Scientists have attempted to recreate the déjà vu experience (full text) in a controlled setting and have found that novelty is an important component of experiencing déjà vu.
We tested 30 participants in an experiment in which we varied both participant awareness of stimulus novelty and erroneous familiarity strength. We found that déjà vu reports were most frequent for high novelty critical words (∼25%), with low novelty critical words yielding only baseline levels of déjà vu report frequency (∼10%). There was no significant variation in déjà vu report frequency according to familiarity strength. Discursive accounts of the experimentally-generated déjà vu experience suggest that aspects of the naturalistic déjà vu experience were captured by this analogue, but that the analogue was also limited in its focus and prone to influence by demand characteristics.
(Score: 3, Funny) by wonkey_monkey on Tuesday December 23 2014, @10:24AM
I already read this. Stop posting dupes!
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 3, Interesting) by dlb on Tuesday December 23 2014, @12:14PM
But on a more serious note, there are a few hypotheses out there [scientificamerican.com]. My favorite is where events are being processed by the brain in an out of sync manner. The memory mechanisms are finishing their job before the conscious part of the brain is aware of what's currently happening. This is close to what's called the "dual processing" theory. (Although I don't know how popular this explanation is with the neuroscientists.)
Either way, here's a fast-paced 4-minute TED ED Talk [youtube.com] that goes over three of the more popular guesses as to what's happening in our brain when we experience déjà vu.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @01:09PM
You only 25% think you have read it and even that is prone to influence by demand characteristics.
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Tuesday December 23 2014, @05:12PM
Word Salad Surgery
This time and next
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Synonymous Homonym on Tuesday December 23 2014, @07:33PM
If I read this correctly, then a sense of deja-vu means that the cat was not the same, but just so slightly different that it seemed the same. Else it would have been obvious that it was the same cat.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 23 2014, @09:15PM
Yes. A neuropsychologist explained Deja Vu to me as being when you have memory of a distinct form of something but the details are slightly different. A part of your brain notices the form and goes looking for its memory yet does not find it. Like a strange building layout that you have seen before but with different coloration and furnishings in the same places. You recognize the form but not the whole.
(Score: 2) by cafebabe on Wednesday December 24 2014, @01:58PM
This is some very cremulent research but how did they ensure that words were novel when people may be either semi-literate or highly literate novelty seekers?
1702845791×2
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 25 2014, @06:51AM
If by 'novel' you mean 'never seen before', you just make up new words. If by 'novel' you mean 'rarely used', you use a corpus and a thesaurus and swap a common word with a rarely used one.