I think I've read this somewhere before
Researchers at MIT have come up with a plausible explanation for that disconcerting mental vertigo ofdéjà vu.
In very layman's terms (ie, I have no other way or hope of understanding this, so I'm going with the MIT explanation here), the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory have discovered that neurons in the brain fire when we visit somewhere new, laying down what they call a blueprint. When we return to the same place, these same neurons (called "place cells", apparently) fire again, letting us know that we have been there before.
Déjà vu may occur after visiting a very similar place leads to overlapping blueprints. Interestingly, the ability to form strong unique memories for similar looking places degenerates with age, which is a possible explanation for heightened levels of confusion among some elderly people.
Just another piece in a long line of research built off the backs of mice.
deja vu originally uploaded to Flickr by saturnism. Used under a Creative Commons 2.0 Attribution ShareAlike licence.
2 comments:
though it's been around for a while now, i only recently discovered the http://www.whatthebleepdoweknow.com DVD... it has a pretty similar explanation for deja vu, though they don't really discuss that specifically. It's more in terms of how you make memories, how people learn things, how to un-learn bad habits by forming new neuron networks.. fascinating stuff.
I must check that one out one time, when I have some free time (whenever that might be). Thanks for the heads up.
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