How Déjà Vu Works

Ultimately, deja vu is a sensation or feeling that the person experiencing cannot explain. The sensation implies familiarity with the current situation and can cause unease.

Without the accompanying sensation of unease, deja vu is little more than feeling unusually familiar with the situation around you. That can be a good feeling, such as the reassurance that the workplace operates the same way every day, or in an unexpected place or unusual circumstance, deja vu can be frightening.

The feeling of deja vu can be comforting. Many people face an irrational fear when dealing with the unknown and deja vu can actually be a comfort to them. It may be the mind’s way of saying, “You’ve done this before. There is nothing to be afraid of.” Most people do not even register this type of deja vu as it happens daily when we are at work with repetitive tasks.

On the other hand, most people find the feeling of deja vu unsettling. This is largely due to the efforts to recall the specifics of when they have seen this before. When were the events the same as they are now? When did I experience this conversation, this place, or this activity? This need to identify why we feel a certain way creates an unease and therefore makes the feeling of deja vu seem almost sinister. This may be derived from logical brain’s need to know.

In reality, deja vu is just a feeling, something that can be brushed away as easily or with as much difficulty as the person experiencing it chooses. It can be a subject of wonderment, trying to figure out where the feeling came from, or met with a simple thanks for the connection between the current activity and some other time.

It may be a misfunction of the brain or evidence of greater mental capacities that science has not learned to tap. Deja vu might be a leftover of human instincts, a group memory, or a simple chemical imbalance in the brain. It may be the brain’s way of dealing with multiple stimuli at once, either from delays along a neural pathway, or from resurfacing memories. Whatever it is, deja vu is interesting to study and interesting to experience.