What Causes Déjà vu?

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Have you ever faced an incident where you catch yourself feeling as if this new experience of yours appears to be fairly familiar to you? Feeling as if you predicted your exact experience would happen just as it is happening?

Déjà vu, translated from French as “already seen”, is the feeling of having already experienced something that is actually happening for the first time. A person may feel as if they remember scenes, events, or hearing something although they haven’t. According to researchers at Texas A&M University, about 60 to 80 percent of people have experienced this phenomenon. There appears to be no clear understanding of what stimulus elicits an experience of déjà vu. Researchers believe that this phenomenon may have something to do with how memory is stored in the brain.

In class we learned that memories are not stored in a single area; they are temporarily stored in the hippocampal formation and over time are transferred to cortical areas. Long-term memories are typically stored in the temporal lobes where specific areas of the temporal lobe are known for helping with the recognition of different events and detection of its familiarity. Although the connection between the temporal lobe and memory retention is still unknown, researchers have been able to get insight on how déjà vu affects individuals through studying people that have suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy (a condition known for causing seizures due to nerve cell activity in the brain being disturbed).  Studying these individuals with temporal lobe epilepsy led to the idea of déjà vu being caused by electrical malfunctions in the brain. Michelle Hook, Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Neuroscience and Experimental Therapeutics, stated that patients suffering from epilepsy reported experiencing déjà vu right before experiencing an epileptic seizure as if it was meant to be a warning that they were about to have a seizure.

When it comes to individuals without epilepsy, researchers have come to believe that déjà vu can be described as a glitch in the brain; one that causes neurons associated with recognition and familiarity to fire and allow for the brain to mistakenly believe things happening in the present have occurred in the past.  It has also been said that déjà vu could be due to mismatched neural pathways. Hook emphasizes that when processing occurs along the neural pathways, perception can be disrupted and two separate messages can be experienced; the second message would be produced through a slowed secondary neural pathway and cause the feelings of familiarity to occur.


I found this article to be very interesting to read as I’ve always wondered what causes déjà vu to occur. There have been countless times where I would go to do something or go to talk to someone about a various topic, feel as if the situation has happened before, but realize it never has. I believe continuing this study could potentially be beneficial to everyone that experiences déjà vu as it could help individuals understand why it occurs to them and how their brain works in these occurrences. Advancing this research could also be beneficial to individuals that suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy as it could potentially lead to new discoveries of how to help treat the 120,000 people every year that are diagnosed with this disorder.

Link: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2016/04/160413113530.htm


Comments

  1. Amanda CollinsApril 19, 2016 at 2:41 PM

    As someone who has experienced déjà vu several times throughout my life, I found your blog post to be extremely interesting to read, as I've always wanted to know how and why déjà vu happens. For me, I usually have a dream about a place, an experience, and later in life I'll end up being in that place or having that experience in the real world. Maybe that's abnormal, maybe not, but it would be interesting to learn if there were more people like this who had "visions" of the future in their dreams and if the same neurological processes exist for them as they do for most individuals with the typical déjà vu. From Dr. Hook's explanation that is probably unlikely, as she and other researchers describe déjà vu as a glitch that results in the brain thinking it has gone through a similar experience from the past and thus creating that feeling of similarity. Perhaps research should be done to see if "psychics" or those who supposedly get visions of the future experience déjà vu-like glitches in the neurological pathways or if this is a different phenomenon entirely. Not sure how that would truly advance or benefit society in the long run (unless it could turn us all into psychics), but it certainly would be interesting to look at nonetheless.

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  2. Amber WittmanApril 20, 2016 at 3:27 AM

    I have always thought of the concept of deja vu as something that is explained in sci-fi movies such as the Matrix. I love how you referred to this phenomenon as a "glitch" because that is what it resembles. I'm interested, not only in what specifically causes this to happen, but how deeply this concept can reach into forgotten or hardly recalled memories. How strong can the sense of deja vu be rather. The hippocampus, as you explained as a center for memory formation is involved in explaining deja vu, but did you know that the amygdala (emotion) is involved as well. It elicits similar emotions during the episode of deja vu. You did a great job on this post and the concept is so interesting. It is endless really.

    Information gathered from: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/brain-babble/201208/the-neuroscience-d-j-vu

    ReplyDelete
  3. UnknownSeptember 20, 2016 at 8:28 PM

    I found this blog to be very interesting because I have always wondered what causes déjà vu. I have experienced it many times before and never really thought about researching the causes behind it. In my mind the experience of feeling as if you predicted an exact experience would happen just as it is happening, is almost like a super power. One part of the blog that caught my eye was that patients suffering from epilepsy reported experiencing déjà vu right before experiencing an epileptic seizure as if it was meant to be a warning that they were about to have a seizure. I could relate to this because in class we learned how electrical signals are passed through the brain. With a condition such as temporal lobe epilepsy, known for causing seizures due to disruptive nerve cell activity in the brain, I could use my knowledge from class to fully understand what disruptive nerves are effected during déjà vu happens. Overall, I would be interested to dig deeper into this topic, as there is so much more to learn about it. Maybe one day with continued research this phenomenon could potentially lead to more treatments for those suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy.

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  4. UnknownNovember 21, 2016 at 11:50 AM

    In my other psychology classes, I have learned how flawed our memory systems are. We as humans are pretty horrible at remembering exact memories and often construct false memories. I wonder if there is a connection between this flaw and deja vu. I also think it is interesting that many of our senses rely on time differences. To locate sounds, we use time differential between each ear and with this phenomena of deja vu, the time differential of the messages in the pathways, make it seem like two different experiences rather than one whole experience. The human brain is a very complex system.

    ReplyDelete
  5. UnknownNovember 28, 2016 at 9:56 AM

    I experience deja vu at least once a week and it is such a strange experience. When I was younger I used to think that I was a psychic because I could not understand why I had seen / experienced these things before [I also could have been watching too much That's So Raven]. Either way, I always found it interesting that I could experience these things. Learning about how flawed human memories are, it makes sense that this is just an error with the neural pathways.

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