Deja Vu

[BREWMANCHU]

We have all experienced it. Sometimes I feel as though I experience it too much to be normal. I run across life situations where I can almost predict what will happen next. However, very rarely can I pinpoint the origin of the prediction. The few times which I have, I realize that my premonitions came from dreams I had days/months/even years before.

I am curious. Has anyone else been able to determine their "deja vu origin"?

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
We have all experienced it. Sometimes I feel as though I experience it too much to be normal. I run across life situations where I can almost predict what will happen next. However, very rarely can I pinpoint the origin of the prediction. The few times which I have, I realize that my premonitions came from dreams I had days/months/even years before.

I am curious. Has anyone else been able to determine their "deja vu origin"?

[/ QUOTE ]

Yes, what you say is very interesting and ... Hey! Wait a minute! Haven't we done this thread before??!! /images/graemlins/mad.gif

[BREWMANCHU]

Ouch sorry if this is a repeat.

[thylacine]

[ QUOTE ]
Ouch sorry if this is a repeat.

[/ QUOTE ]

That's the whole point. /images/graemlins/wink.gif

[lucksack]

Would be pretty surprising if this topic had never been discussed on this forum..

[kerowo]

Something in the environment is familiar to you, but you aren't really aware of what it is so the whole thing seems familiar. The experiment I heard about had to do with hiding objects familiar to subjects in an office so they were partially visible when the students where being interviewed, which led to a higher rate of Deja Vu than without the objects. Something like that.

[Taraz]

I have to say I've had a lot of Deja Vu experiences as well. The crazy thing is that they aren't with objects normally, it's with conversations. It will seem like I know what words will come next before I say them and before the person I'm talking with says them. And they almost always come from my dreams. I could almost swear to you that I remember waking up from a dream saying, "that was weird, why would I be talking about that with this person." And then a month later I'm having that conversation.

Maybe it's my brain just being retarded, I don't know. Real weird stuff though.

[KineticAA]

I don't think it's so much as 'Wait, I've been here before' as it is merely some memory that has had an effect on us which makes us more inclined to remember it repeatedly in different scenarios...whether or not it is similiar to what happened in the past.

[luckyme]

I suspect the trick with deja vu is not the memory at all but the feeling of familiarity. There is a part of the brain that is very involved in that and leads to some interesting mind conditions after certain brain injuries.

Let's say there was a drug that made you feel very familiar with what was occuring ( not unlike the chemical that makes mothers bond to their newborns, and not bond when it's lacking). Then, when under it's influence, we'd have a deja vu FEELING.

That's the simplest way of picturing it even though it's not the process.

luckyme

[BREWMANCHU]

Taraz, that is also my most frequent occurance of deja vu. I find I am able to complete someone else's sentence in my mind before they say it. And as I said before, I relate much of this recall to past dreams.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
I have to say I've had a lot of Deja Vu experiences as well. The crazy thing is that they aren't with objects normally, it's with conversations. It will seem like I know what words will come next before I say them and before the person I'm talking with says them. And they almost always come from my dreams. I could almost swear to you that I remember waking up from a dream saying, "that was weird, why would I be talking about that with this person." And then a month later I'm having that conversation.

Maybe it's my brain just being retarded, I don't know. Real weird stuff though.

[/ QUOTE ]

You almost certainly actually DO 'remember' these dreams. That doesn't mean they happened, or that they happened before these conversations. Memory isn't a static thing, even memories that you've had for a while get revised and edited and changed around from time to time. Sometimes your brain makes a mistake, and the things you are hearing right then get perceived as something you are recalling, not hearing. Persistent and overly frequent deja vu is a symptom some types of epilepsy, and epilepsy is just the spontaneous and inappropriate firing of various brain regions.

[vhawk01]

[ QUOTE ]
I suspect the trick with deja vu is not the memory at all but the feeling of familiarity. There is a part of the brain that is very involved in that and leads to some interesting mind conditions after certain brain injuries.

Let's say there was a drug that made you feel very familiar with what was occuring ( not unlike the chemical that makes mothers bond to their newborns, and not bond when it's lacking). Then, when under it's influence, we'd have a deja vu FEELING.

That's the simplest way of picturing it even though it's not the process.

luckyme

[/ QUOTE ]

Yep. People try to figure out what causes their deja vu, and they almost inevitably decide that something very similar happened in the past, or they had a dream that was close enough to what is happening that they recall it as being the same. But that probably isn't what happens most of the time. Rather, this feeling is a misfiring of the sensation you are SUPPOSED to get when you see something familiar. So, you get the familiar sensation but with the conscious knowledge that this is a new thing. Thats disorienting.

[Taraz]

I'm not claiming that anything weird is really going on. But I'm just describing how it feels. There are multiple times where I could have sworn thinking about a dream right after having it and then having a deja vu experience weeks later. It's just really strange. I don't doubt that it is a neurological misfiring/byproduct/phenomenon. It's just real bizarre.

[Wubbie075]

most of my deja vu experiences have occured while watching TV... I'll be watching a commercial for a new movie or (more than a few times) a new taco bell special item and I'll have a very strong "memory" of seeing that exact commercial 6 months to a year earlier... has not happened for a while though...

I guess I am an oracle who uses the TV as my medium instead of volcanic gasses /images/graemlins/grin.gif