Tanishka Nath - Week #13 - Deja Vu

 Has there ever been a time where you have felt this exact moment has happened before? It’s a strange feeling, seeing the present unravel exactly how you remembered it happening before, keeping you stuck in a time-space continuum where it feels like moments are repeating themselves over and over again. This feeling has me saying, “I feel like this has happened before” to my friends and family, which they then continue to stare at me like I’m crazy. That creepy sense of familiarity, a rather quick and fading moment that we don’t recall even 2 minutes later. While many don’t put that much thought into this, I think it’s something fascinating to explore, and crucial to understand the complexities of the human psyche. 

Deja Vu is peculiar, with science arguing that it has to do with age and fatigue. The feeling has you thinking you’re insane, or insecure on your own collections of memory. This is completely the wrong idea, as Deja Vu is actually associated with a healthy mind. 

While I think the cause for Deja Vu is something deeper, it has remained an unsolved mystery for years, with science constructing the belief that either dreams, or identical memories, disrupt the storage of recollections and its similarities with the present moment. 

Dr. Akira O’Connor from BBC states the same, claiming that when the medial temporal lobe malfunctions, which is a component of the brain that lays down the foundation for memories, the brain becomes over excited and starts to “recognize” details of a memory. This sparks the eerie feeling of familiarity in the body, which then passes through the frontal cortex. Being the voice of reason, once the frontal lobe processes that this was an error, the cycle of deja vu is completed. 

Although Deja Vu is exciting, did you know there was an opposite of this feeling? It’s called Jamais Vu, and it clearly explains why we sometimes look at a word so much that we think it’s spelt wrong: This phenomenon is associated with feeling unfamiliar to a topic or thing that is quite familiar to you. Jamais Vu is often stronger, as it is connected to a concrete concept ingrained in your mind, and often feels weirder as well. 

Deja Vu is an amazing concept, and whether the explanation is a mere malfunction or something more surreal, it accurately displays the limitations and potential that we have to explore the human brain more. Whatever the cause, I hope you reflect on this information the next time you feel Deja Vu, and think: Is this my brain simply miscalculating, or a key to a memory much deeper?


Déjà vu: Re-experiencing the unexperienced, https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/317895, Accessed 19 March 2025.


Comments

  1. Arnav KheniMarch 26, 2025 at 9:42 PM

    Hi Tanishka. This is embarrassing to admit, but I did not understand what deja vu was for the longest time. While I did search it up from time to time, the definition was so unrelatable that I memorized and then forgot it immediately afterwards. But when I reviewed the definition a few months ago, I felt like it justified so many moments in my life. There have been so many moments in my life where I feel like this has happened before, and I usually feel like it specifically happened in my dream. Obviously, I just thought that it was something my mind made up for some reason. Although I attributed it to my mind playing tricks on me initially, it has happened to me way too many times in my life. Personally, I still feel like it is just my mind making up the feeling that it has happened before. I do not feel like being superstitious, so I try to be more scientific instead. So I like how you used the opinion of a medical professional to reason for why this may happen. I have never heard a medical reason behind what has happened to me before, so it is nice to feel more informed about it. Overall, deja vu is relatively harmless, so I do not mind it. But I like how you went deep in the scientific reasoning behind this seemingly unscientific phenomenon, as often described by the media.

    ReplyDelete
  2. Julia WanMarch 26, 2025 at 9:54 PM

    Hi Tanishka, I've experienced Jamais Vu a lot more than I have Deja Vu, especially when I say a word so much it no longer sounds like a word or the example you gave where a word suddenly looks like its spelt wrong, but I had no idea that there was a term for that. It definitely is a weird feeling and I'm glad to know the term for it, maybe I'll look more into it in my free time! I've rarely experienced Deja Vu, but when I have, it's the most trippy feeling ever. I could never tell where the feeling is coming from, it's just an unjustified sense of familiarity. It's good to know that these phenomenons are natural and associated with healthy minds, and it's really interesting that they're quite literally malfunctions or glitches in the brain. Thanks for sharing!

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