Exploring the Mystery of Deja Vu: What Causes It?

[Gold Barz]

Can somebody explain how and why Deja Vu happens?

 

[Genecks]

It's a glitch in the matrix.

 

[Math Is Hard]

Try Googling on deja vu and temporal lobe seizures. That might be a good place to start.
Zoobyshoe is very well-read on this subject and can probably give you a lot of info if he drops by.

 

[zoobyshoe]

I have the weird feeling this quetion has been asked before.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The deja vu is an incredibly weird sensaton that the present situation you are in is unbelievably familiar, as though you are remembering it from the past even though there's no way it could already have happened.

Neurologists have proven that it is caused by a tiny bit of seizure activity in the neurons of a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Even though this is technically seizure activity it's nothing to get worried about: all that means is that the neurons are firing all at the same time for no good reason.

The hippocampus is a major contributor to memory, and performs some vital function in the storage and retrieval of memories. When it gets a power surge like this it creates the false impression that the present is a memory, when it isn't.

A small seizure like this is called a simple partial seizure. This means it is confined to one small location in the brain, and that there is no loss of consciousness.

Most people have at least one deja vu in their lifetimes, some have many more than that. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system of the brain, which is the very touchiest part, the most likely to experience seizures.

What is interesting to me is that there is an opposite to the deja vu called the jamais vu. When a person has this kind of simple partial things around them seem weirdly unfamiliar. They fail to evoke the proper feelings of recognition despite an intellectual realization that you should recognize them. They feel all strange and wrong.

Here is a site that describes some of the many other weird symptoms that simple partial seizures can cause:

Simple Partial Seizures
Address:http://www.trileptal.com/info/understanding/simple-partial-seizures.jsp

 

[Blahness]

If you consistently have dejavu(like many times a day), is that cause for worry?

 

[zoobyshoe]

If you consistently have dejavu(like many times a day), is that cause for worry?

That's hard to say. I went through periods like that and it drove me completely bonkers because I didn't know what they were at the time, and no one could explain them to me. Some a-holes advised me to get right with jesus and they'd probably go away. Other a-holes told me I was being reminded of stuff from a past life. Eventually I ran across mention of them in connection with seizures. More research into this and I finally found studies that had proven they were seizure activity in the limbic system.

If they are driving you nuts, I would see a neurologist.

In general neurologists won't bother with people whose only problem is a few deja vu's now and then, because they have so many people with much worse seizures to take care of. Several a day might be enough to cause them concern and give you a scrip for some anticonvulsants.

They are often associated with migraine as well and there is a large overlap between a lot of migraine and seizure symptoms. That is: some people sort of have both migraine and simple partials. Some neurologists jokingly call this "migralepsy". Same meds work for both, usually.

Do you have any other strange symptoms? Weird visual things, weird body sensations, strong emotions for no reason?

 

[Fractal Freak]

You know, I used to have the same attitude about deja-vu as zoobyshoe. Having a scientific-type mind, I couldn't have any other view. However, something happened to me that I can't explain. While sitting in a circle of friends, all of the sudden, my vision was from a bird's eye viewpoint at the corner of the room, looking down on ME and my friends, yet my hearing was still connected in the circle (really different experience). Anyway, I started remembering everything that they were ABOUT to say, and it happened just as I knew, from hearing it before (?) Well, the conversation among my friends continued for ~45 seconds and I didn't intervene because I would have stopped the cycle, if that makes sense. After they got done with the conversation, they all looked at me because I had this weird look on my face apparently. There was no way I could even describe the magnitude of feeling that I had. So, my question is, do you think that there is a possibility that there could be a realm to tap into perhaps from before or something. I KNOW that seizures cause a false recognition in the hippocampus creating false assumptions that the experience has happened, but individuals with seizures do not have any recollection of what occurred. Any ideas to help with this paradox would be helpful.

 

[zoobyshoe]

...but individuals with seizures do not have any recollection of what occurred.

You missed the point about simple-partial seizures: there is no loss of consciousness during a simple partial, and the person has total recall of what he experienced. Go to the link I posted above. There are a few quotes from people describing what they go through during their simple partials.


