seen it before

[answotti]

Is there any science behind a deja vu? I don't know about you but they totally freak me out-especially the double deja vu!

[spaced]

its a weird one, but the only way I can explain what I think De Ja Vu is is this:-

I think that your brain fools your memory section of your brain to think that what you are seeing has been seen before and is already stored in your memory, but in affect it hasnt.

[lafrancaise]

I don't agree with you spaced, as when I have a d�j� vu I know what's going to happen next and it does happen.

I'd love to know the scientific explaination behind them as like you answotti they freak me out too.

By the way, what's a double d�j� vu?

[Quizmonster]

D�j� vu - French for �already seen' - works through what psychologists call �paramnesia', a temporary time-dissociation. The incident being lived through for the first time is not related by the mind to the present, but somehow to the past. When the mind grasps that it is actually happening now, it seems to decide that this is the second occasion. Thus, the thoughts of just a micro-second or two earlier now somehow seem to be thrust much further into the past.
Some people explain d�j� vu by comparing it to the action of a tape-recorder. The idea is that memories are stored using what amounts to a "recording head" and these memories are recalled by a "playback head" tucked away in the brain. During a d�j� vu experience, they suggest, the two "heads" are somehow placed above the same bit of mental "tape", as it were. This results in something being �recorded' and �replayed' simultaneously, so that the present is experienced as if it were the past.
It's rather like when we think of someone for the first time in years and who do we bump into that very morning? Thinking of them didn't make them magically appear...coincidence did. Such mental oddities seem very eerie, but they're certainly not supernatural.

Click here for the Pacific Neuropsychiatric Institute's web-pages on d�j� vu. Once there, you'll find further links that deal with the matter on a more academic basis than most. (Well, you did ask for science!)

[rojash]

On theory is that it's actually the opposite of what it seems, in that there is a dleay in the signal, so that part of your brain receives the message fractionally late. The part of your brain that gets the message on time, then "re-sees" the delayed message, and thinks "I've seen that before" - which it has, but only microseconds before.

I've heard of many people who say "I knew that was going to happen next", but none who could actually tell anyone in advance exactly what was going to happen!

[rojash]

Sorry QM, I wouldn't have bothered submitting if your answer had been there when I started typing!

[Quizmonster]

Not a problem, Roj. It happens all the time.

[answotti]

To lafrancaise: a double deja is a deja va that you have had the same deja vu before and before that. Kind of a loop. Thanks to all for the responses. So it has nothing to do with pastlives then?

[heathfield]

I'm certain this question has been asked before.

[WoWo]

The current medical thinking is that the brain has two sections for memory a short detailed area and a long term area which just records basic facts about the event, normally the wiring in the brain links to the short term and anything significant is sent to the long term later. But during deja vu it gets sent straight to the long term, this makes the brain think it's reading the long term memory and viewing previous events when in fact it's just replaying the current all be it as others have said a nano second later.