Déjà vu, the feeling of reliving an experience, is a subject that intrigues many people. Recent scientific research suggests that this phenomenon may be caused by spatial similarities between the new scene and the unrecalled memory. Various studies, including those using virtual reality, aim to learn more about the causes of déjà vu. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
What is déjà vu? Psychologists are investigating this eerie feeling that you may have already experienced before.
Have you ever felt that strange feeling? I went through the exact same situation before, even if it’s impossible? Sometimes it even seems like you are reliving something that has already happened. This phenomenon, known as déjà vuIt baffled philosophers, but neurologistand Writer for for a very long time.
Since the late 1800s, Many theories began to emerge About the cause of “déjà vu”, which means “already seen” in French. People thought maybe it was due to mental dysfunction, or maybe some kind of brain problem. Or maybe it was a temporary glitch in the normal workings of human memory. However, this topic has only recently reached the realm of science.
Transition from paranormal to science
At the beginning of this century, a scientist named Alan Brown All reviews written by researchers about Déjà Vu Until that point. Much of what he found had a paranormal flavour, relating to past lives, psychic powers, and other supernatural things. But he also found studies that surveyed ordinary people about their déjà vu experiences. From all these papers, Brown was able to glean some fundamental discoveries about the phenomenon of déjà vu.
For example, Brown determined that approximately two-thirds of people experience deja vu at some point in their lives. He determined that the most common trigger for déjà vu was a scene or location, and the second most common trigger was a conversation. He also reported hints across a century or so of medical literature about a possible link between déjà vu and certain types of seizure activity in the brain.
Brown’s book review brought the topic of déjà vu into the realm of more mainstream science. This is because these are the scientific journals that scientists who study cognition tend to read; in the book Intended for scientists. His research inspired scientists to design experiments to investigate déjà vu.
The layout of your new place may be very similar to places you’ve visited before, but you may not consciously remember it. Credit: SciTechDaily.com
Testing déjà vu in a psychology lab
Inspired by Brown’s work, my own research team began an experiment aimed at testing hypotheses about the mechanism of déjà vu.we investigated a nearly century-old hypothesis It suggests that déjà vu can occur when there is a spatial similarity between the current scene and a scene that cannot be recalled in memory. Psychologists called this the Gestalt affinity hypothesis.
For example, suppose you are on your way to visit a sick friend and pass a nursing station in a hospital ward. You had never been to this hospital before, but you had a certain feeling. The root cause of this feeling of déjà vu may be that the layout of the scene, including the placement of furniture and certain objects in the space, is the same layout as another scene experienced in the past.
Perhaps the way the nurse’s station is arranged – the way it is connected to the furniture, the items on the counter and the corners of the hallway – may be the same as the way a set of welcome tables are arranged in relation to the signs and furniture in a hospital corridor. not. Admission to a school event I attended a year ago. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, only a strong sense of familiarity may remain in a current situation if no previous situation with a similar layout to the current situation comes to mind.
To investigate this idea in the lab, my team used virtual reality to place people in a scene. This allows people to manipulate the environment in which they find themselves. Some scenes share the same spatial layout, while others are distinct. As I expected, There was a high possibility of déjà vu occurring. When people are in a scene that contains the same spatial arrangement of elements as a previous scene that they have seen but do not remember.
This study suggests that one factor that causes déjà vu may be the spatial similarity of a new scene to a scene in memory that is not consciously recalled at that moment. However, spatial similarity is not the only cause of deja vu. Many factors can contribute to making a scene or situation feel familiar. Further research is underway to investigate additional factors that may be involved in this mysterious phenomenon.
Written by Ann Cleary, Professor of Cognitive Psychology, Colorado State University.
This article was first published conversation.
Source: scitechdaily.com
