3 ms·
Consider the anomaly of Deja Vu. Did this moment actually happen previously and your remembering it again, or is a chemical reaction in your brain tricking you
by click170 12y ago
Consider the anomaly of Deja Vu.
Did this moment actually happen previously and your remembering it again, or is a chemical reaction in your brain tricking you into thinking you've had this thought before?
- jacquesm 12y agoDeja-Vu is actually something else, it's a phenomenon that is apparently triggered by the different lengths of travel that information can take through the brain, causing the same information to be presented twice, once directly from the source and once indirectly.
- anigbrowl 12y agoAny chance of a reference for that? I'm in the middle of adapting a story about this and haven't heard this idea before, I'd love to learn more about it.
- jacquesm 12y agoLet me look that up, it's been a while. One moment. Edit: ok, found it: http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/deja-vu4.htm http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/deja-vu4.ht... "Another theory is based on the way our brain processes new information and how it stores long- and short-term memories. Robert Efron tested an idea at the Veterans Hospital in Boston in 1963 that stands as a valid theory today. He proposed that a delayed neurological response causes déjà vu. Because information enters the processing centers of the brain via more than one path, it is possible that occasionally that blending of information might not synchronize correctly. Efron found that the temporal lobe of the brain's left hemisphere is responsible for sorting incoming information. He also found that the temporal lobe receives this incoming information twice with a slight (milliseconds-long) delay between transmissions -- once directly and once again after its detour through the right hemisphere of the brain. If that second transmission is delayed slightly longer, then the brain might put the wrong timestamp on that bit of information and register it as a previous memory because it had already been processed. That could explain the sudden sense of familiarity." The article contains a lot of other theories about the origin of Deja-Vu as well but that one seems to have stood the test of time very well.
- anigbrowl 12y agoThanks Jacques!
- corin_ 12y agoIf you read it from another source and remember anything else about deja vu, don't suppose you recall anything about this: I don't think I've experienced a pure deja vu since I was a child (so 10-15 years), but since then I do get - not frequently, but every now and then - what I call "double deja vu"s, i.e. instead of thinking I've seen/whatever something before, I think I've had deja vu of something before. So it feels like this is the 3rd time, not the 2nd. Never found any information on or even many other people reporting this though.
- jacquesm 12y agoThere is a strong correlation between people experiencing frequent deja-vu and epilepsy. The reason I remembered all this is that a friends child was diagnosed with epilepsy a while ago and I read everything I could on the subject and one of the offshoots of all that reading was a bunch of stuff about deja-vu. Maybe that would be a good starting subject for some 'light reading'.
- corin_ 12y agoThanks, as far as I'm aware I don't have epilepsy but my brain definitely has some other odd wiring.. Will look into epilepsy more anyway :)