You go somewhere for the first time and suddenly you feel that you have been here before or you have a very strange strong feeling as if it has happened before. This is called deja vu. But have you ever wondered what is deja vu and why does it happen?
Deja Vu is a French word. It means ‘already seen’. It is a state when we feel that we have already experienced something. The term was first used in 1876 in a paper by the French philosopher Émile Boirac. According to the report of ‘Live Science’, 80% of people feel deja vu.
There are many theories about why deja vu is felt. Neuropsychiatrist Dr. Oha Susmita says that there may be a memory theory behind this. According to this, déjà vu occurs when the present situation is similar to a previously experienced but forgotten experience.
Simply put, there are few parallels between the current situation and past experiences. This makes it seem like the current event has already happened. Déjà vu may be our brain’s attempt to understand and believe these perceived similarities.
Deja vu is a very strong feeling. It is very difficult to trace how this feeling is developing. For this, scientists used to recreate Deja Vu in the lab. Some participants were called.
In this, scientist Anne Cleary and her team took the help of Virtual Reality (VR). In it, participants were made to feel déjà vu in an environment that was associated with experiences they did not fully remember. This experiment was named the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis.