why do we have Déjà vu?

Déjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously, an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the near past, although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain, Déjà vu is usually found with ''eeriness''
''strangeness'' and ''weirdness''.

link from www.wikipedia.org

[edit on 17-4-2009 by jellyman1991]

To find out why we have deja vus is quite a task, to understand it occurrence we have to understand the potential of our mind and dreams, in order to see a relevant connection between vision and reality.
I definitely think it holds more than we imagine.

reply to post by jellyman1991


I wonder if you can go down the same path twice in your life or even more times. Let's say I'm six years old and I meet up with a six year old friend and we play and do things all day. Then five years later I meet up with the same friend and we pretty much do the same thing again and Déjà vu happens. It might be with a different friend but the same circumstances. Especially if we live in the same town and our brain is familiar with the area and your friend. That's my thought on it anyway.

Oh and you might want to put a Hyperlink or external source of you quoting wikipedia next time.

reply to post by Clairaudience
we have the potential to dream the future but why is that? can we explain it?, no its a mystery in ourselves that we must uncover to find a true answer.

I have the strangest feeling I've heard this question before

Sorry, I couldn't resist.. I think it's likely that our brains are wired for pattern recognition, and to some extent I think we learn by categorizing memories and experiences and comparing them to others.

Seems to me also possible that we might have some -- what to call it -- cellular memories? I know I've experienced this in places that I'm pretty certain I'd never been before, but perhaps there were elements of the situation that were familiar.

Another possibility is, of course, that we experienced the event previously in a dream or otherwise altered state.

cheers

this is a topic whcih has baffled me for same time now, as i get de ja vu alot, nearly every week.
i read somewhere that it has something to do with blood getting to the brain slower than normal, creating the effects of de ja vu.
after reading this somewhere, which i cannot remember now, i went to the local doctor to ask if there was something wrong with me because of this.
the doctor, suggested brain scans and all that kind of stuff and it came out that i was perfectly normal, 110% actualy.
he checked my blood pressure and that was also fine.
i also sometimes get the feeling that everything we do is repeted like our lives are a loop. a while ago i thought that maybe life was just like a dream and there were cracks in it which showed us the truth or something like that.
anyways, does anyone else have de ja vu regulary?
very doog post, star and flag.

Its certainly a strange one.
I find it espescially satisfying when i have it and realise that its been years between the two instances. Although it hasnt happened to me for a while now a few years ago i had de ja vu that i clearly remembered first having the memory back in childhood. It blew me away!
edit-spelling

[edit on 17/4/09 by cropmuncher]

reply to post by Solarskye
it's weird that we could have Déjà vu twice but it happens, i have it sometimes, in a room that is exactly how i pictured it in a dream is it some sort of time travel?.

Why assume that Déjà vu has a purpose?

As far as I understand it, it's purely a glitch in the mechanisms of the brain.

reply to post by argentus
maybe our subconscious is telling us what places we will be or what things will be said, they say everything is connected so maybe everyones dreams are connected by some altered state.


[edit on 17-4-2009 by jellyman1991]

reply to post by jellyman1991


Yes! Yet another plausible possibility, IMO. I've frequently stopped and tried to see if there was some information there for me to glean. A person never knows -- maybe there is some sort of connective message you're supposed to get......... although I hasten to add that I don't want to start hearing "voices"

reply to post by Welfhard
how do you explain it happening exactly as we dreamt it?, is it precognitive or something more natural?, if it is precognitive why do we still percieve that it's something unnatural?.

reply to post by argentus
i dont think anything that crazy will happen but if we could dream of say your death and it happened for a split second would you be fortunate to remember in that split second to do a course of action to prolong your life?.

reply to post by jellyman1991


Well I'm not talking about precognition, I'm talking about this:

Déjà vu is the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously, an individual feels as though an event has already happened or has happened in the near past, although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain, Déjà vu is usually found with ''eeriness''
''strangeness'' and ''weirdness''.

I spent a lot of time thinking about it after I got sick one summer and had upwards of 12 instances in the one week. After looking into it and watching a few docs on [seemingly] unrelated brain phenomena, I came up with a theory.

