off of George Carlin‘s phrase Vujà Dé, is: "Déjà vu: Thinking that something has happened before, but knowing that it has not. Vujà Dé: Knowing that something has happened before, and wishing that it hadn‘t." (Such as a bad family reunion)
Déjà Blue is the name of a commercial airplane owned by JetBlue Airways.
Déjà vu was the title of aPerforming Arts Festival atIndian Institute of Technology Bombay.
See also
Anamnesis
Phenomenon
Precognition
Psychology
References
^ "Deja vu ‘recreated in laboratory‘", BBC News, 2006-07-21. Retrieved on 2006-07-27.
^ Funkhouser, Arthur (1996). "Three types of deja vu".
^ Dickens, Charles (1991). Personal History of David Copperfield. Time Warner Libraries. ISBN 1879329018.
^Howstuffworks "What is déjà vu?
^ Moulin, C.J.A.; Conway, M.A. Thompson, R.G., James, N. & Jones, R.W. (2005). "Disordered Memory Awareness: Recollective Confabulation in Two Cases of Persistent Déjà vecu". Neuropsychologia (43): 1362-1378.
^Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1863). Our Old Home. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co.. ISBN 1404374248.
^Scott, Sir Walter (1815). Guy Mannering otfr The Astrologer. Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne & Co.. ISBN 0766170713.
^Jung, C. G. (1952). "On synchronicity". (Jung‘s paper is often cited from a 1966 edition, however, this was not the original publication as Jung died in 1961.)
^Pacific NEUROPSYCHIATRY
^Neurology Channel
^Howstuffworks "What is déjà vu?
^The Valley of Wonderment
^LXXIX: As to thy question concerning the worlds ...
Neppe Déjà Vu Research and Theory. Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute. Retrieved on [[November 29]],2005.
Brown, Alan S. (2004). The Déjà Vu Experience. Psychology Press. ISBN 1841690759.
Draaisma, Douwe (2004). Why life speeds up as you get older. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521691990.
J. H. Jackson (1888). "A particular variety of epilepsy "intellectual aura", one case with symptoms of organic brain disease". Brain 11: 179-207.
External links
Chronic deja vu- quirks and quarks episode (mp3)
"When deja vu is more than just an odd feeling" The Ottawa Citizen, February 20 2006
"The Tease of Memory" The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23 2004
"Déjà Vu: If It All Seems Familiar, There May Be a Reason" New York Times, September 14, 2004
"Déjà Vu, Again and Again" New York Times, July 2, 2006
"UGH! I Just Got the Creepiest Feeling That I Have Been Here Before: Déjà vu and the Brain, Consciousness and Self", Neurobiology and Behavior, 1998
http://www.anthonypeake.com
The Skeptic‘s Dictionary
How Déjà Vu Works a Howstuffworks article
This entry is from Wikipedia, the leadinguser-contributed encyclopedia. It may not have been reviewed byprofessional editors (seefull disclaimer)
The term "déjà vu" (IPA:/de?a vy/) (French for "already seen", also called paramnesiafrom the Greek word "παρα"(para) for parallel and "μν?μη"(mnimi) for memory) describes the experience of feeling that one haswitnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was coined by aFrenchpsychic researcher,Émile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L‘Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future ofPsychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate French concentrator at theUniversity of Chicago.The experience of déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling senseoffamiliarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", or"weirdness". The "previous" experience is most frequentlyattributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sensethat the experience "genuinely happened" in the past. Déjà vuhas been described as "Remembering the future."
The experience of déjà vu seems to be very common; in formal studies 70% or more of the population report having experiencedit at least once. References to the experience of déjà vu are also found in literature of the past, indicating it is not a newphenomenon. It has been extremely difficult to invoke the déjà vu experience in laboratorysettings, therefore making it a subject of few empirical studies. Recently, researchers have found ways to recreate thissensation usinghypnosis.[1]
Types of déjà vu
According to Arthur Funkhouser there are three major types of déjà vu.[2]
Déjà vécu
Usually translated as ‘already lived,‘ déjà vécu is described in a quotation fromCharlesDickens:
“ We have all some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time – of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances – of our knowing perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly remember it![3] ”
When most most people speak of déjà vu, they are actually experiencing déjà vécu. Surveys have revealed that as much as 70% ofthe population have had these experiences, usually between ages 15 to 25, when the mind is still subjectable to noticing thechange in environment.[4] The experience is usually relatedto a very ordinary event, but it is so striking that it is remembered for several years afterwards.
