Do you ever feel like you’ve already experienced the situation you are in at that moment? You visit a place you have never been to before, and suddenly you feel like it’s all so familiar. But then, you know that it is impossible for you to have experienced this before. Hence, you start questioning your sanity.
This feeling has a name- Déjà Vu. We aren’t warned about this feeling like most other life experiences. Kids of age 6-10 have their first experience of Déjà Vu. They come up with various explanations for this feeling, thanks to their imaginative minds. Maybe, aliens have erased their memories and now it’s all coming back. Scientists, unlike the children, are still not sure of the cause of this.
People with temporal lobe epilepsy have claimed to have experienced Déjà Vu just before a seizure. Scientists have thus concluded that Déjà Vu has something to do with the temporal lobe. The temporal lobe is responsible for making and remembering memories.
Another theory suggests that we feel the sense of familiarity when we see an object we have seen before- maybe in a completely different setting. For example, one may have seen a man riding on a goat. When they see a man riding on a horse, they feel the sense of familiarity. Like, they have been in a similar situation before. They cannot locate a specific memory. This sense of familiarity is Déjà Vu. Parapsychologists believe that our past life experiences cause Déjà Vu.
It has been found out that Déjà Vu is most frequently experienced from the age of 15-25. After that, it starts decreasing. This tells us that Déjà Vu is not a memory problem as memory problems increase with the increase in age. In fact, it a sign of good memory, being able to sense the familiarity. This can help people make decisions.
How do scientists conduct their research on Déjà Vu? There’re observational studies; then there’re experimental studies. It is really difficult for the researchers as one can never be sure if someone who claims to have had Déjà Vu has experienced it at all. Maybe, they have experienced something different or maybe, they have just decided to lie.