The deja-vu phenomenen is just that: a strange but by no means rare occurrence in which a person has a sensation of having been in a particular situation before. The English poet Tennyson expressed the idea beautifully in 'Locksley Hall' when he spoke of a feeling that reminded him 'of something done, of something shared, of something said, I know not where, such as no mortal can declare' (or words to that effect.) Informed explanations vary, ranging from the supernatural to denial. In my opinion, the most logical is that in some situations our brains process information so rapidly that we get the feeling that we have been through or in this situation before, when in fact, what we heard or saw or experienced happened just nano-seconds before.

Is a French expression meaning “already seen,” and in psychology it means “a feeling that something now being experienced for the first time, so far as one knows, has in fact been experienced before.” We borrowed the term, but we have generalized its meaning to stress simply the idea that “whatever is now before us is familiar, something we’ve seen before,” although the idea that the “remembered” experience is illusory is retained in some uses. Recent overuse has made the phrase a cliché, even to the point of being adopted in a tautological joke attributed to (among others) Yogi Berra: “It’s déjà vu all over again!” Déjà vu is usually italicized in Edited English as a foreign phrase and keeps its accent marks.

I have heard that deja vu is just misfiring of the brain synapses. I don't know which one to believe. Is it that or is it because we may have been through that particular (or similar) moment before but for some reason our brains deleted any memory of it? It scares me a little, the power of the human brain. Another theory is that because we only use about 10% of our brains, the spiritual (subconcious) mind (the remaining 90%) remembers things from a past life and tries to show us small parts to help us get through this life better. People who can 'open up' to their subconcious mind and use experiences from a past life to help themselves in this one are called Old Souls. Bit crazy, hey?

I have a seizure disorder, of the temporal lobe specifically, and these seizures can be characterized (in part) by a feeling of deja vu. I think this kind of verifies the brain synapses firing incorrectly or randomly theory. the deja vu can be the entire seizure, or it can precede (called an "aura") loss of consciousness. It is so absolutely intense in me that I literally can tell someone to stop talking and at times have finished what they were saying. Bizarre? yes. explanation for that? no idea. But many times, if I can halt the deja vu by getting out of the situation and lying down somewhere else, i can prevent the seizure from progressing. I don't know if this really sheds any light . . . it probably just makes the whole thing seem weirder. any neurologists or scientists out there who can comment on this? My basic view on this is that the human brain is really only something like 10% understood by science, and that we have abilities way beyond comprehension. Something like a seizure disorder that can cause the brain to function in an out-of-the-ordinary manner can open doors into normally untapped areas of the brain. Since being on medication (started 20 years ago), i have to admit that some part of me actually misses part of the seizure experience; you definitely go to some level of consciousness that most people never experience, something that I believe we are actually all capable of, we just don't know how. There is a theory out there that people who were prophets and such actually had seizure disorders. i believe that deja vu is part of the 90% we don't understand.

another explaination is Precognitive Dreams. alot of people dont believe in this but if you have them, and learn to master them, ther gets to be no doubt in your mind that it happens. I have been getting and practicing these for years to the point now that once I recognize a situation i remember what people are about to say (but havent yet) and to freak them out, I say it first. It almost always gets me a weird look. I myself didn't even believe in it until the day i was in class, realized i had been in the situation before... the teacher asked a question from our homework and no one raised their hand. No one had done their homework, including me, but from my dream i knew the answer. I also knew if no one answered it we would all get alot of extra homework that day, so I raised my hand. I had no clue what the answer was other than from the dream, and it was correct! The teacher later mentioned that if I hadn't known the answer, everyone was going to get several more papers for homework that day. However, i have had the deja vu feeling WITHOUT the dreams before, and without knowing whats coming, but constantly feeling like id been there before, including one day walking out on to the playground in 3rd grade. I think in those instances, it's more of a dreamlike state of mind, which reminds you of dreaming hence making you think you had this in your memory.

The term deja vu (French: "already seen", also called paramnesia) describes the experience of feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously. The term was created by a French psychic researcher, Emile Boirac (1851–1917) in his book L'Avenir des sciences psychiques (The Future of Psychic Sciences), which expanded upon an essay he wrote while an undergraduate French concentrator at the University of Chicago. The experience of deja vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eerieness" or "strangeness". The "previous" experience is most frequently attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past. The experience of deja vu seems to be very common; in formal studies 70% or more of the population report having experienced it at least once. References to the experience of deja vu are also found in literature of the past, indicating it is not a new phenomenon. However, in laboratory settings, it is extremely difficult to invoke the deja vu experience, making it a subject with few empirical studies.

Mainly because of the intense feeling of gaucheness that accompanies the mispronounciation that most people make. As hilighted by the extraordinary claim made at http://dejavu.aqk.ca Is this true?

The feeling that deja vu gives is actually just a repeat of the message fired twice in the brain, specifically across synapses. If the first "firing" makes a faulty connection, the message is repeated, therefore giving the person the sense that he has "been there before".

It is my understanding that deja vu is triggered by a scent, and when that scent is processed by the brain it can trigger a memory which can make you feel like you have been there or had that experience before.

Because when you experience things your brain sends two signals a standard sensory signal and a visual one...Sometimes the sensory info. will reach your brain a split second before your visual one will and you will experience the feeling of "deja vu."

have been in the same situation before, you recognise something before it before it happened.

