Researchers believe they have discovered the key to the phenomenon of déjà vu – a peculiar feeling when someone thinks they have seen something before.
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(Photo: reporter.leeds.ac.uk) |
Experiments indicate that déjà vu can be triggered independently without needing a genuine memory to evoke it. Recognizing a familiar scene or object is believed to involve the release of two processes in the brain.
Firstly, the brain scans its memory bank to ascertain whether the context has been observed previously. If so, an independent part of the brain will recognize a similar context or object.
To test this hypothesis, a research team from the University of Leeds in the UK presented volunteers with 24 common words and then hypnotized them.
These hypnotized individuals were “injected” with the suggestion that when they saw a word in a red frame, they would feel that this word was familiar, even though they could not recall when they last saw it.
However, when they saw a word in a blue frame, they would think that this word belonged to the list of 24 original words.
The participants were then brought out of hypnosis and shown a series of words in different colored frames. Some words were not on the original list and were highlighted in either red or blue frames.
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(Photo: reporter.leeds.ac.uk) |
Ten of the volunteers reported feeling a strange sensation when they saw an unfamiliar word in the red frame, and five others indicated that this sensation was precisely déjà vu.
Researcher Akira O’Connor stated that the results shed light on the causes of déjà vu and the mechanisms of human memory. “It shows that these two processes can be separated and result in the phenomenon of déjà vu,” O’Connor remarked.
Previous studies have suggested that déjà vu may originate from an area of the brain known as the temporal lobe. Some individuals with epilepsy in the temporal lobe frequently experience déjà vu. French scientists have also found that electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe can induce feelings of familiarity with everything encountered.
M.T
