Deja Vous

Everyone has experienced Deja Vous at some point in their life. That eerie feeling of recognising the situation you are in even though you not sure how or why can be distressing for many people. But what exactly is Deja Vous and what causes it? There are a normal of theories regarding this topic, from the neurobiological to the downright outlandish.

One of the more conventional theories is that put forward by neuroscientists. Sometimes the brain will receive the same information twice, confusing the individual to get that “familiar” feeling. Information is sent through the brain by a vast and complex structure of neurones that send and receive signals to all the relevant places. When it comes to vision, the brain has two separate pathways for the information to travel just in case one pathway is damaged. The main route is called the geniculate striate pathway that leads to the occipital lobe of the brain (which can be found at the rear of the cerebral cortex) where the information is processed. One theory of Deja Vous is that the signal goes down both pathways to the occipital lobe where the brain instantaneously process both signals which causes the feeling of familiarity. So basically the feeling of familiarity is real, as the brain has (just milliseconds before) processed the exact same information.

But lets be honest, most of you read this blog do for the more crazy and random theories. So, let us have a look at some of these.

One of my personal favourites is the “Repeating Life” theory. Basically, the idea is that life is eternally repeating and you live the same life over and over again. Deja Vous is simply remembering an aspect of one of your previous existences that should be hidden away in your mind for whatever reason. Now as much as I would love this to be true, unfortunately there are too many flaws to this theory for my liking. For one, what would be the point in living the same life over and over and over again? What possible benefits could it have? Also, if all the information from a persons past lives are stored in your brain (as it would have to if the theory of Deja Vous is correct) then why does this never come out during situations like hypnotic regression? I understand people do get past life experiences brought up through regression, but it is never the same life as the one they are living. They are usually Cleopatra or a Spartan warrior (but curiously rarely a Chinese peasant!!). However, if the “Repeating Life” theory is true then this may explain precognition. If we have lived the same life over and over then like Deja Vous, precognition may work on the same basis. Instead of working in the present like Deja Vous does, precognition works by “remembering” the future. Try testing that in a laboratory-based experiment…

Another idea to explain Deja Vous is that from an evolutionary angle (my apologies to any “Creationists” reading this). Most people find the feeling of Deja Vous to be very distressing, unnecessarily experience but there is not a lot of human behaviour that cannot be somehow linked to evolutionary by-products. The idea is that years ago, in mankind’s early stages of evolution, cognitive development created a kind of early warning system for danger. We have all had a “bad feeling” about a situation and the idea that Deja Vous is a misconstrued cognitive response to potential danger does sound quite interesting, but how much truth there is to it is a totally different debate.

Either way, Deja Vous is a strange human phenomenon and is relatively unexplained by hard scientific evidence. Until this evidence emerges the less conventional hypotheses can took and root and grow as time goes on.