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Déjà Vu: A Brain Twitch?
This is how a neuroscientist defined the strange phenomenon of the déjà vu, the eerie feeling that you are reliving a moment of your life for a second time.
The term was coined in 1876 by the French philosopher Emile Boirac.
One idea brought forward by some researchers is that déjà vu is a sort of 'brain twitch'. Just as we get muscle spasms, or eye twitches, it could be that the bit of your brain which sends signals to do with familiarity and memory is firing out of turn. This fits with evidence that déjà vu is more frequently experienced by people with epilepsy and dementia.
Another theory is that deja vu is the natural result of seeing something genuinely familiar in our surroundings - such as the shape of a structure, or the layout of a room - sparking a false memory.
But none of the current theories definitively solves the mystery - partly because its fleeting and spontaneous nature makes it almost impossible to reliably study in lab conditions. And many think it should not be investigated: because, as someone said, 'explaining rainbows ruins their beauty'.
The term was coined in 1876 by the French philosopher Emile Boirac.
One idea brought forward by some researchers is that déjà vu is a sort of 'brain twitch'. Just as we get muscle spasms, or eye twitches, it could be that the bit of your brain which sends signals to do with familiarity and memory is firing out of turn. This fits with evidence that déjà vu is more frequently experienced by people with epilepsy and dementia.
Another theory is that deja vu is the natural result of seeing something genuinely familiar in our surroundings - such as the shape of a structure, or the layout of a room - sparking a false memory.
But none of the current theories definitively solves the mystery - partly because its fleeting and spontaneous nature makes it almost impossible to reliably study in lab conditions. And many think it should not be investigated: because, as someone said, 'explaining rainbows ruins their beauty'.