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‘Divided Attention’ TheoryĪnother theory is that deja vu could be triggered by things that we’ve seen subliminally but haven’t registered on a conscious level. This supports the idea that deja vu should be a purely subjective experience, and not the result of precognitive dreams. Such patients refuse to watch the news often because they feel like they already know what’s going to happen – of course when tested they fail to predict the events with any accuracy. Likewise, some rare cases of ‘chronic deja vu’ exist where sufferers believe that everything they’re experience has already happened. This follows, as our memory centres happen to be located in the temporal lobes too. For instance in cases of ‘biological’ deja vu, the feeling can be triggered by temporal lobe epilepsy or damage to the area. Research also seems to suggest that this might be true and many studies support the idea. As our memories are the only record we have of events, we are left with no explanation as to what’s happening other than the event having happened before. While the precise mechanisms that would cause such an effect are not fully understood, the general idea is that our brain accidentally creates the memory ‘twice’ while we are experiencing something, making us feel as though it has already happened.
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So there must be another explanation… False Memories – Dual Processing TheoryĪnother explanation for deja vu is that it is caused by memories failing to form correctly in the brain – and this is the theory that is most widely accepted among psychologists. Of course the ability for a dream to predict what your office might look like when starting a new job is something that we would generally consider outside the realms of possibility. Perhaps deja vu is just what happens when our brain does its job eerily well. One solution to this problem is to think of the brain as a giant simulator, the job of which is to come up with potential future outcomes to help guide our decisions and behaviour.
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This is often how many of us would explain the situation, though of course it requires us to take the stance that precognitive dreams are possible – that we can on occasion predict the future in our sleep – which many would be sceptical about. The idea is that we experience these ‘precognitive dreams’ that predict the future accurately, and then as a result experience things in real life that feel familiar. One explanation for deja vu is that it is the result of premonitions that we have in our dreams.