Deja Vu, what causing them?
373433
I don't think anyone really knows the exact reason behind it - but the common belief is that your brain mixes up the signals it is seeing and hearing now, and it is either:\na) A short time delay (we are talking not even miliseconds) of you seeing / hearing / doing something and your brain actually responding - so your then feel like you have seen / heard / done before - a bit like an echo - one part of your brain acknowledges the thing happening then a fraction of a second later the proper part of your brain actually responds to it.\n\nb) Your brain incorrectly puts something in your long term memory - so when it happens you brain thinks it has done it before.\n\nI know it is well freaky - I get it quite a lot almost to the point where I am trying to think of what the next person is going to say, and what I will say in response, and so on - sometimes I can "think" that I know a whole conversation as it is happening.
279489
Interesting question!  I am really looking forward to the answers on this one.\n\nI used to think I was having past life memories.  I was having a deja vu-type experience very often, like every few hours.  I would remember a memory that wasn't my own.  To this day I'm not sure whats happening when it occurs (still pretty much daily) but I'm sure its just some wires getting crossed in my brain somehow.
67666
Would that be "deja vu" that you mean?\n\nHaven't we already seen this?
1186522
One explanation I've heard is that the brain is storing the present into memory so quickly, we perceive it as happening in the past.\n\nThere are also the theories of parallel universe travel or having dreamt something very similar to the present.
119765
Uh, I think that I'm having Déjà Vu ...  LOL
834968
Maybe it is some kind of hallucination.. You may wish to see a psychologist about it. Certain illness might trigger it..
729058
i would normally say at night , it could be sleep paralysis which induces hallucinatory images ..\nhowever they are usually random images ... this seems to be something more\nif you see them as if they are projected thoughts .. then it could be spirit\nif you see them like the typical ghost haunting type imagery then that is your residual energy that you are referring to\nresidual energy is left over energy on the atmosphere... like a replay of what once was ...\nand although this can be seen by everyone if the energy is strong enough ...\nit seems that you are perhaps sensitive to that energy and are seeing it more than the norm\nthe white mist ... i used to get this at night also\nnow i feel it was my guide as i found a lot of comfort from it , but logically speaking this could be the affore mentioned sleep paralysis\n\nwould love to help if ever you have any more questions though ... because it can all get confusing xx
341425
I have answered this question before, deja vu is the correct term.
967443
The next time you get deja vu, you know, at that moment you realize you've done this before - try to figure out what will happen next! You can't! But if, as most people think, you've lived the experience before, you should have no problem remembering what is to follow. Here's why you can never remember what will follow. When we experience anything, our brain records it and stores it as a memory. Then that memory is "filed" so that when we recall it, we can determine the sequence of the event, i.e. was this recent, or years ago? When the brain "misfiles' a current event as being something in the past, it recognizes that event and we feel we've experienced it before. But actually, our brain is comparing the current event to itself! That's why we can never follow through with what happens next...because it hasn't happened yet! And that, my friend is deja vu!
570703
Could be something else, or could just be your mind messing around with you. It's all up to what you believe. Deja vus aggrivate me.. i'm glad i haven't had one in over a year
757390
It's happened to me many times.  It "could" mean that or many other things too---astral projection, reincarnation, a universal consciousness, memories from our ancestors, various psychic abilities, etc.
33995
this happens to me too. it is called deja voo (who knows how to spell that!) when you actually see it in real life. this happens to me quite frequently\ni used to think i was psycic
755106
i think its your brain somehow writing your current experiences on some previous date in its journal of memories, and then seeing that it has already gone through this before.  Then, its a really weird feeling\n\nbut i really have no clu
96311
"Déjà vu" litterally means "already seen". It is actually much more used in English than in French. For the meaning, I do agree with Joliet.
