Deja Vu

[Jetman]

So, yeah, walking around in the mall the other day and in front of the bookstore I see a girl I met at a party a little while back. I know for a fact that I've never seen this girl any where else other than this party, but I struck up a conversation with her seeing as we both recognized each other. While we are talking in this certain spot about something in particular (her trip to Philly to check out the school there), I get this extreme sense of deja vu, like I've seen this whole thing play out in a dream or something.

I've done a lot of drugs back in the day, is all of this shit just somehow catching up to me? Actually, I've had deja vu off and on when I was younger before my drug experimentation at certain select moments in my life so it couldnt be that, right?

Fuck, I dont know.Have any of you ever had this, and what do you think causes it? Maybe this means that I am in the seventh level of hell and am living this shitty life over and over again? or maybe like I said, a glitch in the Matrix?

hopefully it is the drugs...

[Grey's Anatomy]

Yeah, you're just high.

[Rich]

I get deja vu often...it's really weird and cool. It's like holy fuck...i've...experienced this before?

[Revoltor]

I remember reading somewhere that deja vu was simply a brain fart of sorts.

[Chux]

I get deja vu often...it's really weird and cool. It's like holy fuck...i've...experienced this before?

This used to happen to me a lot in College, and it was weird because it was right down to the conversation. Sure you might meet a few people here and there in college, but the EXACT conversation, that kinda fucks you up. It was awesome, but kinda creepy at the same time.

[Jeremy]

I've had it happen with conversations, and oddly enough, with CVS visits as well.

[Rich]

This used to happen to me a lot in College, and it was weird because it was right down to the conversation. Sure you might meet a few people here and there in college, but the EXACT conversation, that kinda fucks you up. It was awesome, but kinda creepy at the same time.

I get it alot when watching tv, like I know what the hell is about to happen next.

In recent years, déjà vu has been subjected to serious psychological and neurophysiological research. The most likely candidate for explanation, according to scientists in these fields, is that déjà vu is not an act of "precognition" or "prophecy" but is actually an anomaly of memory; it is the impression that an experience is "being recalled" which is false. This is substantiated to an extent by the fact that in most cases the sense of "recollection" at the time is strong, but any circumstances of the "previous" experience (when, where and how the earlier experience occurred) are quite uncertain. Likewise, as time passes, subjects can exhibit a strong recollection of having the "unsettling" experience of déjà vu itself, but little to no recollection of the specifics of the event(s) or circumstances they were "remembering" when they had the déjà vu experience, and in particular, this may result from an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the present) and those responsible for long-term memory (events which are perceived as being in the past). Neurophysiological specialist Stephanie Warn (based out of San Francisco) has dedicated research on the subject matter. Her current conclusion is that déjà vu is merely the brain pulsing at an exponential rate which causes a person to recall something he or she saw the moment before.

[dakidski]

I'm on vacation, no 'brain pulsing' for me plz.

[Cowdisease]

From Penn & Teller's Bullshit page:

Q: I have experienced Deja Vu on more then one occasion. Is this in the same group as ESP? If not, could you explain the difference, and if so, is this a "valid" form of ESP?

Penn: I've seen a few explanations of this having to do with synapses firing, but I don't know enough about that or know that's it's true. I have never seen anyone even claim that there was real advance information. It's usually passed off as "a feeling." The "feeling" of ESP is fine, "I knew you were going to call" is a fine feeling, as long as you don't think there's real psychic information. The only tie-in with ESP is scumbags often talk about Deja Vu as proof of the "fact" that we all have ESP experiences.

And if you meant the album -- I like the Neil Young songs.

Teller: I have an eerie feeling I've heard this question before. The latest stuff I've read suggests that the Deja Vu sensation is just that: a sensation of familiarity, not tied to actual previous experience. It's as though there is a bit of a short circuit that gives you a feeling without it being tied to actual experience, not entirely unlike the way serious indigestion makes me dream about scary things.

[Jetman]

See, I dont know about this research that says I've experienced something like this before. I mean everything down to the red shirt this girl was wearing, the shitty calendar store in the center of the mall with the Seminoles calendar right behind her, and this annoying little girl with brown summer cap jumping up and down nearby, and the shitty elevator music playing Britney Spears in the background. I doubt I've experienced that exact same situation before. maybe something similar but not that exact.

I agree with Chux in that it is creepy, I dont like it.

And a lot of stuff, I'm seeing on the interent says something like what Revoltor said, ie. brain fart/ chemical imbalance so maybe that's it. That's just a really odd side effect for a bit of a chemical imbalance imo ...