When a person has no recall for a seizure it is either a complex-partial or a generalized seizure. This difference in terms, simple, or complex, refers to the level of consciousness and recall.

The experience you had in the group sounds like a simple partial involving temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes of the right hemisphere. I have had the same experience of seeing myself from the outside, which is a simple partial symptom called 'autoscopy' but not in conjunction with a deja vu.

Seizures are somewhat like fingerprints: no two people seem to have exactly the same mixture of symptoms. For some people the deja vu is accompanied by intense fear. For others it is part of a "dreamy state" where they feel they are in two separate worlds at once. Others start to see vivid scenes from their past appear in the space in front of them superimposed on the the present. The exact experience depends on whether the seizure activity spreads, and, if it does, where in the brain it spreads to. As long as it remains confined to one hemisphere, and doesn't cross over into the other, and stays away from the thalamus, the person will not experience a defect of consciousness and will not have amnesia for the event.

 

[hypnagogue]

Any ideas to help with this paradox would be helpful.

This is just pure speculation on my part, but one possible explanation is that your conscious experience of the conversation was lagging behind the actual conversation for some reason. So you had the information coming into you about who just said what, and this registered on some subconscious level, but your actual conscious experience occurred slightly later. I'm not aware of any other cases of temporal distortion of consciousness like that though. A simpler and less exotic explanation would be that you didn't really know exactly what was about to be said, you just had a strong feeling that you did.

 

[zoobyshoe]

A simpler and less exotic explanation would be that you didn't really know exactly what was about to be said, you just had a strong feeling that you did.

When I have a lot of deja vus in clusters I inevitably start feeling like I "know" exactly what is coming next. This had to happen to me many times before I realized that what was actually happening is that the feeling of familiarity was becoming attached to the normal train of speculation we all engage in about what is going to happen next, or what someone will say next.

When what happens doesn't conform to your expectation, it is still imbued with such a strong feeling of failiarity, that you dismiss the fact that the precise thing you were expecting didn't happen, and take the consequent feeling of familiarity as "proof" you did know, but had just gotten the details a little wrong.

 

[Fractal Freak]

Ah, good point about the recollection of simple/partial seizures, I was unaware of that. If this phenomenon called autoscopy is caused by the seizure, why was I able to "know" what was said before my friends said it. I can't explain it, but it wasn't like my sense of hearing was lagging and my visial perception was intact, because the words that were spoken matched up with their body actions i.e. laughing, pointing etc. It just seems that in today's world, there are more people trying to debunk this idea because it just can't be proven yet. I say yet for the reason because everything was undiscovered at one time or another, for instance, gravity. So why can't there be this phenomenon of acheiving a different "cause & effect" wavelength? Any thoughts?

 

[Evo]

Were you doing any drugs or drinking at the time?

 

[waht]

re

Deja-vu feels more like you are slightly ahead in time of everybody else and then when it's over, you slip back to your own time frame and relive the moment.

My only wish is that I would go a little further into the future to get the lottery numbers, heh.

However, no deva-vu is the same, sometime you just become familiar with the surroundings and that's it. Other times, I have experienced my soul, or conciusness actually try to depart from my body for a few seconds. I can't really explain it, but it's like everything ceases to move, and you start feeling weightless. Weird.

I'm wondering if there is any way to induce deja-vu.

 

[Fractal Freak]

In reference to if I was doing any drugs at the time, I had smoked some pot ~3 hours before all this started (pretty much sober). It's not like my reality was so distorted that I couldn't perceive what was taking place. But yes, like I said, hours after I smoked, this took place. Also, at the time (years ago) I was an everyday smoker, so my tolerance had increased quite a bit than the every now-and-then smoker. I'm big into Neuroscience and the understanding of how the brain functions, but I just can't dismiss this experience. I have had other occasions where the surroundings were (familiar) and I almost thought it was deja-vu, but the more I thought about it, I was able to distinguish between the two. However, this other experience was nothing I had ever felt before, and this idea of autoscopy posted by zoobyshoe sounds interesting.

 

[zoobyshoe]

The other possibility was that you were experiencing a form of palinopsia:

"In addition, visual events may curiously perseverate (palinopsia) and remain longer than they should or, even more bizarrely, be repeated after a short interval, for example, the sight of someone walking past the bed may be `replayed' over again after a brief interval, and even repeated a number of times."

