Have you ever had deja vu?

[kellyb]

And if so, what do you think it was?

By "deja vu", I mean an overwhelming sensation of having been doing the same thing before in the past.

I'm asking this because on a "believer" forum I go to, I asked this question, and got a near 100% "YES!" response.
And, as would be expected, most insisted that it was a genuinely paranormal experience.
I personally think it's a neurological glitch of some sort, given that the experience isn't actually a case of someone who's just having a hard time remembering exactly when they've, for example, had some same conversation before.

[kieran]

I'll bet that almost everyone has had a genuine "deja vu" experience - I think they are at their most charming when you recognize something as familiar, but you haven't quite yet worked out why.

Of course, you may just have completely forgotten about being somewhere or doing something in the past, maybe as a child. Then the memory comes slowly back to you when you are in the same situation again. It takes time to put all the pieces together and remember. You don't always work out why it is all so familiar and you can be left in quite a confused state. If you do put all the pieces together, it gets called a memory. If you are left in that confused state, it's deja vu.

The mind is a great thing for storing memories in hard to access places. Then something subtle triggers the recollection of that memory and out it pops into the front of your mind. It can be as simple as a smell that reminds you of an old girl-friend's perfume, or a room that bears an un-canny resemblance to somewhere you haven't been for many years. You don't always consciously associate the trigger with the memory.

My guess is that the most profound occurences of "deja vu" are when there is a coincidence of many very subtle "recollection triggers" conflicting with each other. Maybe this my way of describing the "neurological glitch" from the original post.

[merentha]

Yes, every working Monday morning.

[Diabolos]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted before...

[Iconoclast]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted before...

[Cecil]

Some people have deja vu all the time (http://www.livescience.com/humanbiology/060130_deja_vu.html).

I'm sure I was one of them...

[CFLarsen]

Yes, every working Monday morning.
Only Mondays?

[merentha]

Only Mondays?

Yep, the only mornings I see the star of Ringu staring from my bathroom mirror. :eek:

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

"The exciting thing about these people is that they can 'recall' specific details about an event or meeting that never actually occurred," Moulin said.
Oh geez. Never use this idea in a conversation with an alien abductee.

~~ Paul

[NeilC]

I have one every month or so. I start to remember the conversation and then hear myself saying the words I knew I would say - without knowing what they were going to be in advance of course - just that they fit into a half formed memory.

They are pretty damned convincing.

[Rolfe]

I merely report this one without comment. Weird story (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=10253).

Rolfe.

[MRC_Hans]

Rolfe, I don't think that is what is normalle called a deja vu (although I don't know what then to call it).

The way I understand the deja vu phenomen, it is an unspecific feeling as something happens that it has happened before; you recognize every bit of the incidence, without actually being able to predict what will happen next.

As such, there is a thesis for what happens: Our brain is processing a lot of sensory input and is only presenting a small part of it to our conscisus mind. Some experiemnts show that the transfer to the conscisous mind is somewhat delayed, but that this delay is adjusted for in the brain, so when we experience something consciously, it is readjusted to be perceived as happening when the sensory input was received, and not when the processed information was presented to the conscious mind. The deja vu feeling is then supposed to be when this synchronisation goes wrong, so the consciousness perceives the event twice, once when it is presented to it, and also as a synchronised event that "just happened".

BTW, anybody know of the opposite? You must have seen something many times but suddenly become aware of it? I once noticed a fairly large house by the roadside on my way from work. A road I had been travelling on every workday for over a year. I thought "Hey! Is that a new house?!" Obviously, they don't build houses overnight, and also, from the looks of it, it had been sitting there for years, it hadn't even recently been painted or otherwise changed, and there evidently had not been any trees or anything else obscuring it. It had just not registered in my mind before that. .... I drove rather carefully the rest of the way home that day ;).

Hans

[ZirconBlue]

BTW, anybody know of the opposite? You must have seen something many times but suddenly become aware of it? I once noticed a fairly large house by the roadside on my way from work. A road I had been travelling on every workday for over a year. I thought "Hey! Is that a new house?!" Obviously, they don't build houses overnight, and also, from the looks of it, it had been sitting there for years, it hadn't even recently been painted or otherwise changed, and there evidently had not been any trees or anything else obscuring it. It had just not registered in my mind before that. .... I drove rather carefully the rest of the way home that day ;).

