Thread: Ideas on Deja Vu

What are your ideas or theories on Deja Vu ?

Deja Vu being:

"the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously"

Generally I will have a mundane short dream of some seemingly normal happening and then forget about it only to recall it again months or years later when the exact same happening occurs in waking reality.

This occurred just the other day with me writing in a post on these forums.

My last few feelings of Deja Vu are reality based. The same situation, same feeling, same person saying or doing the same thing. The events can happen a year or more apart. Makes me think that I really need to change something in my life!

Generally I will have a mundane short dream of some seemingly normal happening and then forget about it only to recall it again months or years later when the exact same happening occurs in waking reality.

That seems like the most logical. The collection of soo much data stored in our minds. As an occurrence similar to possibly many others, bringing back this feeling of the event unfolding in the now. Maybe giving us the false pretense that we are seeing the future or repeating the same past.

There is too the clairvoyance position that is possible. Multiple lives, multiple universes, psychic and paranormal abilities.

I experience deja vu extremely often. There have been times when I've experienced deja vu for several minutes, and off and on for several hours. I definitely think it has something to do with a slip-up of some sort in the brain, because the times when I've experienced deja vu for hours, my brain was most likely under going something similar to a psychotic episode.

I found this theory interesting...

In particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the present) and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past). In other words, the events would be stored into memory before the conscious part of the brain even receives the information and processes it. This would explain why one is, if it ever comes to mind, powerless trying to twist the outcome of the event in order to create a paradox. The delay is only of a few milliseconds, and besides, already happened at the time the conscious of the individual is experiencing it.

However, the strongest pathological association of déjà vu is with temporal lobe epilepsy. 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. the sudden "jolt", a hypnagogic jerk, that frequently 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.

A while back while waiting for waiting for a doctor I read an article in a magazine. It seemed to believe that it had to do with the groundwork of memory, in the way it is set up.

I can't recall perfectly but basically it was like...you've seen something similar before, so your brain has set it up, and it is two portions of your brain that gets confused. So it generates a feeling of doing something before, but then also has the knowledge that it hasn't, and this is where deja vu comes from, the confusion between the two portions.

Interestingly enough, this is probably the same feeling babies feel when you play peekaboo with them. They have developed the part of their brain that allows them to realize the person couldn't possibly have disappeared, but they can't see their face (thus they believe they have) and now they are confused, which is why they laugh their little asses off when you say peekaboo!

Originally Posted by Sandform

Interestingly enough, this is probably the same feeling babies feel when you play peekaboo with them. They have developed the part of their brain that allows them to realize the person couldn't possibly have disappeared, but they can't see their face (thus they believe they have) and now they are confused, which is why they laugh their little asses off when you say peekaboo!

Haha! That reminds me of a hilarious scene from Family Guy.

Originally Posted by Aquanina

Haha! That reminds me of a hilarious scene from Family Guy.

*wishes nina would elaborate*

Originally Posted by Howie

That seems like the most logical. The collection of soo much data stored in our minds. As an occurrence similar to possibly many others, bringing back this feeling of the event unfolding in the now. Maybe giving us the false pretense that we are seeing the future or repeating the same past.

There is too the clairvoyance position that is possible. Multiple lives, multiple universes, psychic and paranormal abilities.

What I most note is that the dreams of such are so seemingly insignificant. Mostly doing a normal task like getting something out of a cabinet, or typing something behind the computer.
Its not so much what is being done, but the surroundings around the doing that bring the trigger to remembering the dream and thus experiencing the classic definition of deja vu.
Sometines the dreams entail familiar surroundings, other time the dreams involve surroundings totally unknown at the time of the dream. Then later when the experience occurs the relaization of these new surroundings having been in the older dreams arises and is recognized as such.