Has This Happened Before?
Deja Vu by: WIll Walker
Why I chose this topic
I chose the topic of Deja Vu because i find it very interesting, and I can relate to this topic. I often find myself experiencing something that seems familiar to me although it has never happened.
The meaning of Deja Vu
Deja Vu is the feeling that you have already experienced something that is actually happening for the first time.
In the Brain
When people have familiar deja vu experiences, the perirhinal cortex sends messages to the hippocampus, which supports recollection. Many studies have been performed on people where the activity in the parahippocampal cortex starts changing when they notice places that look familiar. Howard Eichenbaum studied this at Boston University.
Other Interesting Stuff
Researchers found that most people experience Deja Vu when they see places that are relatively similar to the place that they are currently in. There are many other theories about the origins of Deja Vu, that are not very exclusive.
Experiments
There is an experiment for Deja Vu where someone is given cards of celebrity names and later on they were given pictures that corresponded to the names. Some photographs matched with the names, and others didn't. The volunteers were told to identify the celebrities in the photographs and indicate how likely it was the celebrity’s names were on the list they had seen previously.