![]() A new report by Colorado State University psychologist Anne M. However, in recent years, as more scientists began studying this phenomenon, a number of theories about déjà vu have emerged, suggesting that it is not merely a glitch in our brain’s memory system. For a long time, this eerie sensation has been attributed to everything from paranormal disturbances to neurological disorders. This mysterious feeling, commonly known as déjà vu, occurs when we feel that a new situation is familiar, even if there is evidence that the situation could not have occurred previously. Advances in Methods and Practices in Psychological ScienceĪll of us have experienced being in a new place and feeling certain that we have been there before.Psychological Science in the Public Interest.Current Directions in Psychological Science.She is also an assistant professor in the Department of Neurology at the College of Medicine. Hershey Medical Center in both the Comprehensive Epilepsy Program and the Affiliated Rehabilitation Program of Pinnacle Health. I had discounted the idea of previous lives and things like that by my late teens and was already looking for more scientific explanations for the world, so when I had the experience, it kind of made me a believer that things like déjà vu even existed."Ĭlaire Flaherty-Craig, Ph.D., is currently a consulting and treating neuropsychologist at The Milton S. I could even envision what the landscape looked like around the bend in the road, and about an hour later when I reached there, that's what it looked like. When I was on the west coast hiking one day, I had a very distinct feeling, a real strange sense that I'd been there already. She recalls a déjà vu experience of her own from early adulthood as an example: "After college graduation, I took five weeks and went on a hiking trip in Ireland. "Statistically it occurs more in late adolescence and frequency of episodes declines with age." One popular belief is that déjà vu might result from an accumulation of life experience, but science says otherwise, explains Flaherty-Craig. ![]() "It was thought that one hemisphere of the brain would process the visual information first and so the delayed information reaching the other hemisphere was processed like a memory." However, recent studies done on the blind have challenged this idea, and Flaherty-Craig notes at least one case where the blind individual reported déjà vu involving hearing, touch, and smell. "There was a long-standing theory about a visual disconnect," she explains. Dozens of "causes" of déjà vu have been proposed over many decades, remarks Flaherty-Craig, but most fall by the wayside as researchers learn more about the human brain and cognitive processes. Carl Jung suggested it arose from tapping the collective unconscious. Proponents of psychic phenomenon quickly latched onto it as evidence of past lives, while early psychiatrists and psychologists bandied about various theories to explain its occurrence: Sigmund Freud attributed it to repressed desires. ![]() The concept of déjà vu has been around since French philosopher and researcher Émile Boirac coined the term in 1876. The actual trigger for it in healthy individuals is not exactly known, but we do know those same regions of memory and memory monitoring are involved." Those patients reporting déjà vu are temporal lobe seizure patients. The brain regions for memory are in the temporal lobes, and there's an area for monitoring memory accuracy in the middle frontal lobe. "It's been most closely studied in epilepsy, where patients often experience it before a seizure. "Déjàvu, a French term meaning 'already seen,' is considered a disconnect or clash between objective unfamiliarity and a subject sense of familiarity," says Claire Flaherty-Craig, a consulting and treating neuropsychologist at Hershey Medical Center. It's typically a brief sensation, lasting no more than ten to thirty seconds, but ninety-six percent of the population claims to have experienced at least one occurrence. ![]() ![]() If you've ever had that fleeting, mysterious sense that something new-a city or person you're seeing for the first time-is somehow familiar, that you've been there or known them before, then you can count yourself among those who have experienced déjà vu. ![]()
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