-Introduction to Neuropsychology
J. Graham Beaumont
1983, The Guilford Press, p.118

In other words, you would be having a deja vu + autoscopy + palinopsia as part of the same simple partial. As I said before, the exact experience depends on whether the seizure activity spreads, and if so, where it spreads to. There are probably dozens of reasonable combinations possible considering what all is connected to the limbic system. I think most people just have the feeling of hyperfamiliarity by itself.

 

[Fractal Freak]

Wow, that sounds like an interesting topic. Were they ever able to distinguish a mechanism of action for this palinopsia. Sounds more like occipital activity, but you're right about the ability of the seizure to spread, so I'm not sure. Definitely a possibility though. How are you so familiar with all of this?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Wow, that sounds like an interesting topic. Were they ever able to distinguish a mechanism of action for this palinopsia.

That mention is simply made in conjunction with occipital lesions. In other words they're simply correlating lesions at a certain location with specific sorts of symptoms. They don't always have a good idea of the exact mechanism: why that lesion leads to that particular distortion. "Palinopsia" seems to be applied to any experience where there is some form of visual repetition, and I've read of several different things that fall under this heading. I'm really only offering it as an informed suggestion about your experience.

Sounds more like occipital activity, but you're right about the ability of the seizure to spread, so I'm not sure.

Yes, your experience sounds to me like it involved the temporal, parietal, and occipital lobes all at once. I would say this must have been the right hemisphere, because if it had been the left hemisphere you would probably have suffered a language deficit of some kind.

Definitely a possibility though. How are you so familiar with all of this?

I was very struck and impressed with Oliver Sacks' book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. This lead to reading many of his other books, then similar books by Harold Klawans (another neurologist), then I happened on a book about synesthesia by Richard Cytowic, which mentioned that the deja vu was a common simple partial. Since I had had so many of these crazy-making deja vus, this info lead to a study of seizures in general, and especially the interesting book Seized by Eve LaPlante. I used to go to the medical library of the local university quite a bit and look articles up in the back issues of neurology journals and since I got on the web I've been able to read first hand reports of all kinds of seizures by people posting on epilepsy websites.

 

[seraphim]

I seem to be missing the 'how' of this. I don't understand how one could have precise situational deja vu based caused by a seizure in the brain.

For example, I experience extremely specific deja vu multiple times every day. It is not that I feel a sense of vague familiarity but rather that I can predict the exact happenings down to the second for the next 10 minutes because I had a dream about it a few nights ago or something similar. I have never had this vague feeling that you describe but precise knowledge of how the next several full minutes will occur down to kicking a rock as I walk down the sidewalk.

How could a seizure in my brain cause this exact fortelling of a period of several minutes?

 

[zoobyshoe]

How could a seizure in my brain cause this exact fortelling of a period of several minutes?

If what you say is true, then you're not having deja vu's, you're having some sort of authentic precognitive experience.

The experience I'm talking about here is purely illusory: the present seems inordinately familiar despite the fact you know it can't be. Normally this is a shortlived, anomalous feeling, that soon dissipates. When clusters of these happen one after another you can start getting the feeling you know what is going to happen next. In fact, what you think is going to happen next never does except as much as you would expect by chance. If the deja vus continue, however, whatever does happen feels so hyperfamiliar that you tell yourself that it proves you did indeed know what was about to happen, you'd just gotten the details wrong.

Now, as I said, if you aren't wrong about what is going to happen next, then you are having some other experience, apparently the result of precognitive dreams from your description, and not a deja vu.

 

[seraphim]

Well, I suppose that the idea seems to make more sense... though I'm quite skeptical about precognition. But then again, I suppose that I'm no more skeptical about that than I initially was about seizures in the brain. But thank you very much for that clarification.

I'll have think about this more and put these occurances under a bit more analysis before I decide anything. Perhaps I'll post back here once I come to a conclusion.

 

[zoobyshoe]

Well, I suppose that the idea seems to make more sense... though I'm quite skeptical about precognition. But then again, I suppose that I'm no more skeptical about that than I initially was about seizures in the brain.

