What is Déjà vu?
Feeling trapped in your memory, wondering whether this has happened before, have I been here before? There’s no need to be tensed because it is natural because you might be having déjà vu that’s why you are unable to remember where you have experienced this before because the truth is that you haven’t experienced this before.
Déjà vu is a term coined by a French philosopher and physical researcher in 1876. This condition is associated with the memory of a human being. According to Professor Alan Brown at South Methodist University in Dallas, almost every person in his life experience déjà vu once in his life. This phenomenon usually occurs at a young age, during the age of 15–25. It mostly starts at the age of 6 or 7 and happens once a month on average. Scientists called it a ‘Glitch in the Matrix.’
Causes of déjà vu
Up until now the causes of déjà vu are still a mystery but researchers have performed experiments and déjà vu is the misfiring of neurons that makes pseudo connections. “Déjà vu is a brain twitch just like a muscle spasm when receiving information brain sends a signal to do with familiarity and memory is firing out of turn. “Says Dr. Akira O’Connor, a psychiatrist at the University of St. Andrews.
The main reasons of déjà vu are:
o stress
o tiredness
o mini seizures
Experiments to explore déjà vu
Scientists say that déjà vu is not a neurological phenomenon and more of a psychological one. In research of finding reasons behind déjà vu scientists have concluded several experiments including virtual reality and hypnosis.
In the experiment, the Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scan the brain of 21 people as they experienced some sort of artificial déjà vu. When their brains were scanned it was found that during déjà vu hippocampus of the brain was not active although this part is related to the memories of a person. The mainly triggered regions were those of decision making because the brain was checking through the memories trying to create a difference between what’s happening and what we are experiencing. According to the studies, people with frequent déjà vu feelings tend to have more brain malfunctioning like dementia and epilepsy.
During déjà vu, the temporal lobe of the brain tells the mind’s frontal region that this currently happening event has happened before. The frontal region thoroughly checks the previous memories in the brain and the brain asks whether this has happened before? If yes then try to think more to retrieve the old memory but if not then you come to know that it’s déjà vu. During déjà vu, the neural firings are cut off.
Is déjà vu a good thing or bad?
Déjà vu is a generally good thing because according to Dr. Akira O’Conner, in this way the brain works fast checking for the facts and prevent a man from misremembering things. When millions and billions of neurons work together they become a little too messy and the brain can misremember things
But if a person keeps on experiencing this peculiar feeling more than average this is mainly a sign of some problem that can, later on, cause serious brain problems like dementia, Alzheimer.
Dopamine and déjà vu
Dopamine is an excitatory neurotransmitter, that transfers the signals through synapses. As it is already known that déjà vu is related to familiarity and during familiarity signaling dopaminergic actions are present. So the medicines which are excitatory to dopaminergic neurons can also be a factor for déjà vu.
Once a man in Finland used a flu medicine mixture which was excitatory to some dopamine neurons, he started having déjà vu, just because it’s an interesting feeling so he kept on taking the medicine, and eventually he stopped having déjà vu.
Dream based déjà vu
Some scientists believe that when we dream we imagine and some part of that imagination is stored in our brain although we only remember some dreams. When we are having déjà vu maybe our brain is checking the familiarity between the actual situation and the event that happened in your dream and in this way the event didn’t happen twice. The first time you imagined in your dream and the second time it’s happening for real, that makes you think that it’s a déjà vu.
