Been There, Felt That: The Intriguing Puzzle of Déjà Vu

What’s déjà vu? Psychologists are exploring this creepy feeling of getting already lived by way of an expertise earlier than.

Have you ever ever had that bizarre feeling that you just’ve skilled the identical actual scenario earlier than, regardless that that’s unimaginable? Generally it will probably even seem to be you’re reliving one thing that already occurred. This phenomenon, generally known as déjà vu, has puzzled philosophers, neurologists, and writers for a very very long time.

Beginning within the late 1800s, many theories started to emerge concerning what would possibly trigger déjà vu, which implies “already seen” in French. Individuals thought perhaps it stemmed from psychological dysfunction or maybe a kind of mind downside. Or perhaps it was a short lived hiccup within the in any other case regular operation of human reminiscence. Nonetheless, the subject didn’t attain the realm of science till fairly lately.

Transferring From the Paranormal to the Scientific

Early on this millennium, a scientist named Alan Brown determined to conduct a overview of every thing researchers had written about déjà vu till that time. A lot of what he might discover had a mystical taste, having to do with the supernatural – issues like previous lives or psychic skills. However he additionally discovered research that surveyed common individuals about their déjà vu experiences. From all these papers, Brown was capable of glean some fundamental findings on the déjà vu phenomenon.

For instance, Brown decided that roughly two-thirds of individuals expertise déjà vu in some unspecified time in the future of their lives. He decided that the most typical set off of déjà vu is a scene or place, and the following commonest set off is a dialog. He additionally reported on hints all through a century or so of medical literature of a doable affiliation between déjà vu and a few sorts of seizure exercise within the mind.

Brown’s overview introduced the subject of déjà vu into the realm of extra mainstream science, as a result of it appeared in each a scientific journal that scientists who research cognition are inclined to learn, and in addition in a guide geared toward scientists. His work served as a catalyst for scientists to design experiments to analyze déjà vu.

Possibly the structure of a brand new place is similar to someplace else you’ve been, however that you just aren’t consciously remembering. Credit score: SciTechDaily.com

Testing Déjà Vu within the Psychology Lab

Prompted by Brown’s work, my very own analysis staff started conducting experiments geared toward testing hypotheses about doable mechanisms of déjà vu. We investigated a close to century-old speculation that advised déjà vu can occur when there’s a spatial resemblance between a present scene and an unrecalled scene in your reminiscence. Psychologists known as this the Gestalt familiarity speculation.

For instance, think about you’re passing the nursing station in a hospital unit in your solution to go to a sick buddy. Though you’ve by no means been to this hospital earlier than, you might be struck with a sense that you’ve got. The underlying trigger for this expertise of déjà vu could possibly be that the structure of the scene, together with the position of the furnishings and the actual objects inside the area, have the identical structure as a special scene that you just did expertise previously.

Possibly the way in which the nursing station is located – the furnishings, the gadgets on the counter, the way in which it connects to the corners of the hallway – is identical as how a set of welcome tables was organized relative to indicators and furnishings in a hallway on the entrance to a college occasion you attended a yr earlier. In accordance with the Gestalt familiarity speculation, if that earlier scenario with an analogous structure to the present one doesn’t come to thoughts, you may be left solely with a robust feeling of familiarity for the present one.

To analyze this concept within the laboratory, my staff used digital actuality to put individuals inside scenes. That means we might manipulate the environments individuals discovered themselves in – some scenes shared the identical spatial structure whereas in any other case being distinct. As predicted, déjà vu was extra more likely to occur when individuals had been in a scene that contained the identical spatial association of parts as an earlier scene they seen however didn’t recall.

This analysis means that one contributing issue to déjà vu may be spatial resemblance of a brand new scene to 1 in reminiscence that fails to be consciously known as to thoughts in the meanwhile. Nonetheless, it doesn’t imply that spatial resemblance is the one explanation for déjà vu. Very doubtless, many elements can contribute to what makes a scene or a scenario really feel acquainted. Extra analysis is underway to analyze extra doable elements at play on this mysterious phenomenon.

Written by Anne Cleary, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Colorado State College.

This text was first printed in The Dialog.