Was there a moment when you felt like you had lived it before? A strange feeling that both attaches and detaches you from the present, a strange sense of déjà vu. The word comes from the French language and means “already seen”. It means that what is happening now has happened before in the same way. Some people have confirmed that they have experienced it. For example, someone was talking to their friends, and all of a sudden, they felt, “Oh, I have been here before.”
Although déjà vu may be one of the most mysterious memory experiences, there are still a few possible scientific explanations. The first theory is the memory error. A part of the brain, such as the temporal lobe, that is responsible for recognizing familiar places, people, or experiences might be activated by mistake. This causes the brain to perceive the new environment as familiar. The second theory is the hologram theory. Our brain stores memories partially. If part of the current environment is similar to an old memory (even unconsciously), the brain reconstructs the whole scene as a familiar experience. According to the dual processing theory, sometimes information about a scene is transmitted to the brain through two different pathways, or one eye processes information more slowly than the other. Our brain interprets this delay as two separate events. As a result, it believes the scene has already happened.
These theories explain how our brain stores and recalls memories. It functions as a scanner that visualizes and processes the stored information in the memory. Our brain creates a mental map of the places we have been to and the experiences we have gained, and it stores them as memories. When two experiences are so alike, these mind maps are interpreted differently, which causes déjà vu.
In the end, whether you have experienced this strange feeling before or not, you should know there are many more mysteries in the world that we have no clue about, and some we may not understand in our lifetime, but one thing is certain: our brain is far more fascinating and complex than we realize, and there is always something new to discover.
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Featured Image: https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317895
Photo 1: https://www.inquirer.com/health/deja-vu-explanation-scientific-research-20221028.html