Hans

This sounds like what George Carlin referred to as "Vuja de".

[money]

BTW, anybody know of the opposite? You must have seen something many times but suddenly become aware of it? I once noticed a fairly large house by the roadside on my way from work. A road I had been travelling on every workday for over a year. I thought "Hey! Is that a new house?!" Obviously, they don't build houses overnight, and also, from the looks of it, it had been sitting there for years, it hadn't even recently been painted or otherwise changed, and there evidently had not been any trees or anything else obscuring it. It had just not registered in my mind before that. .... I drove rather carefully the rest of the way home that day ;).

Hans

I read a novel back in high school (sorry, don't remember the title or author) which dealt with this idea. The author called it presque vu.

I think I like the Carlin term for it better.

[Jorghnassen]

I experience it from time to time, mostly about little things. Never anything like the Rolfe story (don't you take notes in class? And yeah, technically that weird story doesn't constitute deja vu).

[Godmode]

I read somewhere that deja vu occurs most often during puberty. That's when I remember having my most intense deja vu experience, it lasted for quite a long time (10 minutes).

[Nucular]

The way I understand the deja vu phenomen, it is an unspecific feeling as something happens that it has happened before; you recognize every bit of the incidence, without actually being able to predict what will happen next.
That pretty much describes my own deja vu experiences. It happens a few times a year. Usually when I'm tired, or not sleeping very well, or keeping strange hours.

Often, it feels JUST like I've dreampt of events that are happening, and places I see, but in code, so I only know when I see them. It's a really weird feeling - but though I'm preoccuppied with trying to use it to actually predict what happens next, I never can. Because obviously, it's not what it feels like.

I quite like it. It makes mundane things like shops and lampposts extremely interesting for a few minutes.

[NeilC]

Yes it's eerily exciting as the climax of it comes and the last pieces of the situation fall into place "as you knew they would".

[Belz...]

I quite like it. It makes mundane things like shops and lampposts extremely interesting for a few minutes.

Ditto. Fun thing, really. Confused the heck our of me the first few times, until I heard of a theory not unlike the one in Hans' post.

[stupidquestion]

I'm quite prone to deja vu, but I would never ascribe mystical meaning to it--especially because it usually involves extremely mundane situations. I don't know enough about current hypotheses, but I do recall a study that showed the experience is far more common when someone is sleep-deprived, which is certainly the case with me. It also typically happens for me in repetitive events that are naturally somewhat deja-vu-y; e.g., walking in the front door, talking with someone I speak to a lot, etc. I've never had a deja-vu experience in a striking, brand-new environment.

[Dogdoctor]

I voted yes and it was particularly intense, however I have had all kinds of deja vu experiences some intense some mild and anything in between. However in the last 20 years I have had none that I can remember. I figure it is a brain malfunction.

[LeCynthia]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted before...

[LeCynthia]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted before...

[luchog]

I read a novel back in high school (sorry, don't remember the title or author) which dealt with this idea. The author called it presque vu.

I think I like the Carlin term for it better.
Nope, neither are correct.

The correct term for a feeling of never having experienced a familiar scene is known as Jamais vu (http://skepdic.com/jamaisvu.html).

There are three related phenomena

Deja vu - "already seen" - a feeling that an unfamiliar event has been experienced before, even though it is completely new.

Jamais vu - "never seen" - a feeling that a familiar event is completely new, that one has never experience it prior to the moment.

Presque vu - "almost seen" - a feeling that there is something, often of a profound nature, that is there on the edge of one's consciousness, a lurking mental breakthrough, but one is not quite able to experience it.

[Nucular]

Presque vu - "almost seen" - a feeling that there is something, often of a profound nature, that is there on the edge of one's consciousness, a lurking mental breakthrough, but one is not quite able to experience it.
Ooh I have that one too sometimes. Jumpy temporal lobe, perhaps.

