No, you haven't read this before (unless
you're my editor), but I wouldn't blame you for feeling that way.
Pretty much everyone gets that
bizarre I- swear-I've-been-here-before feeling
at some point. Déjà vu is still a pretty mysterious phenomenon, but
researchers are putting the pieces together. And even though it can
feel freaky, it turns out it might actually be a good thing.
So what's actually happening when you get that
weird feeling? There are a couple of different theories about the
way déjà vu works, but most of them operate from the idea that it's
a fairly benign — and possibly beneficial — memory issue.
Essentially, it goes like this: You've seen
something that was deemed inconsequential, such as a stranger's
face on the subway, so you "forgot" it. Then, later, you might see
someone else who looks very similar to that first person and you
get a sense of eerie familiarity, but you're not really sure why
because you don't readily remember the first guy. It's almost like
your memory is too good, but the result is
actually a false
memory — you're confusing the second face for the
first.
Another theory, called "double
perception," suggests that we're actually seeing the same thing
twice, but we didn't really register it the first time. Maybe you
walk into a new restaurant to meet some friends, but you glance
down at your phone to check a text as soon as you get inside. So
you did see the layout of the restaurant, but
you were immediately distracted. Then, when you look up from your
phone, you see it again but it feels like the first time — with a
weird sense of having seen it before.
But we know that you don't have to actually
have experienced that initial thing firsthand to feel a that sense
of familiarity when something uncannily reminds you of it later.
For instance, people have traced their déjà vu back to places they
only saw in TV
shows or photos.
So it's not totally surprising that more
recent research — especially with the help of brain imaging and
virtual reality techniques — reveals that the process is a whole
lot more complicated than an overactive memory. For instance, in a
2012 study published
in Consciousness and Cognition, researchers were able
to induce a feeling of déjà vu (but not actual memories) in
participants by having them walk through virtual 3D locations that
shared specific structures. For instance, the windows in a virtual
bedroom followed the same shapes as a set of wall shelves in a
virtual closet.
Another study, this one presented at
the International
Conference on Memory in 2016, found that feeling might
actually be a signal that your brain's memory checking processes
(not memory formation) are at work, explains New
Scientist. Here, researchers read 21 participants a series
of words that all related to but did not
include the word "sleep" (e.g. night, pillow, dream,
bed). Then, the researchers asked their participants if they'd
heard a word beginning with the letter "s." They all answered
correctly that they had not.
However, when they were asked later whether or
not they'd heard the word "sleep," the participants really
freakin' felt like they had heard that word, thanks to
all those other words. But they knew, because of the earlier
question about the letter "s," that they hadn't. That contradiction
turned out to be a perfect recipe for déjà vu. Participants' brain
scans also confirmed that the parts of their brains that increased
in activity when answering the question weren't areas we usually
associate with memory formation (e.g. the hippocampus) but were,
instead, prefrontal areas involved in making decisions. It's almost
as if participants were on their way to creating a false memory of
the word "sleep" but their déjà vu feeling told them something
wasn't quite right.
So, truthfully, we're still figuring out
exactly what's going on when you get déjà vu. We can safely say
it's not a glitch in the Matrix, and we can suppose that it's
actually a sign of your mind's very complicated memory processes
working as they should. With any luck, knowing that will help you
shake that unsettling feeling next time it happens.
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