Anyone can experience deja vu, and those who have it will recognize that it is more than just a sense of having seen or done something before. According to New Scientist, a startling and often disturbing sense of history repeating itself that is impossible to happen. This phenomenon has puzzled philosophers, neurologists, and writers for a very long time, who each offered their explanation.
Since the late 1800s, many theories emerged behind the cause of deja vu, which is French for "already seen." Some thought it may have stemmed from mental dysfunction or brain problem, while others say it is a temporary hiccup in the normal operation of human memory. But the science of the phenomenon has not reached the realms of science until now.
What's the Science Behind Deja Vu? Scientists Might Be Closer to Answering This Mysterious Phenomenon
Can Paranormal Explain Deja Vu?
In 2003, a scientist named Alan Brown conducted a review of all research that had been done regarding deja vu. Much of the research was about the paranormal or supernatural explanation of the phenomenon, which takes things like past lives and psychic abilities to explain why people would experience it.
On the other hand, he also cited some studies that surveyed the public about their deja vu experiences. Brown collected some basic findings from these studies and presented his insights.
For instance, he wrote that about two-thirds of people had experienced deja vu at some point in their lives. He said that a specific scene or place and a conversation could trigger deja vu. Brown also reports on hints of medical literature, such as brain seizures, possibly linked to the phenomenon.
His review is one of the reasons why deja vu has reached the realm of modern science because it was published in a reputable scientific journal where cognitive scientists could take an interest in the topic and present it in a book aimed at scientists.
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Understanding Deja Vu Through Gestalt Familiarity Hypothesis
Anne Cleary, a professor in the Department of Psychology at Colorado State University, wrote in an article in The Conversation about her work on deja vu.
Inspired by Brown's work, she and her research team began conducting experiments testing a near-century-old hypothesis that suggests deja vu can happen when a person senses a spatial resemblance between a current scene and an unrecalled memory. Psychologists call this the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis.
She said this could happen when a person feels a familiarity with a certain place despite not having been there before. The reason could be that the layout of the scene, such s the furniture and objects within the space, have the same layout as a different space experienced in a different scene.
Gestalt familiarity hypothesis states that if a previous situation with a similar layout to the current mind does not come to mind, it will leave a strong feeling of familiarity with the current situation.
Cleary and her team experimented in her laboratory using virtual reality to place people within scenes that allow them to manipulate their environments. Some places share the same layout, and some have distinct styles.
At the end of the experiment, they found that deja vu is likely to happen when people are in a scene with a similar spatial arrangement to an earlier science that they could not recall. Their findings suggest that one contributing factor to deja vu could be a spatial resemblance of a new scene to memory but fails to remember it consciously.
But they noted that there could be other factors yet to be found and proven. More research is needed to investigate other possible factors at play in this phenomenon.
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