As predicted, déjà vu was more likely to happen when people were in a scene that contained the same spatial arrangement of elements as an earlier scene they viewed but didn’t recall. That way we could manipulate the environments people found themselves in – some scenes shared the same spatial layout while otherwise being distinct. To investigate this idea in the laboratory, my team used virtual reality to place people within scenes. According to the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis, if that previous situation with a similar layout to the current one doesn’t come to mind, you might be left only with a strong feeling of familiarity for the current one. Maybe the way the nursingstation is situated – the furniture, the items on the counter, the way it connects to the corners of the hallway – is the same as how a set of welcome tables was arranged relative to signs and furniture in a hallway at the entrance to a school event you attended a year earlier. The underlying cause for this experience of déjà vu could be that the layout of the scene, including the placement of the furnitureand the particular objects within the space, have the same layout as a different scene that you did experience in the past.ĪLSO READ | Ever felt choked, anxious, or been unable to move, speak between a state of sleep and wakefulness? Although you’ve never been to this hospital before, you are struck with a feeling that you have. Psychologists called this the Gestalt familiarity hypothesis.įor example, imagine you’re passing the nursing station in a hospital unit on your way to visit a sick friend. We investigated a near-century-old hypothesis that suggested déjà vu can happen when there’s a spatial resemblance between a current scene and an unrecalled scene in your memory.

Prompted by Brown’s work, my own research team began conducting experiments aimed at testing hypotheses about possible mechanisms of déjà vu. His work served as a catalyst for scientists to design experiments to investigate déjà vu. The underlying cause for this experience of déjà vu could be that the layout of the scene (Source: Getty Images/Thinkstock)īrown’s review brought the topic of déjà vu into the realm of more mainstream science, because it appeared in both a scientific journal that scientists who study cognition tend to read, and also in a bookaimed at scientists. He also reported on hints throughout a century or so of medical literature of a possible association between déjà vu and some types of seizureactivity in the brain. He determined that the most common trigger of déjà vu is a scene or place, and the next most common trigger is a conversation. ALSO READ | ‘Listening to my favourite music helps me emotionally reset’: Shaheen Bhatt on feeling overwhelmedįor example, Brown determined that roughly two-thirds of people experience déjà vu at some point in their lives.

Deja vu explained