Déjà vécu refers to an experience involving more than just sight, which is why labeling such "déjà vu" is usually inaccurate.The sense involves a great amount of detail, sensing that everything is just as it was before and a weird knowledge of what isgoing to be said or happen next.
More recently, the term déjà vécu has been used to describe very intense and persistent feelings of a déjà vu type, whichoccur as part of a memory disorder.[5]
Déjà senti
This phenomenon specifies something ‘already felt.‘ Unlike the implied precognition of déjà vécu, déjà senti is primarily oreven exclusively a mental happening, has no precognitive aspects, and rarely if ever remains in the afflicted person‘s memoryafterwards.
Dr. John Hughlings Jackson recorded the words of one of his patients who suffered from temporal lobe or psychomotor epilepsyin an 1889 paper:
“ What is occupying the attention is what has occupied it before, and indeed has been familiar, but has been for a time forgotten, and now is recovered with a slight sense of satisfaction as if it had been sought for. ... At the same time, or ... more accurately in immediate sequence, I am dimly aware that the recollection is fictitious and my state abnormal. The recollection is always started by another person‘s voice, or by my own verbalized thought, or by what I am reading and mentally verbalize; and I think that during the abnormal state I generally verbalize some such phrase of simple recognition as ‘Oh yes – I see‘, ‘Of course – I remember‘, but a minute or two later I can recollect neither the words nor the verbalized thought which gave rise to the recollection. I only find strongly that they resemble what I have felt before under similar abnormal conditions. ”
As with Dr. Jackson‘s patient, some temporal-lobe epileptics may experience this phenomenon.
Déjà visité
This experience is less common and involves an uncanny knowledge of a new place. The translation is "already visited." Hereone may know his or her way around in a new town or landscape while at the same time knowing that this should not bepossible.
Dreams,reincarnation and alsoout-of-body travel have been invoked to explain this phenomenon. Additionally, some suggest thatreading a detailed account of a place can result in this feeling when the locale is later visited. Two famous examples of such asituation were described byNathaniel Hawthorne in his book Our OldHome[6] andSir WalterScott in Guy Mannering.[7] Hawthornerecognized the ruins of a castle in England and later was able to trace the sensation to a piece written about the castle byAlexander Pope two hundred years earlier.
C. G. Jung published an account of déjà visité in his 1952 paper On synchronicity.[8]
In order to distinguish déjà visité from déjà vécu, it is important to identify the source of the feeling. Déjà vécu is inreference to the temporal occurrences and processes, while déjà visité has more to do withgeography andspatial relations.
Scientific research
In recent years, déjà vu has been subjected to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. The most likelyexplanation of déjà vu is that it is not an act of "precognition" or "prophecy", but rather an anomaly of memory; it is theimpression that an experience is "being recalled".[citationneeded] This explanation is substantiated by the fact that the sense of "recollection" at the time isstrong in most cases, but that the circumstances of the "previous" experience (when, where and how the earlier experienceoccurred) are quite uncertain. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the "unsettling"experience of déjà vu itself, but little to no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstance(s) they were"remembering" when they had the déjà vu experience. In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurologicalsystems responsible forshort-term memory (events which are perceived as being in thepresent) and those responsible forlong-term memory (events which are perceived asbeing in the past).
Another theory being explored is that of vision. As the theory suggests, one eye may record what is seen fractionally fasterthan the other, creating that "strong recollection" sensation upon the "same" scene being viewed milliseconds later by theopposite eye.
Links with disorders
A clinical correlation has been found between the experience of déjà vu and disorders such asschizophrenia andanxiety,[9] and the likelihood of the experience considerably increases with subjects having these conditions.However, the strongest pathological association of déjà vu is withtemporal lobeepilepsy.[10][11] This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience ofdéjà vu is possibly aneurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in thebrain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological)epileptic episode regularly (e.g.the sudden "jolt", ahypnagogic jerk, that frequently occurs just prior to falling asleep),it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneoussensation of memory.
