You walk into a room and suddenly your brain goes fuzzy with an overwhelming wave of familiarity -- although this is a totally new experience. Like something out of a sci-fi plot, it almost seems as if you've walked into the future.
éjà vu, during your life. Déjà vu (French for 'already seen')
there is no clear, identifiable stimulus that elicits a déjà vu experience (it is a retrospective report from an individual), it is very difficult to study déjà vu in a laboratory
Understanding how memory storage works may shed some light on why some experience it more than others
Retention of long-term memories, events and facts are stored in the temporal lobes
The temporal lobe is where you make and store your memories.
temporal lobe epilepsy
nerve cell activity in the brain is disturbed
déjà vu events may be caused by an electrical malfunction
what is the basis for déjà vu in healthy people without epilepsy
researchers describe it as a 'glitch' in the brain
déjà vu in healthy individuals may also be attributed to a 'mismatch' in the brain's neural pathways
the brain is constantly attempting to create whole perceptions of the world around us with limited input.
Déjà vu could be linked to discrepancies in the memory systems of the brain, leading the sensory information to by-pass short-term memory and reach long-term memory instead
The brain interprets the second version, through the slowed secondary pathway -- as a separate perceptual experience -- and thus the inappropriate feeling of familiarity (déjà vu) occurs