Most people I've explained this to balk at the word seizure because it's the first time they've ever encountered the notion that a seizure can be very tiny and not really much of a problem. It takes a while to get used to that.

 

[Genecks]

I think my matrix theory works best.. In my mind.. i think we have already lived all events.. and we are hooked up to some mind machine and are reliving life.. but the thing is.. sometimes we experience the memories days or weeks or even earlier before than we are suppose to and it's a glitch. You can go with some scientific answer.. but i think deja vu is something that can't be touched by science... because perhaps this is a fantasy world... with preprogrammed physics..

 

[Mk]

The deja vu is an incredibly weird sensaton that the present situation you are in is unbelievably familiar, as though you are remembering it from the past even though there's no way it could already have happened.
Neurologists have proven that it is caused by a tiny bit of seizure activity in the neurons of a part of the brain called the hippocampus. Even though this is technically seizure activity it's nothing to get worried about: all that means is that the neurons are firing all at the same time for no good reason.
The hippocampus is a major contributor to memory, and performs some vital function in the storage and retrieval of memories. When it gets a power surge like this it creates the false impression that the present is a memory, when it isn't.
A small seizure like this is called a simple partial seizure. This means it is confined to one small location in the brain, and that there is no loss of consciousness.
Most people have at least one deja vu in their lifetimes, some have many more than that. The hippocampus is part of the limbic system of the brain, which is the very touchiest part, the most likely to experience seizures.
What is interesting to me is that there is an opposite to the deja vu called the jamais vu. When a person has this kind of simple partial things around them seem weirdly unfamiliar. They fail to evoke the proper feelings of recognition despite an intellectual realization that you should recognize them. They feel all strange and wrong.
Here is a site that describes some of the many other weird symptoms that simple partial seizures can cause:
Simple Partial Seizures
Address:http://www.trileptal.com/info/understanding/simple-partial-seizures.jsp

To add another of my 2¢ on how weird my mind is:
A few days a week, I get this deja vu many times per day (~6?). Its a common part of everyday life for me. There is an odd correlation between looking between small stacks of things, and deja vu. Jamais vu describes a feeling I get when I stare into a mirror, into my irises sometimes. Everything just feels so unfamiliar, the word that best describes it is "alien." The world and I just feel so alien to me. Eventually I get scared and must look away, so I know where I am and who I am.

 

[zoobyshoe]

There is an odd correlation between looking between small stacks of things, and deja vu.

Small stacks of things? Like what? That's a very specific and unusual trigger. Mine are not connectable to a specific trigger.
I've never had a jamais vu myself, although back in college I remember staring at my face in the mirror when I was drunk and feeling the image I saw couldn't possibly be me.

 

[Mk]

Small stacks of things? Like what? That's a very specific and unusual trigger. Mine are not connectable to a specific trigger.
I've never had a jamais vu myself, although back in college I remember staring at my face in the mirror when I was drunk and feeling the image I saw couldn't possibly be me.

I meant small stacks of books and poker chips particularly. After sleeping on it, I conclude this:

Sometimes I mindlessly stare at something when I'm supposed to be doing an extremely boring task (or just listening to a speaker). My eyes were often attracted to a pile of books (I'm thinking about a particular place now). It was ~2 stacks, with each stack being about seven books tall. The books were old beat-up high school algebra textbooks. Many times I had ended up mindlessly staring into them (not at them), and suddenly experienced the feeling of deja vu. Even as the books in the stacks and the location of the stacks changed, the culmination was still the same.

No correlation between stacks (lol).

But it still happens to me everyday... this deja vu.

----

That's a good name for it. I don't suppose it's the same thing as getting "stuck" in REM sleep, which would have a result more like sleepwalking in a genuine instance of it.

No, its not. My comment was directed towards your account of waking up and walking around and going back to bed, but waking up from that dream.

Hmmm... what if you were awoke from a dream in which you were dreaming you awoke from the same dream. It would go on forever. When would you actually wake up? Could you wake up? Of course you could, but it would make well for a horror movie.

 

[matthyaouw]

My deja vus are incredibly annoying. In most of them I feel like I'm having a deja vu of a deja vu.
I don't quite understand how that works, but it's very frustrating.