Pharmacology
It has been reported that certain recreational drugs increase thechances of déjà vu occurring in the user. Somepharmaceutical drugs, when taken together, have also been implicated inthe cause of déjà vu. Taiminen and Jääskeläinen (2001)reported the case of an otherwise healthy male who started experiencingintense and recurrent sensations of déjà vu on taking thedrugsamantadine andphenylpropanolaminetogether to relieve flu symptoms. He found the experience so interesting that he completed the full course of his treatment andreported it to the psychologists to write-up as a case study. Due to thedopaminergicaction of the drugs and previous findings from electrode stimulation of the brain (e.g. Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, &Halgren, 1994), Taiminen and Jääskeläinen speculate that déjà vu occurs as a result of hyperdopaminergic action in the mesialtemporal areas of the brain.
Memory-based explanations
The similarity between a déjà vu-eliciting stimulus and an existing, but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation.Thus, encountering something which evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered maylead to déjà vu. In an effort to experimentally reproduce the sensation, Banister and Zangwill (1941) usedhypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia suggestions for material they had already seen. When thiswas later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in three of the 10 participantsreporting what the authors termed paramnesias. Memory-based explanations may lead to the development of a number of non-invasiveexperimental methods by which a long sought-after analogue of déjà vu can be reliably produced that would allow it to be testedunder well-controlled experimental conditions.
Neural theories
In the late 19th and early 20th Centuries, it was widely believed that déjà vu could be caused by the mis-timing ofneuronal firing. This timing error was thought to lead the brain to believe that it wasencountering a stimulus for the second time, when in fact, it was simply re-experiencing the same event from a slightly delayedsource. A number of variations of these theories exist, with miscommunication of the twocerebral hemispheres and abnormally fast neuronal firing also given as explanations for thesensation. Perhaps the most widely acknowledged neuronal theory is the optical pathway delay theory which explains déjà vu asbeing the product of a delayed optical input from oneeye.Closely following the input from thefirst eye (when it should be simultaneous), this misleads consciousawareness and suggests a sensation of familiarity when thereshould not be one. Although intuitively plausible, this theory isuntestable due to the minute times involved in neuronal firing,and inconsistent with reports that blind individuals experience déjà vuin the same way as sighted individuals (O‘Connor &Moulin, 2006).
Non-scientific Explanations
Parapsychology
Déjà vu is associated withprecognition,clairvoyance orextra-sensory perceptions, and it isfrequently cited as evidence for "psychic" abilities in the general population.Non-scientific explanations attribute the experience toprophecy, visions (such as received indreams) or past-life memories.
Dreams
Some believe déjà vu is the memory of dreams.Though the majority ofdreams are never remembered, a dreaming person can display activity inthe areas of the brain that process long-term memory. Ithas been speculated that dreams read directly into long-term memory,bypassing short-term memory entirely. In this case, déjà vumight be a memory of a forgotten dream with elements in common with thecurrent waking experience. This may be similar to anotherphenomenon known as déjà rêvé, or "already dreamed."
Not only is the link to dreams as they pertain to déjà vu the subject of scientific and psychological studies, it is also asubject of spiritual texts, as is found in, for example, in the writings of theBahá‘íFaith with quotes like "...perchance when ten years are gone, thou wilt witness in the outer world the very things thouhast dreamed tonight."[12] and "Behold how the thingwhich thou hast seen in thy dream is, after a considerable lapse of time, fully realized."[13]
Reincarnation
Those believing inreincarnation theorize that déjà vu is caused by fragments ofpast-life memories being jarred to the surface of the mind by familiar surroundings or people. Others theorize that thephenomenon is caused byastral projection, orout-of-body experiences (OBEs), where it is possible that individuals have visited places whilein theirastral bodies during sleep. The sensation may also be interpreted as connected tothe fulfillment of a condition as seen or felt in apremonition. For further cases ofremembering information from past lives, seeIan Stevenson.
Related phenomena
Jamais vu
Main article:Jamais vu
Jamais vu is a term in psychology (from the French, meaning "never seen") which is used to describe any familiar situationwhich is not recognised by the observer.
Often described as the opposite of déjà vu, jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer‘s impression of seeing thesituation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that he or she has been in the situation before.
Jamais vu is more commonly explained as when a person momentarily does not recognize a word, person, or place that theyalready know.
Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types ofamnesia andepilepsy.
Theoretically, as seen below, a jamais vu feeling in a sufferer of adelirious disorder or intoxication could result in a deliriousexplanation of it, such as in theCapgras delusion, in which thepatient takes a person known by him/her for a falsedouble or impostor. If the impostor ishimself, the clinical setting would be the same as the one described asdepersonalisation, hence jamais vus of oneself or of the very "reality of reality", are termeddepersonalisation (or irreality) feelings.
The Timesonline reports:
“Chris Moulin, of theUniversity of Leeds, asked 92 volunteers to write out "door" 30 times in 60 seconds. At the International Conference on Memory inSydney lastweek he reported that 68 per cent of the volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such as beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. Dr Moulin believes that a similar brain fatigue underlies a phenomenon observed in someschizophrenia patients: that a familiar person has been replaced by an impostor. Dr Moulin suggests they could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.[1] ”
Presque vu
Presque vu (from French, meaning "almost seen") is the sensation of being on the brink of anepiphany. Often very disorienting and distracting, presque vu rarely leads to an actual breakthrough.Frequently, one experiencing presque vu will say that they have something "on the tip of their tongue."
Presque vu is often cited by people who suffer fromepilepsy or other seizure-related brainconditions, such as temporal lobe lability.
L‘esprit de l‘escalier
Full article atL‘esprit de l‘escalier.
L‘esprit de l‘escalier (from French, "staircase wit") is remembering something when it is too late. For example, a clevercome-back to a remark, thought of after the conversation has ended. Another example for this is when you‘re about to take a testand you know everything, but, when it begins, you forget all that you‘ve learned; after taking the test you remember absolutelyeverything that you had forgotten while taking it.
Popular references
Television At the end of the third episode of the third season of the television seriesLost, Hurley claims to experience déjà vu whenJohn Locke makes a speech of saving Jack, Kate and Sawyer fromThe Others. The déjà vu experience he claimed was due to the fact that Desmond spoke of this speech (while apparently disoriented) with Hugo "Hurley" Reyes just minutes before it happened.
An episode ofScrubs in season five titled,My Déjà vu, My Déjà vu, the main character J.D., while going through the storyline of the episode, has many experiences of déjà vu. All these experiences allude to things that have happened in previous episodes and are sometimes even direct copies of the scene line-for-line.
An episode ofU.S. Acres (in theGarfield and Friends cartoon) centers on déjà vu, showing the characters realizing their actions are occurring repeatedly. In another episode, Orson is organizing his bookshelf. After getting a book called "Déjà vu: the sensation that you are doing something that you‘ve done before", he gets another book with the same title, and another, and another, until someone interrupts him.
AMonty Python sketch featuresMichael Palin hosting a documentary on deja vu. The program continually restarts, making Michael Palin‘s character anxious that he is suffering from deja vu.
TheStar Trek: The Next Generation episodeCause and Effect has the crew experiencing deja vu while caught in atime loop.
In theBuffy the Vampire Slayer episode "Becoming, Part One",Buffy experiences a déjà vu when a pencil rolls down a desk. She re-enacts the event, resulting in finding afloppy disk containing information that turns out to be very valuable.
The first season finale ofCharmed, "Déjà Vu All Over Again", the sisters deal with a warlock who works with a time demon to keep resetting the day when he fails to kill the sisters. Phoebe Halliwell, who has the ability of premonition, senses the repetitions and helps the other sisters, Prue and Piper, in recognizing the situation.
In theX-Files episode Monday, a woman experiences the same Monday repeatedly because her boyfriend blows up a bank with a bomb during a robbery because agentsFox Mulder andDana Scully were not able to stop the explosion. The only way Mulder could stop the bomb is by recognizing and acting on his feelings of déjà vu.
In the episode Speak No Evil in the animated seriesMy Life as a Teenage Robot while Jenny is attempting to put out a fire a giant globe rolls off (which is reminiscent of an earlier scene). Jenny says in an accented voice Deja Vu.
Movies In the1980 horror classicThe Shining, the hotel‘s caretaker Jack expresses a feeling of déjà vu, stating that he feels he has been to the hotel.
