I used to get déjà vu when I was younger. I would be sitting on the school mat and suddenly I got this eerie feeling that I'd "seen this before". What was happening in front of me was like a replaying memory. I was stammering, "oh yes, oh yes" trying to remember the next bit before it really happened. ...quite freaky and very memorable. I don't get it much now. What are your déjà vu experiences? What do you think is behind the phenomenon? Is there a way to awaken déjà vu, or to calm it down if it becomes a problem?

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I dont call this deja vu. Deja vu means something happened and it happened again. For instance, few months back, i was at a road junction with friends in the car, i saw a white Mitsubishi SUV made a crossing and few minutes later, the SAME white SUV did the SAME crossing. I was stunt and if i remember correctly, the time did change but not the things i see.

What you are experience is when you are dreaming you dream of seeing this, doing that and when you are awake, you realize that you have done this before, you have seen this before. I couldnt say if this is something good or bad but i have been experience this alot lately too and with knowing what would happen, i always try my best to divert my actions.

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Hey there onscreen

Interesting tale about the car. Reminded me of The Matrix when Neo saw the same black cat twice. I looked up http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Déjà vu and it doesn't confirm your view though... it points out a few variations, although the common link is a feeling of being there, as if experiencing a past memory... not seeing something happening twice withing a short space of time.

The dream bit you mention sounds closer. I've heard you can't change what happens... it's why people struggle to remember the next bit. Have you actually managed to change something because you foresaw it happening this way?

 

 

 

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As I already said somewhere here in the forum... Déjà Vu is an anomaly of our brain :)
There are several theories which try to explain the reasons for this to happen, but the answer still eludes us.

Some say that déjà vu experiences result from memories which are incorrectly stored in the long term memory section, giving you the feeling that they had already happened before you actually experience them. Another explanation states that memories can follow alternate pathways in the brain, making it possible for them to be stored even before the visual information of the event gets to the visual cortices. Because of that, when you get to "see" ou "experience" something, that memory has in fact already been stored in your brain, and you'll get that familiar feeling, of course.

These are, however, nothing more than theories. They are, nevertheless, the explanations I like the most :p

Besides these ones, there's also that explanation which defines Déjà Vu as a recalled experiencie... Like when you dream about something (experience it) and are then put through a similar situation in the real world. It's kinda cool :p

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The thing you are talking about (seeing an event you have never experienced before and then seeing it with your own eyes and a flash in your brain about what would happen in the micro-future) is called Déjà Vecu (the article at Wikipedia) describes it very nicely, that there are 3 types of Déjà Vu and calling the event you have never experienced before as Déjà Vu is wrong. You (and everyone experiencing it) should be calling it Déjà Vecu (which translated literally translates as "already lived") and according to Wikipedia it's "a common happening to younger people at around 15 to 25 years old". Now, if you let me, I will talk about my common experiences of this foul experience (to me):

The worst thing that happened to me in my life was the death of my uncle (by my father's side). It was a really horrible event for my whole family, and it happened the previous winter of 2007. He had an operation which didn't succeed and so on... I won't discuss his death in here (not because that it's hard to me to talk about it - it is, but, because it's not fair towards my aunt et cetera...) but his funeral, for which his body was first brought to his house and the mourning was held, during which his body was laying in the coffin and flowers were brought to that room, I didn't take a look at him while I was entering the room and left the flowers, but when I was coming out of the room I got a quick look of his face. It (his face) was yellow (because that his "yellow" (I think it was called bile or yolk or something like that - I don't know the correct phrase for that part of the humans body, english is not my main language) burst during the operation) and one specific detail freaked me out!! One or two teeth on his jaw were interestingly misplaced and that specific detail, I completely remember, maked me feel veery strange, and I had a feeling that I dreamed about it when I was young, or it was an "ordinary" Deja Vecu.

Deja vecus have happened to me a lot before and after that event, but that specific event made my day a horror and my whole week a mess...

So far, I haven't had a good experience with Deja Vecu's, but I hope that experience will improve or will completely dissapear in the future and I won't remember the death of my uncle

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You explained it well. Though more research to be done as the Wikipedia source did not satisfied me totally. What still bother me is how does these "anomalies" started and how would one can discharge it. If it happen to often, what is the side effect or is there none? How would these memories get to stored incorrectly in our brains? Hmm.. can i call it a vision?

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These anomalies start because some neuronal pathways weren't activated when they were supposed to, or were activated when they weren't supposed to be active. Many things can make this happen, we do not know for sure how it all begins. Accessory pathways may exist in the brain... if that happens, data can proceed through such pathways and indeed reach the memory before it reaches the visual cortex, as already mentioned. The incorrect storage theory functions in somewhat the same way, I think. We don't know what makes memories be stored in the wrong "compartment", however.
If these things happen too often, you can probably check with your doctor, he'll know what to do a lot better than anyone here at the forum, I guess. I think that people with cerebral fibrosis (which may be the result of a previous infarction) may possess abnormal electrical activities in the brain, which may lead to deja vu, perhaps... but I guess it more easily leads to other things such as hallucinations than to deja vu. I'm not very into this, actually.

Oh!, and it's not a vision, because things do happen/have happened. Or at least they've been dreamed about :p

PS.: I'm not using any bibliographic source for these answers... I'm mainly recalling a "debate" we had at school with our teacher (neurosurgeon).
So, much of this is bound to be somewhat incorrect. But not that much, I hope ;)

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