I don't think I've ever had Hans' jamais vu - but then maybe I have it all the time, and always think it's the first :rolleyes:

[ZirconBlue]

Nope, neither are correct.

I would argue that, since Carlin is a comedian, "vuja de" was meant to be humorous and, therefore, cannot really be considered "incorrect." It's definitely funnier than actual French. And easier to remember.

[tkingdoll]

What do the French say for 'deja vu'?



:confused:













Note: this joke also works for 'cul de sac'

[Nucular]

Note: this joke also works for 'cul de sac'
And "smells like a French trollop"

[Rat]

If I forget to take my anti-madness pills, I can quite easily have incredibly intense déjas vus (sp?) that last for an hour or more. You get to the point where you think that if you do something really unexpected, it'll break the spell, which sometimes works on milder ones, but nope, you just knew that was going to happen.

Cheers,
Rat.

[Johnny Pixels]

I voted for Yes- intense, but I didn't realise quite how intense deja vu could be. I've never had it for an hour or anything, but it has stopped me mid sentence. Sometimes I get it when I've definitely never been somewhere before, like I was talking to a girl in a field once, never met her before, never been to that field before, never talked to a girl in a field before. I've always understood it in that sort of case to be some kind of brain lag, so the memory exists, but only from like a second or so before, so you think you've been there before, but it's only because the information is lagging behind in your head. I dunno where I heard that explanation now though.

[Quinn]

I swear I am not making this up. Just now I was looking at the thread index, scrolling through the list of thread topics with my eyes, and I noticed a thread near the top of the screen titled "Have you ever had deja vu?" For a fraction of a second, I thought "That could be interesting, maybe I'll look at it," while my eyes continued to scroll downward. Then when they reached the bottom of the screen, there was another thread down there titled "Have you ever had deja vu?"

Of course it was simply a glitch of the trackpad, but the circumstances were too good not to mention...

[chipmunk stew]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted before...

I've often wondered how much our suggestible memories play a role in the phenomenon:

You have a "coincidence of many very subtle 'recollection triggers' conflicting with each other" as kieran aptly put it, and sort of stitch them together and modify them on the fly so that you actually implant a memory that is identical to the current experience unfolding.

[Eos of the Eons]

I'll have a dream about an obscure place that I'd been to only once or twice. Then I'll end up at the place, or noticing it because of the dream. Playgrounds are especially good to get the feeling in. That's when I get the most intense deja vu. Is it some weird brain chemical, or just the sudden jump of memories that brings on the feeling?

[NeilC]

Have you ever had deja vu?

And if so, what do you think it was?

By "deja vu", I mean an overwhelming sensation of having been doing the same thing before in the past.

I'm asking this because on a "believer" forum I go to, I asked this question, and got a near 100% "YES!" response.
And, as would be expected, most insisted that it was a genuinely paranormal experience.
I personally think it's a neurological glitch of some sort, given that the experience isn't actually a case of someone who's just having a hard time remembering exactly when they've, for example, had some same conversation before.

[kellyb]

That actually freaked me out for a second!

[Jorghnassen]

I'm sure I've seen this question posted before...


I was quite sure of that too, then I searched for another thread on specifically on déjà vu and couldn't find one (but, I might have missed it, and the search engine on this forum is crummy, wouldn't take "deja vu" as one string, considered "vu" too short and only looked for "deja"...)

[Belz...]

What do the French say for 'deja vu'?

Note: this joke also works for 'cul de sac'

We say the exact same thing.

[Jorghnassen]

We say the exact same thing.

Except that we pronounce it correctly (and spell it correctly too: déjà vu).

/silly English speakers can't pronounce "u" properly, even those capable of making the right sound mix it with "ou"...

[Hydrogen Cyanide]

I read a novel back in high school (sorry, don't remember the title or author) which dealt with this idea. The author called it presque vu.

I think I like the Carlin term for it better.

This novel seems to have some deja vu aspects to it (kind of sci-fi, fantasy, weird and romance... and popular with high school girls):
The Time Traveler's Wife (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/015602943X/sr=8-2/)

[Soapy Sam]

Deja vu?

Not that I can recall.