The1993 filmGroundhog Day documents a rather pertinent (to the main character, at least) representation of this phenomenon. The character also asks the Hotel Manager if she ever has deja vu
Déjà vu is a1989Polish-Soviet comedy film byJuliusz Machulski.
In the1999filmThe Matrix, the character of Neo experiences déjà vu when he sees a black cat go past twice in a row. Trinity explains to Neo that "a déjà vu is usually a glitch in the matrix" which occurs when the machines change something inside the matrix (seesimulated reality).
Despite its title, the2006 filmDéjà Vu directed byTony Scott and starringDenzel Washington in fact explores the subjects of space/time "worm holes" and time travel.
MusicVan Halen has a song titled Take Me Back (Deja Vu) on their albumBalance
Dionne Warwick had a Top 20 hitsingle, "Deja Vu" in1979.
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young recorded a song called "Deja Vu" for an album of the same name in 1970. The song‘s recurring theme was David Crosby singing "... and I feel like I‘ve been here before."
"Déjà Vu" is also the name of anIron Maiden song, on the albumSomewhere In Time (1986), about this phenomenon.
"Déjà Vu" is a song byDog Fashion Disco on their 2003 albumCommitted To A Bright Future.
"Déjà Vu" is a2006 song byBeyoncé Knowles featuringJay-Z.
"Déjà Vu" is a song by theYeah Yeah Yeahs.
"Déjà Vu" is a song by theBrazilian singerPitty.
The bandAce of Base recorded a song titled "My Déjà Vu" on their 1995 album "The Bridge".
Lord Tariq and Peter Gunz recorded in 1997 a song titled "Déja Vu (Uptown Baby)." It containssamples fromSteely Dan‘s "Black Cow" andJerry Rivera‘s "Amores Como El Nuestro".
"Déjà vu" is a song byAustralian bandSomething for Kate.
Americansinger/songwriterJohn Fogerty wrote a song called "Déjà Vu (All Over Again)."
"Déjà Vu" is a 1988 song byYngwie Malmsteen.
"Déjà Vu" is a song written and performed byThe Bee Gees, on the album ‘This is Where I came in‘.
Alternative rock bandBrand New named their second album, released in 2003,Deja Entendu, meaning "already heard".
There is aNew Zealand rock band going by the nameDeja Voodoo.
"Déjà Voodoo" is a composition by virtuoso bassistMichael Manring off of his 1991 album Drastic Measures.
"Strange Deja Vu" is a song by the bandDream Theater from their concept album,Metropolis Pt. 2: Scenes from a Memory in which the lead singer has a dream where he walks through a house and sees himself in a mirror as a young girl, which later on the albums turns out is himself in a former life, and that he (as the girl, Victoria) was murdered.
"Miss Deja Vu" is a track byLootpack (West Coast purist revivalist Hip-Hop Crew) that appears on their albumThe Lost Tapes (2003)
Deja Vu is mentioned on the hip hop duo‘sPete Rock and CL Smooth famous song "They Reminisce Over You". They say "deja vu/tell me what cha gonna do/when they reminisce over you/".
"Jamais Vu" is a track onCatch Without Arms, an album by the progressive alternative band, dredg.
Comedy ComedianGeorge Carlin invented an alternate phenomenon he called vujà dé, or "the feeling that somehow, none of this has ever happened before!" a term already exists for this sensation -jamais vu.
The end of an episode ofMonty Python‘s Flying Circus is a repeating sketch about déjà vu.
The song titled "Sweat" by the band Tool refers to deja vu - "Seems Like I‘ve been here before, Seems like I‘m slippin‘ into a dream within a dream"
Comics Déjà vu is aSilver AgeBatman villain.
QuotesYogi Berra said, "It‘s like déjà vu all over again" (one of many famousYogiisms).
Literature Remembrance of Things Past or In Search of Lost Time (depending on translation), a novel by Marcel Proust, which unravels the narrator‘s life by way of four moments of déjà vu, also known as involuntary memory experience recall. Through these moments, the narrator recaptures large portions of his forgotten past.
That Feeling, You Can Only Say What It Is in French, a short story byStephen King, which deals with a subject‘s horrifying déjà vu experiences.
Déjà vu, presque vu and jamais vu are mentioned inJoseph Heller‘s 1961 novelCatch-22 and play a large role inKim Stanley Robinson‘s 1996 novelBlue Mars.
