Why does it sometimes seem to us that what is happening to us has happened before? Why does the "déjà vu" effect occur? It seems that there were already 6 letters
Sometimes a situation arises when it seems that “it has already happened”: you know this place, you have already heard these words and this music, you know what will happen in the next moment. As if you have already lived this day and this hour. This state is called "déjà vu", which in French means "seen already."
According to statistics, about 95% of people have experienced a similar effect at least once in their lives, but scientists still cannot give any specific explanation for this phenomenon. Nevertheless, today we will look at the most curious (though not always scientifically based) theories about déjà vu.
There is no scientific explanation for the origin of the déjà vu effect
Scientists' opinions
Physicians, psychologists, philosophers and esotericists have their own points of view on the effect of "déjà vu". Neuroscientists believe that this occurs due to a malfunction in the memory. A person has short-term and long-term memory. Any event is first recorded in short-term memory, and then “added to the archive”.
But, according to experts, sometimes memory is mistaken and immediately sends the event “to the bins”. Therefore, we begin to perceive a completely new situation as something that happened a long time ago. This usually happens when a person is relaxed, sick, or during unfavorable weather conditions (heat, cold, magnetic storms, surges in atmospheric pressure).
Well, psychologists, in order to explain the phenomenon of "déjà vu", take as a basis the theory of dreams of Sigmund Freud. He argued that during sleep, the human brain creates thousands of situations that can be very similar to reality. And then, in reality, a person remembers his dream as an already experienced event.
Alternative Sciences
Esotericists consider the effect of "déjà vu" to be a manifestation of reincarnation. According to their theory, each soul comes into the world several times. And, perhaps, "déjà vu" occurs when the soul recalls a similar situation from past life... This explanation of "déjà vu" has existed since the days of Ancient Greece.
This effect has become the basis for many films ("Deja Vu", 2006)
So, Plato and Pythagoras adhered to the theory of ancient cosmogonism, that is, the transmigration of souls. Buddhists, confident in reincarnation, also explain the effect of "déjà vu" by the fact that the soul remembers the events of past lives. One could agree with such a theory if people did not "remember" events related to the present: a mobile phone lying on the table, airplanes in the sky, etc.
Actually…
Most likely, the explanation is actually much more complicated than we think. Perhaps today humanity does not yet possess the knowledge that will help to clearly and intelligibly explain the nature of the occurrence of the effect of the repetition of events.
But "deja vu" became the source of many masterpieces of literature and cinema: one way or another, this phenomenon was affected by such famous films as "The Matrix", "Groundhog Day" and "Deja Vu", works by Charles Dickens and Marcel Proust, Arthur Conan Doyle and Jack London, Clifford Simak and Leo Tolstoy.
Did you feel déjà vu? Have you ever thought that the situation in which you found yourself was already? The phenomenon of déjà vu is as widespread as it is mysterious.
Briefly
For the first time the term "déjà vu" was used at the beginning of the twentieth century by the French psychologist Emile Buarak.
Déjà vu is a very common phenomenon. Up to 95% of adults claim to have experienced this condition at least once. The relationship between deja vu and the level of education of a person has been established empirically. The dependence is directly proportional: the more educated a person is, the less he is insured against the feeling of what “already happened”. The lowest level of déjà vu (48%) was recorded in children primary school... The highest (81%) - among doctors and candidates of sciences.
A link has also been established between deja vu and epilepsy tendencies.
The area of the brain that is responsible for generating false memories is called the hippocampus.
Deja vu is more often felt by women.
The reverse of déjà vu is called jamevu. This is when a person cannot recognize the situation or environment, everything is new to him.
Primal Consciousness
Anthropological scientists have established that the state of déja vu is very close and even identical to the primitive, mythological consciousness. For déjà vu, there is a feeling of timelessness, the wholeness of the flow of time, depersonalization of the subject. The mythological consciousness in the description of the famous researcher of antiquity A.F. Losev.
In this regard, the phrase said in the film "The Matrix" that deja vu is a sign of a reboot of the world seems to be quite reasonable. In a mythological way, it is so. When we get into the state of "already been", we turn to the primitive consciousness, when the "recognition" of the world occurs constantly.
All a dream
An original, but still relevant and supported theory was proposed in 1896 by a professor at Boulder University in Coloralo Arthur Allin. He assured that deja vu is nothing more than a memory of what we have already experienced in a dream. Allegedly, our subconscious mind from time to time "scrolls" a dream when we are in a state of wakefulness.
According to Freud
Of course, Sigmund Freud also studied the phenomenon of déjà vu. In his opinion, deja vu is nothing more than a memory of a real, but traumatic experience that took place in the past, which has gone into the subconscious. In The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud describes his understanding of déjà vu on the example of a girl who, having arrived at her friend's village (her friend has a sick brother), finds herself thinking that it has already happened. However, a simple analysis of her biography gives us an understanding that the girl does not remember this place, but her sick brother, the memory of which was "removed" by her into the subconscious.
