Déjà vu Isn’t What You Think It Is

Déjà vu is actually associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. This experience is a neurological anomaly related to epileptic electrical discharge in the brain, creating a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past.

Some researchers speculate that déjà vu occurs due to a discrepancy in memory systems leading to the inappropriate generation of a detailed memory from a new sensory experience. That is, information bypasses short-term memory and instead reaches long-term memory.

The familiarity is signaled by brain cells in the temporal lobe, but is noticed and ignored by another part of the brain that checks whether all the signals coming to it make sense. The part of the brain that does this checking may well be in the frontal lobe, a part of the brain in from just above your eyes.

Déjà vu is the phenomenon that a person experiences when they feel that they've experienced an event in their past. ... A new study in the journal Brain Stimulation explained a phenomenon epileptic patients experienced where they were able to recall a dream or have a dream-like feeling while awake called déjà rêvé (and am betting that's one you never heard before).

Far be it from me to rain on anyone's parade but déjà vu can be a sign of something more serious — such as epilepsy, mentioned earlier — if you have other symptoms that accompany déjà vu. More often, though, it just means you might need to get a little more sleep or participate in an activity that can help lower your stress levels.

Some call it a gift, others, a curse.

Now the complete opposite is jamais vu, which involves a sense of eeriness and the observer's impression of seeing the situation for the first time, despite rationally knowing that they have been in the situation before. Jamais vu is sometimes associated with certain types of aphasia, amnesia, and epilepsy.

Déjà vu occurs most often between 15 and 25 years of age and decreases progressively with age.

Thus, if you are between those years and feel akin toward something, the best advice I can give ... see your doctor. For not everything around us is hearts and flowers.

For those past 25 and still claim to have a sense of Déjà vu ... obviously, it is too late to help you. Senility, or Dementia has has claimed you already.