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Deja vu
Why do we get deja vu?
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i have always thought it is where your brain gets out of sync with itself and you sort of get a brain hiccup where an event reaches the memory before it has been processed, so once it has been processed it reaches the memory and finds itself there already! Apparently it can sometimes occur just before an epileptic seizure. Nobody has really been able to research it properly because it happens without warning.
D�j� vu - French for �already seen' - works through 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.
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