You have long term memory and short term memory. One specific part of the brain will constantly compare what's in your short term to what is in your long term. It's part of the intuition.

Now imagine that there is a glitch and your brain writes what's going on 'now' into both short term and long term memory, making two identical memories.

Then your brain finds a memory that is exactly the same as whats going on around you - which is why the feeling can be SO strong.

it's weird that we could have Déjà vu twice but it happens, i have it sometimes, in a room that is exactly how i pictured it in a dream is it some sort of time travel?.

It won't be some sort of time travel, you don't travel in and out of dreams. It's probably some sort of retroactive 'interpretation' of an old dream. When we go through REM sleep after a dream, the dream gets erased but not completely - it just gets really faded. This is why some people say they don't dream. They do, but they can't remember.

Then occasionally we see something in our day that sparks the memory of the dream, but in an incomplete state and the subconscious may fill in the holes.


[edit on 17-4-2009 by Welfhard]

reply to post by jellyman1991


Deja Vu, interesting but not often spoken about.

First thing, ever been driving a car or riding a bike, came to a junction, looked and it was clear. Pulled out and heard a horn from a car that was clearly right there yet you never saw it? Brain researchers say that the human brain can imagine/predict and some say see the future. Without this ability we would see the image from our eyes just after it had happened as opposed to as it happens. I cant find the original articles I read on this years ago but this should give a brief explanation. Could explain Deja Vu in some cases.

dvice.com...

One of the most fascinating things I have ever seen was when I went to see a hypnotist. A family member of mine went on the stage and was under hypnosis. The hypnotist told them that they could not see the person standing in front of him and asked a series of questions such as how many fingers am I holding up etc. Every answer was correct despite the view being completely blocked by another person standing in the way!
The hypnotist then blindfolded my cousin showed the audience the watch that he put in his left hand, put an audience member in front of him and told him that he would not be able to see anything blocking the view. He then asked what was in one of his hands (bear in mind the blindfold and the person standing in front of him blocking any view) and the answer was a watch.

I think human beings have more senses than we are aware of but never explore enough in our lifes because of materialistic societies habits.

reply to post by darthStar
yes exactly i think Déjà vu keeps our brains active and it makes us learn better, by the fact that our brain make us process memory better with Déjà vu, it makes us remember our dreams and our surroundings
but what if we're in a continuous loop and our brains are like tapes processing all the information, and if we time travelled wouldn't that be Déjà vu?.

I read that D'J'Vu is the "feeling" that we've experienced an event, converstation, emotion or some other happening before, when we know that it isn't possible. As far as I recall, it is simply a electro-chemical fault in our brain where the information is repeated twice, This results in a 'second' memory of the event that feels like we're reliving the experience.

Having said that I'd rather believe in a more fanciful theory, namely we are psychic, or that there are parallel realities, I dunno. Anything but the mundane explanation above.

Good post, it's been talked about a hundred times before but it is always refreshing to discuss it.

I believe Deja Vu is fate's way of telling you that you are on the correct path of life. Like when you are on a road trip and you aren't sure if you are going the right way - and then you see something familiar or a road sign that reassures you and lets you know you are traveling in the right direction. Well I like to think of deja vu as the same thing.

My theory of Déjà vu has to do with time and the three time frames in which we live.
We have normal time, which is what we travel on now.
Fast forward time, which is a destination and not something you can view along the way, like traveling through a dark tunnel.
and last we have reverse time.
now all three times touch each other like three hollow tubes touching each other length ways.
a little like this "80" , only they are touching.
we all travel along normal time in our every day life, but some of us in our sleep can slip into fast forward and just get a sneak peek at the future and then we go back into reverse time.
reverse time can only bring us back to now, it is like time is closed off after we go past it.
This is how we can explain Déjà vu.
It would also explain how people can be in a coma for years and not lose any time, they could just be caught between reverse and now and cannot get through the door.

reply to post by XXXN3O
so when we dream we dream the reality so wouldnt that make our dreams the ultimate reality, what if we would use Déjà vu as a sort of power wouldn't we all see what is coming infront of us, if we did tap into our minds would we find that we could unlock this unique ability to better our lives?.