EVER WONDERED : What causes the Déjà vu phenomenon?

‘I have an eerie feeling that I have experienced this before… standing here at my office window, looking down at the traffic, seeing a red Toyota jump the traffic lights as Bob Marley’s song ‘No woman, no cry’ plays from my computer.’ ‘However, I cannot quite remember when or if this even happened. I must be having a déjà vu experience!’ Déjà vu, a French word that means ‘already seen’, is a term that was coined by a French psychic researcher of the 19th century called Émile Boirac. Boirac used it to describe the experience of feeling sure that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation at a previous time; although the exact circumstances of the previous encounter are uncertain. This phenomenon is known to be common in humans, both adults and children. Scientists still argue about the cause of déjà vu with some saying this “previous” experience is influenced by past dreams. However, others say that people experiencing déjà vu usually have a strong feeling that the experience “genuinely happened.” Nevertheless, the most likely explanation presented so far is that déjà vu is not an act of previous experience but rather is an anomaly of one’s memory. This gives people the impression that déjà vu has occurred. They explain that this irregularity results from an error in the neuro-sensory nerves that connect to the brain; where a present experience is mistakenly recorded in the long term memory (a part of the brain where past experiences are recorded). For this reason people hardly recall, when, where and how this “previous” experience occurred. Hence the conclusion that déjà vu is most likely a memory sensory error! Ends