It's a very eerie feeling that what you are experiencing right now you have already experienced before. It doesn't seem possible so it clashes with our logic leaving us feeling very uneasy and no explanation.

Something your subconscience mind has already seen or felt, be a place or conversation with a person. It is your subconcience mind that have experienced that moment, may be in dream or thoughts. See the movie Deja Vu, and you will know how it is being implied there.

DeJa Vu is something seen before and remembered.So logically if you have never been to a place where you experince deja vu in this life time,common sense would say that a past life is coming back into your consciousness.I realize a great many people don't believe in past lives.Either way it will be a subject of great debate.

I HEARD by a skeptic like myself say that deja vu occurs when your brain mistakenly sends a current to your long-term memory instead of to the short-term as is intended. Sort of an accidental "short-circuit" of neurons. Made sense to me. [edited: corrected awkward wording]

In short, it's your subconscious mind "reminding" you of something you didn't notice the first time.

Like adt_33, I've heard it's a glitch in the brain, like transferring the immediate experience into long-term memory rather than short-term. Seems to make sense. Still, it doesn't explain inidents of deja vu I've experienced where there's an element missing. Like being in a store, experienceing a moment of deja vu and thinking, "Yeah, but there should be a dark-haired guy standing right over there." Because that's how I "remember" it even though I'm experiencing it live. It's an odd sensation.

My neurologist says that Deja vu occurs when the unconscious mind percieves a situation slightly before the conscious mind does, creating a short delay and giving you the senstation that what is happening has already happened before because, technically, it is already in your memory even though it only got there a milisecond before the conscious mind processed the scene. Make sense?

been there done that. lol

Whenever i experience deja vu, which is quite often, i am almost sure it's familiar because i remember it as a dream. but what i remember happening/think is going to happen almost never does. it's really unsettling.has anyone read the darktower books by stephen king? in the second or third book the main character meets a boy named jake, jake is from our world but died before he should have, so he went to the main characters' world. then he died in that world so went back to his world as if he didn't die in the first place. but he still had the memory, although vague, of dying both times. it was making him crazy untill he found a door to the other world again and the two paths in his brain re-joined. what i'm saying is this, maybe deja vu is when, at some point in your life, you took a wrong path, you are where you aren't supposed to be. or you're there but the circumstances have changed. and deja vu is showing you a possible way to change them back to get to where you're supposed to be. I dunno, just my thoughts

Not this again... :)

I have heard it is one eye sends the information to the brain just a millisecond before the other eye gets the information there. I thought about this and it makes scenes until you have auditory deja vu. I have had deja vu that lasts more 3-4 minutes crazy stuff.

It is a french term meaning "already seen". It is a feeling we sometimes have that we have been somewhere or seen something before.

This feels like deja vu all over again.

what is deja vu?..i just had it.lol

It's the feeling that you get every once in a while that makes you think a moment that just happened already happened sometime in the past. It has something to do with the way our brains have limited short term memory. Our brain can't process everything at once (too much info really) so all it does is take key notes (like simply remembering the color of a shirt, the fist thing they say, the general location of the encounter, etc) of any single situation. When we remember something, all we look at are those key notes and our imagination fills in the rest. deja vu may occur when the brain encounters a situation that produces the same key notes as a previous situation. The brain may confuse two situations seperate from each other to be the same when their actually different.

deja vu is a crosby,stills and nash album. i couldnt resist make that joke

I think that i have answered this before

Didn't you ask me that before?

I think i have answered this before

It's a memory illusion, there are several theories, but they are hard to prove as Deja vu's happens spontaneosly.

Deja Vu the stripper joint or phenom? JUST KIDDING :-)! Deja v (DO) is where you relive a day over and over again... OR You might get Dejavu if you wind up at place before & yet it is your first visit to that location...

It reminds of these episode on X-files, where many possibilities are presented as Mulder & Scully enter a bank where a robbery takes place.

I am open to dejavu and have many experiences, starting from the age of 5 (now 34) ive even had deja vu of a deja vu! Now heres a freaky theory! when we sleep and dream, time is irrelivant! If we could learn how to contol it we could predict the future? Andrea

De ja vu happens in the tiniest of fragments of seconds and occurs because something causes a malfuntion in the processing of the present sensory information in the brain. When this malfuntion occurs (which is idiopathic) it causes the brain to start processing that sensory information over again, giving the person the sense that they have been here before or seen or smelled something before etc. They haven't, but they have processed the information approximately one and a half times.

I could swear that I have seen this same question, before... +5

To avoid us to post duplicate questions on AB.

Wthere are things we remember and hold onto, there also curtain information that the we try to store in our memmory but sometimes we can't process all the information, just bits and peaces of it. When trying to remember the whole thing you can't but when you come across the same information all over again and you remember only those bits and peaces of the information and now adding in the 2nd time you've seen that informaton it seems like its new. or your mistaking those small bits and peaces as a something else that your brain has filled in so theres no gaps. what its purpose there is no purpose its how people work, we gather or try to gather information and sometimes we overload it and files in our head becomes a virus and scrambles and some things are lost, or stored in the wrong place, or gets thrown away and forgotten. we have to store info and sometimes hit the empty trash button like on computers but sometimes not all the infor gets emptied.. or we can't process all the information just a portion.. no purpose of Daja Vu. just things that make us remember things that are in the very end of the storage and maybe the trash.. and suddenly gets triggered as a memory that was forgotten about.

i always thought it was because of a sudden change of blood pressure in the brain