The Déjà Vu Illusion

The déjà vu illusion occurs when a person has an inappropriate feeling of familiarity in a situation that is objectively unfamiliar or new. The amorphous nature of this experience has made identifying its etiology challenging, but recent advances in neurology and understanding of implicit memory and attention are helping to clarify this cognitive illusion. More specifically, déjà vu may result from (a) a brief change in normal neural transmission speed causing a slightly longer separation between identical messages received from two separate pathways, (b) a brief split in a continuous perceptual experience that is caused by distractions (external or internal) and gives the impression of two separate perceptual events, and (c) the activation of implicit familiarity for some portion (or all) of the present experience without an accompanying conscious recollection of the prior encounter. Procedures that involve degraded or occluded stimulus presentation, divided attention, subliminal mere exposure, and hypnosis may prove especially useful in elucidating this enigmatic cognitive illusion.

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