In the novelChoke, the narrator often visits a nursing home/mental hospital and describes seeing, and eventually even feeling it for himself, jamais vu.
InLemony Snicket‘s A Series of Unfortunate Events: The Carnivorous Carnival, In Chapter Five (Page 103) it references déjà vu and the page after is the exact same page.
Computer gamesDeja Vu is a computer game running on mac and other platforms.NES game published by Seika.
Deja Vu (and its sequel, Deja Vu The Remix) is a computer game for theZX Spectrum by Andrew Daly, apparently named for its similarity to certain older games.
Chrono Lord Deja in World of Warcraft is an enemy of players of the game and a part of a time-traveling flight of dragons named the Infinite Dragonflight.
InThe Secret of Monkey Island,Guybrush Threepwood states "Déjà vu" as he first sees the mysterious island of Monkey Island.
The InternetDeja.com (Deja News) was a web-basedusenet archive purchased byGoogle, and now called Google Groups, although it can still be accessed via www.deja.com.
Misc Déjà vu is a Giant Inverted Boomerang ("Super Invertigo")roller coaster byVekoma that is operating atSix Flags Great America,Six Flags Magic Mountain andSix Flags Over Georgia.
Deja Blue is a spring water bottled byCadbury Schweppes and sold throughout theUnited States.
A take off of George Carlin‘s phrase Vujà Dé, is: "Déjà vu: Thinking that something has happened before, but knowing that it has not. Vujà Dé: Knowing that something has happened before, and wishing that it hadn‘t." (Such as a bad family reunion)
Déjà Blue is the name of a commercial airplane owned by JetBlue Airways.
Déjà vu was the title of aPerforming Arts Festival atIndian Institute of Technology Bombay.
See also
Anamnesis
Phenomenon
Precognition
Psychology
References
^ "Deja vu ‘recreated in laboratory‘", BBC News, 2006-07-21. Retrieved on 2006-07-27.
^ Funkhouser, Arthur (1996). "Three types of deja vu".
^ Dickens, Charles (1991). Personal History of David Copperfield. Time Warner Libraries. ISBN 1879329018.
^Howstuffworks "What is déjà vu?
^ Moulin, C.J.A.; Conway, M.A. Thompson, R.G., James, N. & Jones, R.W. (2005). "Disordered Memory Awareness: Recollective Confabulation in Two Cases of Persistent Déjà vecu". Neuropsychologia (43): 1362-1378.
^Hawthorne, Nathaniel (1863). Our Old Home. Boston: Houghton Mifflin & Co.. ISBN 1404374248.
^Scott, Sir Walter (1815). Guy Mannering otfr The Astrologer. Edinburgh: J. Ballantyne & Co.. ISBN 0766170713.
^Jung, C. G. (1952). "On synchronicity". (Jung‘s paper is often cited from a 1966 edition, however, this was not the original publication as Jung died in 1961.)
^Pacific NEUROPSYCHIATRY
^Neurology Channel
^Howstuffworks "What is déjà vu?
^The Valley of Wonderment
^LXXIX: As to thy question concerning the worlds ...
Neppe Déjà Vu Research and Theory. Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute. Retrieved on [[November 29]],2005.
Brown, Alan S. (2004). The Déjà Vu Experience. Psychology Press. ISBN 1841690759.
Draaisma, Douwe (2004). Why life speeds up as you get older. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0521691990.
J. H. Jackson (1888). "A particular variety of epilepsy "intellectual aura", one case with symptoms of organic brain disease". Brain 11: 179-207.
External links
Chronic deja vu- quirks and quarks episode (mp3)
"When deja vu is more than just an odd feeling" The Ottawa Citizen, February 20 2006
"The Tease of Memory" The Chronicle of Higher Education, July 23 2004
"Déjà Vu: If It All Seems Familiar, There May Be a Reason" New York Times, September 14, 2004
"Déjà Vu, Again and Again" New York Times, July 2, 2006
"UGH! I Just Got the Creepiest Feeling That I Have Been Here Before: Déjà vu and the Brain, Consciousness and Self", Neurobiology and Behavior, 1998
http://www.anthonypeake.com
The Skeptic‘s Dictionary
How Déjà Vu Works a Howstuffworks article
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