Freud also associates the phenomenon of déjà vu with instincts and taboos. He writes: "The feeling of 'already experienced' is a kind of reminder of the secret fantasies of a person. A signal that we are touching something desirable and at the same time forbidden."
Note that Freud's disciple and opponent Gustav Jung considered déjà vu to be evidence of the transmigration of souls and a person's experience of the experience of his past lives.
Hologram effect
In 1990, the Dutch psychiatrist Hermann Sno suggested that the human brain stores memories not entirely, but in the form of holograms, that is, the memory of an event consists of fragments, each of which contains general information. When we try to remember something, we do not remember "entirely", we remember a part, and on the basis of this part we can "unfold" the rest of the picture of the past.
Sno believed that the phenomenon of déjà vu is associated with the fact that the remembered fragment is identical to some part of the mnemonic holograms. He gets involved in work RAM and unfolds a picture of a holistic experience. Almost real. But false.
Subconscious games
Physiologists from the University of Washington, Larry Jacoby and Calvin Whitehouse, conducted a test group to memorize words. First, the subjects were shown a list of words and asked to memorize them. After a while, they were shown other lists and asked to tell what words they had seen before. The experiment was also complicated by the fact that immediately before the second test, the subject seemed to be accidentally very a short time were allowed to look at other words that were not on the first list.
The results were overwhelming. Almost everyone who saw the "bonus" words for a millisecond added them to the list of words from the first list, although they were not in the lists.
Such games of memory, when information does not have time to be "caught" by the consciousness, but is captured by the subconscious and nevertheless penetrates the conscious level, are not uncommon in our life. This can partly explain the phenomenon of déjà vu.
Although today they say from all sides that one must live full life Some people believe that a person can have multiple lives. This is the so-called theory of reincarnation.
Everyone has their own opinion on this, but here is a list of signals that may indicate that “there was a boy after all” and you have already experienced existence on this planet somewhere in the heart of England during the Tudor era.
1. Recurring dreams
In general, many explanations can be found for recurring dreams, but they say that if you have the same dream all the time, then perhaps this is the key to your past. The plot can be a different historical era, a different area. This is one of the signs that you have existed before at a different point in history.2. Deja vu
Each of us, at least once in our life, has been overwhelmed by a sudden and strange sensation ... We know for sure: this is what is happening now for the first time. But suddenly we realize that this has already happened once: I have already been here, I saw the same person, heard the same words, and the light fell in the same way. The present seems to be meeting the past ... Scientists explain this by the phenomenon of paramnesia, parapsychologists - by the past life.3. Do you remember events in the past
Key point: you were not a member of them. That is, you have memories that should not be in your head. And, perhaps, you remember this in rather bright colors. Some people claim that these are shards of your past memory.4. You have incredible intuition.
People who believe in reincarnation claim that you are in an amazing connection with time. Both past and present and future. You can often predict the outcome of an event, feel how and where to act, which often surprises others.5. Unreasonable fears and phobias
We are all afraid of something: water, heights, spiders or snakes. But where did these fears come from? Some believe that this is the result of painful events in the past. If you, for example, are afraid of snakes and do not know why, maybe your answer is in this?6. Mystical pains
This is, of course, a controversial point, but did you experience phantom pains in healthy parts of the body that disappeared after a moment? Perhaps in a past life you were, for example, a soldier and your leg was torn off, and now an old trauma is responding to you ...7. You've found your soul mate
It is somewhat similar to the movie "The Diary of Memory". But it is possible that if you feel with every fiber of your soul in someone a kindred spirit (maybe even in a stranger), it is possible that this is no accident. Such is the beautiful romantic theory that confirms that everyone has their own soul mate in this world.8. You feel like you have an old soul.
This phenomenon can occur when a person thinks that his soul lives longer than himself. If you are wise beyond your years or feel more mature than you should, it is possible that you have a past behind you, and now - one of the "present". Well, that's great. It didn't matter if it really was, but isn't it time to apply your wisdom to life in order to achieve more?9. You feel like you're out of date
The feeling that you are out of place here, one way or another, visits many people. But few feel that they are in the wrong time. Sometimes it may seem like a completely different era or area would be ideal for you. This does not mean, of course, that all single people yearn for a past life. But, if you are simply drawn there, then maybe you missed a lot in the past?Image copyright iStock
Due to a tumor in the brain, Pat Long was pursued by such obsessive manifestations of déjà vu that he began to question the very reality of what was happening to him and his life as such. His story, originally published on the Mosaic website , can tell us a lot about the nature of this phenomenon.