963346
The one we assume is 'now', but actually took place before now and it takes awhile for us to 'catch up'....science has already established that our brains are programmed with a delayed reaction anyway.   I think deja vu is due to either reincarnation, or the fact that time is not linear. mail me if you ever want to talk about it...time is one of my favorite subjects in the world, and greatest dilemmas!
606337
There's nothing of that sort.\nOver the years, many scientists ignored déjà vu completely due to its frequent association with past life experiences, ESP and alien abductions. These associations gave the study of déjà vu a bit of a stigma. Recently, researchers have set aside some of those associations and have begun putting brain imaging technology to work. Firmly placing déjà vu within the study of memory, they hope to discover more about how memories are formed, stored and retrieved.\n\nThey have since determined that the medial temporal lobe is involved in our conscious memory. Within the medial temporal lobe are the parahippocampal gyrus, the rhinal cortex and the amygdala. John D.E. Gabrieli at Stanford University found in 1997 that the hippocampus enables us to consciously recall events. He also found that the parahippocampal gyrus enables us to determine what's familiar and what isn't (and without actually retrieving a specific memory to do it). While about 60 percent of people say they have experienced déjà vu, the rates are highest among people between the ages of 15 and 25. The upper age varies among researchers, but most agree that déjà vu experiences decrease with age. There have also been higher reported occurrences among those with higher incomes, those who tend to travel more and those with higher education levels. Active imaginations and the ability to recall dreams has also been a commonality among people who report déjà vu experiences.\n\nSome researchers also report that the more tired or stressed you are, the more likely you are to experience déjà vu. Other researchers, however, have seen just the opposite. They report that the more refreshed and relaxed you are, the more likely you are to experience déjà vu. Obviously, the jury is still out about a lot of things related to déjà vu.\n\nOne reported finding is that the more open-minded or politically liberal a person is, the more likely they are to experience déjà vu. However, this may also mean that the more open-minded you are, the more likely you are to talk about something potentially seen as "weird," like déjà vu. \n\nLeading Theories\nWhen we're on a cell phone and driving, our attention is divided. Déjà vu may work the same way.\nDivided Attention (the cell phone theory)\nRecent research by Alan Brown has attempted to recreate a process that he thinks is similar to déjà vu. In studies at Duke University and SMU, he and colleague Elizabeth Marsh put the idea of subliminal suggestion to the test. They showed photographs of various locations to a group of students, with the plan to ask them which locations were familiar. Prior to showing them some of the photographs, however, they flashed the photos onto the screen at subliminal speeds -- around 10 to 20 milliseconds -- which is long enough for the brain to register the photo but not long enough for the student to be consciously aware of it. In these experiments, the images that had been shown subliminally were familiar at a much higher rate than those that were not -- even though those students who had actually been to those locations had been pulled from the study. Larry Jacoby and Kevin Whitehouse of Washington University did similar studies using lists of words with similar results using lists of words.\n\nBased on this idea, Alan Brown proposed what he calls the cell phone theory (or divided attention). This means that when we are distracted with something else, we subliminally take in what's around us but may not truly register it consciously. Then, when we are able to focus on what we are doing, those surroundings appear to already be familiar to us even when they shouldn't be.\n\nWith this in mind, it is reasonable to see how we might walk into a house for the first time, perhaps while talking to our host, and experience déjà vu. It would work like this: before we've actually looked at the room, our brains have processed it visual
443369
It's called Deja Vu, and is actually a borrowed word brought into English from the French language.\n\nAs far as I know, we're really not sure exactly why it happens.\n\nThere are several theories - 1 states that somehow our consciousness and our brain run momentarily out of sync, which cause our brain to take visual input from an experience but processes it a little later, so that by the time we realize what we've seen our brain has actually already "seen it" (but we're talking at very high processing speeds). \n\nAnother theory states simply that we have been in a similar situation before but have just forgotten, so when we are in it again it seems new to us but somehow just vaguely familiar.\n\nYet other esoterics say that it is actual memories from past lives.\n\nHappy researching!