If you have a feeling that you have read this before, do not worry, you are just experiencing the feeling of "foreseeing illusion" or what is known as "déjà vu" (déjà vu), such as visiting a friend's apartment and feeling that you were here before, But the truth is that this is the first time you visit this apartment.
However, the feeling can be so strong and so real, that you know what you'll find when you enter the kitchen, and experts estimate that nearly 2 out of 3 people have experienced it at least once.
The originally French term - which means "seen before" - was coined by the French philosopher and psychological researcher Émile Boirac in 1876, but people experienced this feeling long before it was named.
Over the centuries, man has taken a "foreseeable illusion" as evidence of what he believed in. For example, Sigmund Freud looked at "déjà vu" and saw repressed desires, and Carl Jung believed that it was linked to the collective unconscious, and Plato described something similar to déjà vu as evidence of a previous life. And, of course, there is a recent notion in Hollywood that déjà vu is the product of a defect in the Matrix.
A feeling that has puzzled scholars since it was coined by the French philosopher and psychological researcher Émile Poirac in 1876 (Shutterstock)
Deja vu enters the arena of science
In 2003, as a Discover Magazine report notes, psychologist Alan Brown published a research paper in the Psychological Bulletin that included the little information we had about a pre-seen illusion, and linked that information to models in Cognitive Psychology and Memory Research.
His work paved the way for the research community to take a closer look at this phenomenon in the following years, and since then he and a handful of researchers have introduced the study of déjà vu to basic science.
In addition to considering it a supernatural phenomenon, it represented a "pre-vision illusion" another obstacle for researchers, as it usually takes no more than a few seconds to feel, and there is nothing to prepare for its occurrence, which makes studying it very difficult, and much of the information known about it is based on exploratory studies, In spite of this, researchers have come up with new ways to study it in practice.
In 2006, a team in England hypnotized people to stimulate déjà vu, and Anne Cleary, a professor and researcher in cognitive psychology and memory at Colorado State University, had a cutting-edge idea.
It used virtual reality to induce deja vu, showing people a series of scenes in a Sims video game carefully crafted so that the spatial layout of one scene was similar to another even though the images themselves were completely different.
Subjects experienced a pre-vision illusion when the scene was similar to the one they had seen before, suggesting that similar spatial planning between two places may lead to a sense of familiarity with the new place, a feeling similar to deja vu.
Since the "illusion of preseen" entered the field of science, many theories have emerged to explain it (Getty Images)
Lots of theories to explain it
Once the "foreseeing illusion" research was taken seriously, many theories began to emerge about what happens in the brain while experiencing this sensation.
For example, one hypothesis is that déjà vu is caused by memory, such that you have experienced something but your conscious mind cannot remember it. When you encounter something similar you feel familiar but cannot recall memory. Cleary's VR experiences support this view. The spatial similarity - And it's not any specific detail - that evokes a sense of familiarity.
Another common theory is that a prescience illusion is caused by interrupting the current thought sequence. Imagine, for example, that you were walking down the street, passed a new coffee shop and peeked into the store, but at that time you received a text message and looked away, meaning that the information was processed on some level, but Not completely.
When you look at the coffee shop again you will have the strange feeling that you have seen it before, because you just did it even though you had no conscious memory of it.
A third theory is that déjà vu is caused by minor seizures in the brain. It is known that people with epilepsy experience déjà vu frequently. In people without epilepsy, this may be caused by a type of seizure-like activity, in which a slight abnormality occurs in the brain that causes A sense of illusion before seeing, and this is perfectly consistent with the fact that adolescents and young adults experience the feeling of déjà vu more frequently than the elderly, as the brain is busy recalling many events in that age period, which makes the chances of a defect higher.
Cleary points out that these are not necessarily contradictory theories, "there can be many different reasons that could all be valid reasons for déjà vu."
The reasons for feeling presbyopia are not yet known (Shutterstock)
Not just deja vu
Although no reasons have been identified for the prescient illusion yet, it is good that science is finally getting serious about this strange phenomenon.
"I think déjà vu research has shed light on the processes that help us better understand memory on a broader level than just trying to understand a pre-seen illusion," Cleary adds.
Cleary's lab is currently researching the relationship between déjà vu and seizures, updating virtual reality technologies and trying to learn more about individual differences in déjà vu experiences.