Several years ago, on one quite ordinary and even boring day, something unusual happened to me.
I lay down under a tree in a park in east London and suddenly felt dizzy - and then I was covered.
The park disappeared, and I saw myself lying on a plaid picnic blanket among tall ears of golden wheat.
The vision was very realistic and vivid. I heard a slight rustle of ears swaying in the wind, felt the warmth of the sun's rays on my face and looked at the birds soaring in the sky.
I understood that these were my memories, very pleasant memories. But the fact is that I have never lay in the middle of a wheat field in my life. What I experienced was an extremely intense form of psychosensory illusion.
Image copyright iStock Image caption Pat Long found himself in the middle of a wheat field during his first deja vu
Our memories seem to us to be an integral, almost sacred part of our "I". A melody from an old TV commercial, the name of a previous prime minister, or a key moment in a popular anecdote - memories are part of our identity.
The memory usually works imperceptibly, in background while we go about our day to day business.
We are accustomed to its effectiveness and take it as something natural. Until the system crashes.
At the onset of an attack, sufferers may experience synesthesia, extreme euphoria, or even orgasm.
For the past five years, I have suffered from epileptic seizures, which are caused first by a lemon-sized tumor on the right side of the brain, and then by its removal.
Before she was diagnosed, I felt completely healthy. I was in my 30s and had no symptoms until one day - after the first attack - I woke up on the kitchen floor with bruises under my eyes.
Seizures, or seizures, occur after a sudden electrical discharge in the brain.
They are usually preceded by a condition called an aura, a less intense seizure that may be accompanied by hallucinations or unusual sensations.
At the beginning of an attack, patients may experience synesthesia (when a person simultaneously perceives with two or more sensory organs what others are able to feel with only one - Approx. translator), extreme euphoria or even orgasm.
Image copyright iStock Image caption Everything is not so exciting for me. I usually experience a sudden change in perspective, increased heart rate, anxiety, and sometimes auditory hallucinations.
One of the first to describe the epileptic aura was the English pioneering neurologist John Hughlings Jackson. He noted that hallmark this condition is often vivid hallucinations similar to memories.
The main feature of my aura is déjà vu. I don't remember having experienced them before, but now they happen up to ten times a day.
And it worries me if this blurring of the boundaries between delirium and really experienced events will develop into madness.
In trying to understand what déjà vu is, I hope to learn to always return to reality from those amazing places where my imagination takes me.
In his novel Catch 22, Joseph Heller described déjà vu as "a strange, mystical feeling that you've experienced a similar situation before."
The term comes from the French expression déjà vu "already seen" and refers to a series of related memory "glitches".
50 surveys conducted at different times show that about two-thirds of healthy people have experienced déjà vu at some point in their lives. Many do not pay attention to them, considering them a strange illusion.
Image copyright iStock Image caption If déjà vécu is usually fleeting and is not given much importance, then déjà vécu - "already experienced" - is a much more disturbing sensation.
Unlike déja vu, déjávecu makes you feel like you have experienced a given sequence of events.
The defining feature of déjà vu is the ability to recognize that it is an illusion and not a reality. But people who feel the effect of "already experienced" lose this ability completely.
One of the leading experts in déjà vu, Professor Chris Moulin, talks about a patient he worked with at the memory disorders clinic in Bath.
Due to the gradual loss of brain cells caused by dementia, the man suffered from persistent and compulsive deja vu.
Image copyright iStock Image caption Sometimes it seems that the gears in our brain stop, so that we remember something that we did not even suspect before ...
Even having met Professor Moulin, he immediately stated that they had already met, and named the specific time and place where it happened.
After his first meeting with this patient, Professor Moulin became interested in the reasons for déjà vu, as well as in how these subjective fantasies might interfere with the daily functioning of memory.
But the doctor faced a difficult problem - the feeling of déjà vu is so instantaneous and short-lived that it is almost impossible to recreate it in a clinical setting. What he was trying to do was like trying to catch lightning in a bottle.
The phenomenon of déjà vu has been studied by many scientists - from a parapsychologist late XIX century Emil Boyrak, who, in particular, was interested in the phenomenon of clairvoyance, before Sigmund Freud.
In one of his most famous works, The Psychopathology of Everyday Life, Freud investigated, among other things, memory defects.
The book, for example, describes the experience of a woman who came to her friend's house for the first time, but at the same time claimed that she knew exactly the location of all the rooms.
The first scientific definition of déjà vu was formulated in 1983 by a neuropsychologist from South Africa, Vernon Nappo. He also identified 20 distinct types of this phenomenon, not all of which were associated with the ability to see.
For example, one of Chris Moulin's patients, who was blind from birth, claimed to have déjà vu.
