As I go through my day, every once in awhile, I stumble across some random topic and find myself daydreaming in class trying to come up with answers. Unfortunately, I never seem to remember my questions afterwards for when I'm in front of my Mac, but for the times that I do recall said questions, I decided I'd share my online research at home with everyone. Who knows, maybe you've wondered the same things I have... I'll cite my sources at the end, but don't hold anything I say as solid facts or even recent research. I'm just doing this for fun, as odd as it is. I happened to have a feeling of "deja vu" today. That got me thinking...what's the science behind this concept, if there is any? And if there is no science...does that support the idea of reincarnation and recollecting memories and experiences? What is "deja vu"? The direct translation is "already seen" in French. Pretty simple concept. Those who have experienced deja vu describe it as an overwhelming sense of familiarity with something that really shouldn't be so familiar at all. Let's say you've never been to India before. You enter a temple with a tour group and all of ausdden, out of nowhere, you feel that you've already been in that very same spot. Or you're having lunch with a group of friends and discussing the current news you saw on TV and once again, that feeling of already having "been there, done that" hits you; same people, same topic, same place. This is deja vu. Are there types of deja vu? Apparently there are. Deja Senti: This feeling refers to something 'already felt'. It is a mental phenomenon and researchers believe that something felt in the past is very similar to that felt in the present. This similarity in the two experiences makes a person feel that he/she has felt the same way in the past. Deja Vecu: A feeling that everything that is happening currently is identical to what had happened before and a strange idea about what is going to happen next, is termed as Deja Vecu. A person experiencing a Deja vecu feeling claims to know what is going to happen in near future and often feels to have remembered it. Deja Visite: This form of Deja vu is a feeling of having visited a completely new place. A person experiencing this form of Deja vu claims to have knowledge of an unvisited place. One claims to be well aware of the geography of a place, when the person has never been there in reality. Deja Visite is characterized by a weird know-how of a spot one has never ever visited. Is there science behind deja vu? Researchers have looked into assciating deja vu with conditions such as schizophrenia, anxiety and even other neurological disorders, but no solid association has been found. It has been found that this phenomena could be the result of the mal-functioning of the electrical system of the brain. In this sense, deja vu would be nothing more than an incorrect sensation of memory. Certain medicines are believed as being held responsible. Drugs such as amantadine and phenylpropanolamine have been observed to cause the feelings of deja vu. Certain medical drugs can cause hyperdopaminergic action in the mesial temporal areas of the brain, resulting in deja vu. As we all know, the human brain is fascinatingly complex. Deja vu might be the tendency of the brain to derive associations between different situations. The brain often tries to experimentally reproduce a situation that it has never faced before. Thus one's own anticipation of a certain incident may make the person think he/she has already encountered a similar experience in the past. Personally, I think this theory has some solid ground. It may be that one of the human eyes perceives a certain thing before the other. Simply put, one eye records the incident earlier; the other eye, which records the same incident milliseconds later, makes the brain get a feeling of recollection. One eye perceives something and the brain interprets it. The eye that lags in time by a few milliseconds perceives the same thing and sends the image to the brain. As the brain perceives the same thing milliseconds later, the person senses it as having seen it before. This can't be completely accurate as even people with a single eye claim to have experienced deja vu. Then again, some people don't associate deja vu with science or logic at all. For many, it supports the beliefs of reincarnation and even having psychic abilities to detect the past and the future. So what do you think? Science or not? Sources:
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
Deja Vu
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