Effect deja vu

 It is possible that everyone has had a moment at least once in their life when they thought to themselves, "I associate this, I've been here before, I've experienced this!".


Such a feeling is known as the "déjà vu" effect. The name "déjà vu" comes from the French language and literally means "already seen". It refers to something we have already encountered in life and we experience it once again, usually in the form of a soft sensation, often an image. Whichever way you look at it, a term very appropriate for something we experience again (or rather, most often have that feeling). It most often refers to places where, objectively speaking, we are for the first time, but 'something' tells us that we already know the place.

How can such a phenomenon be explained?
Most likely, it is a neurological phenomenon, meaning that it is more related to our cognition and consciousness than to vision itself. This is confirmed by the intriguing fact that the phenomenon of déjà vu also occurs in blind people (in the sense of recalling tastes and smells). According to Marcin Małecki, a doctoral student in psychology at the School of Social Sciences and Humanities, déjà vu is the result of transferring a feeling along the lines of 'this is familiar, familiar and familiar' from one familiar object to another, located in a new place or situation. The impression of 'déjà vu' could be triggered, for example, by an item of furniture in a room we have rented in a guesthouse. For the impression of déjà vu to occur, a certain condition should be met. For this to happen, the furnishings (e.g. a chest of drawers) should be similar in style, design and colour to what we know from our own lives or memories. A similar trigger for déjà vu can be, for example, the view from a window in a new place that is confusingly similar to a landscape we once encountered.

In ancient times, the issue of déjà vu was also of interest. People of the time tried to understand and explain it as best they could. In subsequent eras, it was also explained in various ways. References were made to the influence of other spiritual entities, to reincarnation.
A modern theory concerning so-called parallel worlds has gained some popularity. According to this theory, we live in one of the parallel worlds, and any imbalance in these worlds would have this effect on our consciousness.

There is also an opinion that déjà vu is a kind of flash of knowledge that we collect all our lives, but which we do not use directly. This is so-called latent knowledge, probably stored in as yet unexplored areas of our brain. If something we see overlaps to a large extent with one of our unconscious memories, we have the impression that we are taking part in it once again. It is impossible not to mention the neurological approach to the issue of déjà vu. In the simplistic version, according to doctors, déjà vu simply indicates neuronal interference. A more pessimistic version assumes that this effect accompanies one form of epilepsy, the so-called temporal epilepsy. In this case, déjà vu may be a symptom of the disease, being one of the elements of the so-called epileptic aura, preceding the seizure. This eventuality should not be underestimated, especially if the flashbacks occur frequently. It is then worth seeing a specialist.

In general, déjà vu can probably be classified as an interesting experience, as long as it does not happen too often. The opposite of the déjà vu effect is the feeling of strangeness concerning an objectively familiar situation, the so-called "jamais vu" (a term also from the French, pronounced "¿ame wu" meaning: "never seen").