Image copyright iStock Image caption Freud described the experience of a woman who came to her friend's house for the first time, but at the same time claimed that she knew exactly the location of all the rooms.
Professor Neppo's classification includes such phenomena as déjà senti ("already felt") and déjà entendu ("already heard").
Freud mistakenly attributed déjà vu to exclusively psychological phenomena, which led to the shift of this phenomenon into the plane of mystical phenomena.
A 1991 Gallup poll ranked déjà vu on a par with questions about astrology, paranormal activity, and ghosts.
Many people do not consider déja vu to be part of normal cognitive activity in the brain, and some even believe it is a sign of psychic ability.
Personally, it is not difficult for me to refute the last statement, but the very existence of such an opinion shows how little attention was paid to déjà vu in official science.
Scientists used to think that our memories were stored in the brain in an organized manner, like documents in a filing cabinet.
But in the early 1970s, this theory was refuted by neuroscientist Professor Endel Talving. He stated that the memories are actually divided into two different groups.
One of them is semantic memory. It contains general facts that do not depend on our personal experience.
The second group includes episodic memories associated with events in our life or personal experiences.
Image copyright iStock Image caption The knowledge that the Natural History Museum is located in London is a semantic memory, and the memories of my class excursion at the age of 11 are episodic.
With the help of new technologies in brain research, in particular MRI, Professor Talving discovered that episodic memories are formed in the form of small pieces of information in different parts of the brain, and then assembled into a coherent whole.
"The process of remembering is like a mental time travel, when we relive what happened in the past," - explains the scientist.
Unsurprisingly, déjà vu is experienced by those patients in whom an epileptic seizure originates in the regions of the brain responsible for the formation of memories.
In Experience of Déjà Vu, Professor Alan Brown offers 30 different reasons why this sensation arises.
In addition to pathologies (such as epilepsy), déjà vu can also cause stress and fatigue.
Professor Brown is a proponent of the so-called split perception theory. The theory describes this perception of reality when the brain does not pay enough attention to what is happening around.
For example, when a person is about to cross a busy street, but is distracted by a shop window. And then, when he crosses the street, he wonders why he is doing this. At this point, the nervous system is divided into two phases of one experience.
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption It's like the feeling when you crossed the street, but you can't remember why.
Another explanation suggests that déjà vu is caused by an error in the processing of memories.
When the brain is aware of events, it adds to each of them a kind of time stamp when it happened. And, consequently, déjà vu arises when the connection is broken between the seen event and the moment when the "stamp" is set.
At such a moment, the brain begins to think that the event has happened before.
Researchers Alan Brown and Elizabeth Marsh conducted an experiment in the Department of Psychology and Neurobiology at Duke University. They tried to test Brown's theory that déjà vu occurs due to an error in the hippocampus (an area of the brain involved in the mechanisms of emotion formation and memory consolidation - Approx. translator) when that part of the brain processes memories.
The experiment involved students Brown and Marsh. First, they were shown photographs of different premises in their universities: libraries, classrooms and dorm rooms.
A week later, the students were shown the same photographs again, but the images of the new rooms were inserted between the slides.
When the subjects were asked if they had been to these places before, some confirmed this, even when the picture showed a room in another university, where they had never been.
Image copyright iStock Image caption The university buildings look pretty similar. Brown and Marsh concluded that just one image element or experience is enough for the brain to perceive the entire scene as familiar.
But the question is: why does deja vu happen in people without brain diseases?
Professor Brown notes that healthy people experience déjà vu only a few times a year, and usually this feeling is caused by some kind of environmental factors.
"Déjà vu tends to take over you indoors when you feel calm," notes Professor Brown. "The illusion is often accompanied by fatigue or stress."
Deja vu usually does not last long (10-30 seconds), more often in the evening than in the morning and on weekends.
Some researchers believe there is a link between the ability to remember dreams and the experience of déjà vu.
And Professor Brown suggests that although déjà vu occurs in equal proportions in both women and men, young people are more susceptible to them, those who travel a lot have higher incomes and liberal views.
Image copyright iStock Image caption “And there is a rational explanation for this,” he notes. “People who travel a lot have more possibilities being caught in an environment that may seem familiar. People with liberal beliefs are not afraid to admit they may have unusual psychological experiences and try to understand them. "
The night I finished this article, I experienced another intense deja vu. I was thinking about the deadline for submitting the article and suddenly remembered clearly how I sat and wrote the final sentence.
But when I re-read the article the next day, the last paragraph was missing. It was just an illusion.
And now, as I write these final sentences, I am plunged back into the feeling of "I've done this before." Well, in the end, as some like to say, "our whole life is a continuous déjà vu."
This article originally appeared on the Mosaic site and is reprinted here under a Creative Commons license.
