We all have experienced déjà vu (from French, literally „already seen”). Those moments when where the current situation feels like it has happened before. You can’t pinpoint when it happened or how it has become so familiar. There’s no reliable way to cause it in people’s minds heads; it’s difficult to scientifically study déjà vu. We know that humans don’t experience déjà vu until they are at least 8 or 9 years old. It’s most frequent in your teens and twenties and as you get older it tapers off. One theory states that déjà vu is an error between long and short-term circuits in the brain. The information we gather from our surroundings might be incorrectly transferred from short to long-term memory. So if we experience something new – which is currently in our short-term memory – it feels as if we already experienced it the past.
There is also something known as Presque vu – “tip of the tongue”. This is what happens when you are familiar with something. You know you know it, but at that moment you cannot recall it. One explanation of how that happens is “blocking hypothesis”. Other words similar to the target word are being remembered and to help you out, your brain is actively blocking other stuff around it, including the word you are looking for. It might actually explain why Presque vu has a social aspect. If a group of people is given the same “blocking words” that are related, no one in the group can come up with the actual word until the subject is changed and then all of the sudden someone remembers the target word.
Finally there’s Jamais vu – never seen. This is when something that you know, that you are familiar with, all of the sudden seems brand new and bizarre. It’s most commonly experienced when a person momentarily does not recognise a word. This can be achieved by anyone by repeatedly writing or saying a specific word out loud. After repeating it over and over again the word starts to lose its meaning and we start to think “How is this even a word?”. Dr. Chris Moulin did an experiment on this. He asked 92 volunteers to write out “door” 30 times in 60 seconds. 68% of the volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu: they began to doubt that “door” was a real word. He also believes that jamais vu might be connected to schizophrenia. Schizophrenic patients will sometimes see people they know and insist that it’s not the person they know. Instead, it’s an imposter.
Have you ever experienced any of these phenomena? If yes, which one was it?
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tip_of_the_tongue
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jamais_vu
http://www.gainesonbrains.com/2012/02/seeing-into-future-neuroscience-of-deja.html
Comments
Deja vu - the most common, sometimes happens me even few times a day. I feel like I have spoken to someone already, but I do it now, I feel like I was doing something, but I do it now.
Preseque vu is also well known feeling. I can also observe many situations when someone want to say something, but they don't know how to say it.
Jamais vu is also well know I think. When you think a lot about one word, finally it seems very weird and strange.
I do not know whether it would be in the category of any kind of 'vu's, but this topic reminds me of my very poor ability to recognize and remember faces. If I saw someone a long time ago or just few times then I have a problem to recognize them. Often on the street I mistake strangers for my friends or my family members, even of only for a few seconds. People who are very diffrent for others look alike to me. In such a complicated machinery as human brain, there are always (more or less temporary) defects.
Deja vu feels the weirdest, because it seems almost impossible for example see same thing two times in differebt time.
Presque vu - I hate it, because it always happened when I need this word, to my essay or story, so it takes some time to reacall it - sometimes it is long way around (I don't remember the name... It is similar to, to... Sniezka! mountain! Mount Everest, but in Japan - Fuji)
Jamais vu - this one is also very weird. I know that some word exist, but when I say it out loud it seem unbelievable this is the way I remember it, so I have to ask somebody if I'm really wrong or my mind is making fun of me
The worst for me is Deja vu, because it's awful feeling that you have been talking with someone about something and you feel recuring and stupid. But in fact you have never been talking with that person and she treats you normal. The worst feeling ever!
It sounds really interesting that after hearing some word so many times, we could start doubting its existence.
I experience Déjà vu really often, around once a week. It’s both interesting and annoying because you start to overthink the situation if it really happened in the past or is it just your brain tricking you.
Presque vu is in my opinion the most annoying one, the moment when you can’t say something that you want to say is just killing me.
- holographic principle
- holographic universe
- black holes
- relativity theory
- universe’s (apparently accelerating) expansion (the bigger it gets the faster it expands, a property of spherical surface being a function of radius squared)
- information theory
- auto-correlation functions
Universe can be modeled as a black hole, with us, as observers, observing information on the surface of that black hole. Universe is not 3-dimensional. It’s 2-dimensional, with 3rd dimension arising (being derived) from the black hole’s expansion process. Time is not linear either. It moves forward as black hole expands, and it moves backward as it contracts.
Thanks for interesting article :).
By the way, it's fascinating that we know more and more about the world around us, where technology develops at a fast pace, but human brain remains an enigma.
Yes, I've experienced déjà vu twice or thrice when I was a child. I had an irresistible impression that some time ago I was sitting in the same place, talked with the same person, said exactly the same words and moved the same hand etc. I don't remeber how old I was, but I definately was attending school so I was probably older than 8 years. That's in some aspect interesting, although logical that younger children don't experience déjà vu.
Before having read your article I wasn't conscious that something like Presque vu or Jamais vu does exist.
I think I experienced Deja-Vu once in my life. The funniest thing that it was in Biedronka shop. It is quite a weird feeling that something went wrong in my brain. I think it’s all a matter of our neurology. We haven’t discovered brain very well yet. One friend who works as a biochemist once told me that our body can make mistakes. I thought that this whole biological system is perfect as a clock, but actually, it can produce some bugs. And maybe deja-vu is on of those mistakes our brain makes.
So I’ll keep believing that the way our brain tricks us and not something mystical.
I have also experienced Presque vu and I always tend to remember words that I want to use in some context in other language but not in the language I'm currently speaking :P
There are in fact three types of déjà vu: deja vecu which gives us the expression that we have already experienced this, deja senti with the expression that we have already felt this or deja visite which it is a paradoxical feeling that we know a place which we have never visited before.
As for the second one - all of us had a moment when we saw an actor or tried to recall a name of the song or a movie. Our mind gets older and this situations will keep on happening :)
Don't won't to offend anyone but the third one with 68% of people reaction looks very stupid - "Jamais vu – never seen". I've tested it with 9 of my friends with three test words "doors", "one", "sex" - sorry but none of us after sixty seconds had a problem with existence of the word or it's meaning. And we have tested it three times.
As for me I experienced the first two "vus". Many people say that they feel "deja vu" very often - I don't. I have felt it maybe a couple of times in my life.
If it comes to Presque vu, it happens to me all the time. And is quite annoying. I cannot think of anything else if I can't recall certain word!
Of course deja vu happened to me before at least once, it happens less often the older I get. I never concentrated on those things, it always seemed like some "stupid mistake of my brain" but I know some people relive those moments and try to find meaning in them.
Presque vu happened to me many times but I never know it had a specific name of it's own.
Jamais vu is something new to me, I don't recall experiencing anything like that but maybe that's in part because I never heard about it.
I have also experienced presque-vu a couple of times. Human brain is such an amazing thing, I hope one day we will get the right answers why this happens.