Deja Vu

Everyone at some point has gotten that feeling that they’ve been in the current situation before. Déjà vu is mysterious in the fact that we believe we’ve experienced that one moment before, whether in a dream or in a past experience, but cannot pinpoint it. It is believed that déjà vu is the cause of a failure in our recognition memory to distinguish between familiarity and recollection. Familiar memories are when you a remember something but do not know how whereas recollection is when you remember a memory fully.

Many studies have been done to study familiarity and recollection. They have found that we remember events as elements of the event but not the event as a whole. Déjà vu occurs when these elements of past evens overlap with our new experiences and the elements seem familiar. When our brain glitches and mixes up this it can make an experience seem familiar.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/11/081118122146.htm