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It can be a place, a conversation, a particular moment – even though we have never experienced the situation we are in before, it still seems familiar to us. Up to 90 percent of all people have had such a feeling of déjà vu (which means “already seen” in French). But scientists are still puzzling over what causes it. There are currently about thirty different theories about the cause of this phenomenon.
One thing is certain: men and women experience déjà vu equally often. Travel enthusiasts experience it more often than the average couch potato – probably because they supply their memory with new images, sounds, smells, and emotions more often.
Liberals experience it more often than conservatives, younger people more often than the elderly, the educated more often than the uneducated. Fatigue is also a factor. There are even people who experience déjà vu all the time and every situation in their lives seems somehow familiar – as if they were caught in an endless time loop.
Subliminal stimuli may be the cause of déjà vu
Some researchers believe that the feeling of déjà vu is based on real memories. Example 1: A girl bakes gingerbread with her mother every year at Christmastime. Many years later, even though she can hardly remember it, she walks through the Christmas market and the feeling of déjà vu hits her. The atmosphere and the smell bring back memories of the past. She cannot help but feel that she has experienced a situation exactly like this before.
Another explanation of déjà vu is based on the influence of the unconscious. Example 2: In a train station hall, a man decides to check the departure time of his train. As he lifts his head to look at the board, his gaze briefly falls on a woman standing under it. The moment is so brief that he doesn’t even realize it. A few minutes later, when he goes to board the train, the woman lets him go first – and the man experiences a feeling of déjà vu. Unconsciously, his brain has processed her image before. However, he recognizes her only just now.
True memories or fiction?
But what if we experience a feeling of déjà vu that is not based on a real experience? This is also within the realm of possibility. Parapsychologists, for example, consider déjà vu to be a clairvoyant dream; esotericists, on the other hand, see the phenomenon as a spontaneous memory of a past life.
This may sound crazy – but science doesn’t know any better. Neurologists still suspect that the answer lies somewhere in the depths of our brains. It is here that the hippocampus, a part of the temporal lobe, distinguishes between known and unknown sensory impressions. In a déjà-vu situation, the theory goes, the chemistry in our brains simply goes haywire.
