Thread: Deja vu theory

Originally Posted by Aquanina

I posted this in another deja vu thread but I'll post it again since this is such a popular topic.

excerpted from the Deja Vu Wiki...

In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past). The events would be stored into memory before the conscious part of the brain even receives the information and processes it.

The strongest pathological association of déjà vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy.[5][6] This correlation has led some researchers to speculate that the experience of déjà vu is possibly a neurological anomaly related to improper electrical discharge in the brain. As most people suffer a mild (i.e. non-pathological) epileptic episode regularly (e.g. a hypnagogic jerk, the sudden "jolt" that frequently, but not always, occurs just prior to falling asleep), it is conjectured that a similar (mild) neurological aberration occurs in the experience of déjà vu, resulting in an erroneous sensation of memory.

déjà vu may be a form of familiarity-based recognition (recognition that is based on a feeling of familiarity with a situation) and that laboratory methods of probing familiarity-based recognition hold promise for probing déjà vu in laboratory settings. Another possible explanation for the phenomenon of déjà vu is the occurrence of "cryptamnesia", which is where information learned is forgotten but nevertheless stored in the brain, and similar occurrences invoke the contained knowledge, leading to a feeling of familiarity because of the situation, event or emotional/vocal content, known as "déjà vu".

It will be interesting when they can accurately replicate the experience of deja vu in the lab setting.

That's an interesting analysis. Considering deja vu is an anomalous phenomenon, maybe that anomaly could be explained by dreams in which we experience future events. Dreams are experiences which are forgotten, but still reside (somewhat) in our memory, so if one were to experience something similar to which he had dreamt, in waking life, this could trigger the sensation of deja vu, but not quite the entire memory of the dream in which it occurred.

So from where I'm standing, deja vu could be the waking experience of a previous precognitive dream.