''Already seen'',
''Been there, done that''.
Yes, you're right. We are talking about ''déjà vu''. Déjà vu is the experience of thinking that a new situation had
occurred before and you have already experienced something actually
being experienced for the first time. It is the feeling that you have been to a place before or
you have performed exactly the same event before. Have you ever had a feeling like
that. I would presume a 'yes' for an answer. About 70% (if not more) of
population reports having experienced such feeling. Most number of incidents
occur between 15 and 25 years i.e. the period when brain is still developing.
Are they scary? Not really! But they have a mystic element attached to them.
The exact cause of the phenomenon still remains a mystery. Let us go through
some of the explanations forwarded by various experts.
Neurological Time Lag - Some researchers believe that sometimes data from the eye
reaches the brain with a delay and gives us the feeling that we have seen
this before. Brief delay of a millisecond in relaying information from one
cerebral hemisphere leads to the experience of déjà vu This is because one
part of the brain has already processed the information while other part
processes it a millisecond later. As your brain processes the information
twice, you get the feeling that you have already seen or heard something.
Source Amnesia - It
refers to brief dysfunction of ability of brain to remember information (including
where, why and when) we have acquired. For example, you might have seen the
pictures of the place (for which you are having déjà vu) in some magazine or
some other source but the source of that memory is forgotten.
Inattentional Blindness
- This explanation suggest that déjà vu occurs when we do not pay entire
attention to the surrounding as we are distracted by something else but our
brain still processes the information slightly without our knowledge. Once we
bring back our attention to the surrounding, we have the experience of déjà vu as we have processed it twice.
Memory based explanation
- Virtual reality investigations suggested that we may experience déjà vu if
the spatial layout of a previously experienced scene in memory (which we fail
to recall at the moment) and a new scene is very similar. Though we don't
remember the earlier experience but it still exerts an effect on our new
experience and that gives us the feeling that we have seen this before. Another explanation suggest that we confuse a
present event in the conscious mind with a similar past event in the
subconscious mind which creates the impression that we have seen this before.
Parapsychology - Some
parapsychologists suggest that some cases of déjà vu might be explained on the
basis of reincarnation. Proponents
of reincarnation suggest that this is due to the visions from the previous
life.
Partial Perception -
E.B. Titchener suggested that false sense of familiarity is due to partial
perception. This happens when person gets a brief glimpse of an object or
situation before complete construction of full conscious perception by brain.
Some even consider it
as an act of 'premonition' or 'prophecy'.
Mostly, deja vu is
accepted as an anomaly of memory, but proponents of reincarnation, premonition,
prophecy, etc think otherwise and propose alternate explanations. Scientists
are yet to be sure about its exact cause and significance (if any). You must have experienced it yourself. What do you
think???
Also Read..
Reincarnation: Life After Death!
Premonition : Believe It Or Not !
Categories:
Article
This kind of description could only come from a doctor. I read a lot about parapsychology, ESP,telpathy (though I haven't experienced any thing of that sort). Something tells me these things do happen. We don't know about them, it doesn't mean that they do not exist. May be I am wrong!
Excellent analysis of an enigmatic concept-i loved reading about it.All the explanations are so rational & believable.
Thank you Deepak.I am going to follow you....BEWARE!!!!!!!!!!!
Thank you Indu.. I love that warning of yours.. :)
You have already left a question for me I see..
Soon you will have your answer in the subsequent post..
I hope to see you more.. :)
Absolutely very interesting! Thank you Deepak!!
You are right Meenakshi.. Parapsychology is an interesting discipline. It deals with phenomena like telepathy, ESP, clairvoyance, levitation, etc. Researches have been done to explain these phenomena. We do not have a conclusive evidence but some interesting ones. May be i'll come up with a post on them subsequently...
Deja vu, interesting prospects...one more reason for deja vu which i believe hold good is sometimes we are so much involved in something that we when we are in deep sleep we dream about it...and since it's a dream we forget most of it after we wake up and often forget it...but when such things happens in real life it seems to us that yes...i know this...i have faced this before also...
Anjan you are right indeed.. we confuse a familiar image in subconscious mind with image in conscious mind.. it is one of the explanations.. there are some very compelling explanations.. we are not sure which one is responsible for the experience.. may be all of them on different occasions..
Thank you for sharing this information but being a believer I will go with the parapsychologists. I have experienced deja vu often and I believe it is something to do with memories of past lives. I look forward to coming to your blog and reading more posts like this.
Thank you for visiting Journey and leaving such wonderful comments on my poems.
Thank you Rimly for visiting..
I look forward to seeing you more here..
A very interesting post. I believe that there are some things science simply cannot explain - or at least the science we know. I'm with the parapsychologists on this one. Thanks for visiting my blogs.
Loved the article on dejavu . . i would like to call it an article more than a blog post as it weighs more towards the educational level . . :)
Interesting!!! :)
interesting subject....though i never felt like that but did read about the same somewhere......
thanks for the visit, following you now, looking forward to read more here :)
Thank you Maliny, Irfan and Namrata for visiting and going through. I am glad you found it interesting. You are always welcome here.
Thank you Suzy for visiting. Parapsychology explanation is a very interesting one. I will admit I am divided on the probable cause of deja vu, just like our scientists. I hope to see you more..
Hmm...never really thought much of deja vus. But yeah some of those theories do make sense, really.
The full time I was reading your blog post, I felt like I had already read it before. Nah, I'm messing with you. ;)
I found it curious to read that déjà vu generally occurs between the ages of 15 and 25. That would explain why I have experienced it many times in my younger days but not so much any more. I do remember reading about it once, a very long time ago. That article indicated that it tended to happen when we are particularly tired. I did notice after that, that seemed to be true.
Very interesting blog post.
Hey Hilary.. you are a deja vu right here.. :)
Thanx for visiting... and messing up.. :)
i hope to see you more..
guess what??? i once wrote a post with exactly this title.... yea the difference was that it was a story....http://titli15081977.blogspot.com/2012/03/deja-vu.html
good to read the scientific thoughts on it!
I am torn in between. In the past I thought it was part of the reincarnation and now after reading this (very insightful post, BTW.,) I am leaning toward the "Neurological Time Lag" theory.