 

[zoobyshoe]

My deja vus are incredibly annoying. In most of them I feel like I'm having a deja vu of a deja vu.
I don't quite understand how that works, but it's very frustrating.

I know exactly what you are talking about.

The reason this happens is becasue when you have a deja vu, the feeling of familiarity becomes attached to whatever your attention is fixed upon. Therefore, if you happen to have two in a row, in quick succession, the feeling of familiarity becomes attached to that feeling itself. As you are ruminating on the strangeness of the first one, the second one happens, and makes the situation of thinking about how familiar everything seems hyperfamiliar, in and of itself. I always think: "My God! I've had that deja vu before!

The first deja vu makes the situation familiar, and the second makes that familiarity familiar. It is a literal instance of Yogi Berra's famous line: "It's like deja vu all over again.

 

[matthyaouw]

It's not like two deja vus (is that even the correct plural?) following each other like you describe. It just feels like one that I've had before. I suppose this could happen if two partial seizures happened in extremely quick succession, so quick the second had begun before I knew the first had happened. How long do partial seizures last for? I'm thinking if a seizure were still going on by the time I become conciously aware of the deja vu, whatever was passing through my head at the time would also be interpreted as a memory. Or do the seizures only affect direct sensory input?

 

[zoobyshoe]

[How long do partial seizures last for?

Anywhere from a split second to indefinitely. In my case the deja vu is very brief. It comes on very strongly all of a sudden, then fades, rather like the dynamic of the sound of a large bell being struck.

I'm thinking if a seizure were still going on by the time I become conciously aware of the deja vu,

You are aware of it as soon as it happens. There's no delay. That " feeling" is the seizure activity. If it were located in your motor strip instead, for example, the convulsing limb would be an instantaneous manifestation of the misfiring neurons.
If, in your case, the event is longer lasting, then you wouldn't need two separate events to have the same effect, just a change of what you're thinking about as the deja vu continues. As I said, the feeling of familiarity becomes attached to whatever you hold in your consciousness.
What all this points out is that the quality of familiarity is a glaze added by the mind. It is not inherent in the object, or situation itself. The limbic system is always adding this feeling in exactly the right dose whenever it recognises something as something we already have in memory. It usually does this so well we don't even realize it's something that needs doing. We think of 'familiarity" as a property of what we are reacting to, not something created by the brain. It's only when this system overreacts, as in a deja vu, or when it fails altogether, as in a jamais vu, that we're tipped off to the very existence of this brain function. It is an essential element of memory.

 

[matthyaouw]

I see. Thanks! :)

 

[zoobyshoe]

I see. Thanks! :)

Actually, I just realized I could take a pic of the EEG of a deja vu and post it:

This guy has depth electrodes implanted right into various parts of his limbic system through holes drilled in his skull in an attempt to locate his seizure focus prior to epilepsy surgury.
This is from a paper called The Role Of The Limbic Sysytem in Experiential Phenomena of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy by Pierre Gloor, et. al. Annals of Neurology, Vol12 No2 August 1982

 

[Mk]

The hippocampus is a major contributor to memory, and performs some vital function in the storage and retrieval of memories. When it gets a power surge like this it creates the false impression that the present is a memory, when it isn't.

Could this be linked to how one eats? Or the architecture of one's brain. Are all of our brains' architecture the same?

 

[zoobyshoe]

Could this be linked to how one eats? Or the architecture of one's brain. Are all of our brains' architecture the same?

It's not a normal function. It means something is off, not working properly. Could be chemical, from diet, stress, lack of sleep, etc, or could be from hippocampal sclerosis, or other damage.

 

[x.s.a.n.d.r.a.x]

Deja vue Question! please answer

So I experience "dejavues" quite alot. expecially when I am over tired or stressed out. When I have a dejavue however, i go into this dream like state and nothing feels real, i will have a vision or feeling of a dejavue i have had before or even a dream. its hard to explain. and when the dejavue is done I can NEVER remember what it was about or what happened. i will usually loose some of my memory of my day. and i also tend to have them in my sleep too and when i wake up i feel like I am in a dream for the rest of the day. Also when you have a dejavue, do u become very nauseous and sick to your stomach, dizzy and tired..and then when its done a very bad headache?