Im Afraid Its Deja Vu Over Again

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In 1999, a 42-yr-old woman went to the doctor for what she described equally a popping dissonance in both her ears. The noise was so loud it had started to keep her upward at nighttime. The adult female was diagnosed with Palatal Tremor, a motility disorder of some of the muscles at the back of the pharynx, in which they contract and cause a clicking sound.

She was given relaxant drugs like diazepam, but they didn't work. In 2004, however in search of an effective treatment, the woman saw a neurologist who gave her 5-HTP, a naturally occurring amino acid that affects the cardinal nervous arrangement. It fabricated the popping go away, just brought on a strange side effect.

"When I watched TV, I felt I was watching repeats, although I knew I wasn't, as it was the news," she wrote at the time (her account was after documented in a 2007 example written report). "I so got a telephone call from my sister to tell me the kids were existence sent home as there was a power cut at schoolhouse. I asked her why she was telling me this again as she had told me this several days before."

But her sister hadn't told her that before, and there hadn't been a power outage at the school a few days earlier. Instead, the woman was having an extreme, and long-lasting, episode of déjà vu.

"Since the doctor did not call back it was the pills, I decided to try [them] once again," she wrote. "I had the same feeling of having seen and done all of this before. I did not have whatsoever eerie type of feeling, I knew I couldn't know these things only I felt like I did."

Déjà vu is French for already seen. It's idea to be very mutual, having occurred in betwixt 30 and 96 percent of the population, and usually lasts only seconds. It can be triggered by fatigue or emotional stress and is near frequent in our 30s, tapering off after that. People study more than déjà vu the more years of education they've had. It's more common at night than in the morning. People who travel regularly and people who remember their dreams are more prone to déjà vu.

We know déjà vu as a weird fleeting moment. You pause and bask in the strangeness, then motility on—possibly non to feel it over again for months or years. We brush it off in our daily lives but déjà vu, says Adam Zeman, a clinical neurologist at the University of Exeter in the UK, can be a window into the many ways our brain regulates retention, familiarity, and other related processes. (From this detail patient, Zeman says, we may have learned that serotonin is involved in the genesis of déjà vu; the drugs she was taking were serotonergic, and they triggered the episodes.)

Zeman says that fifty-fifty though nosotros tend to lump déjà-vu-like experiences together, researchers are now distinguishing betwixt dissimilar kinds of déjà vu. Some are then intense you lot might realize yous have never experienced them, even if you consider yourself a déjà vu veteran.

With déjà vu, we become an eerie sense that our surroundings or electric current experiences are familiar, but we simultaneously recognize there's something "slightly bogus" nearly that familiarity, Zeman tells me.

Merely déjà vu has besides long been recognized every bit an aureola of temporal lobe epilepsy, or the showtime of a seizure. For a person with epilepsy, a feeling of déjà vu can hateful they will before long start seizing or lose consciousness. Zeman collaborated on a study a few years ago that asked whether there was anything about an epileptic's déjà vu that was unlike from déjà vu experienced past a healthy brain; the answer seems to exist no. Information technology might be slightly more drawn out or occur more oftentimes in epileptic people, only information technology's otherwise the same.

Zeman says that because scientists are sometimes able to record directly from the brains of people with epilepsy—they have more reasons to undergo neurosurgery, subsequently all—we've been able to make up one's mind which parts of the brain are associated with déjà vu. In the tardily 1950s, researchers plant through electrical stimulation and recording of seizures that the temporal neocortex was primarily involved. In the late 1970s, it was shown that you could provoke déjà vu through electrodes in the medial temporal lobe, and more than recent piece of work has found with fifty-fifty more specificity which parts of the medial temporal lobe are associated with déjà vu.

The medial temporal lobe includes the hippocampus and the parahippocampal gyrus, both of which are of import in memory. The famous patient HM had epilepsy in both of his medial temporal lobes, and they were removed to terminate his seizures. Dorsum then, information technology wasn't known how crucial those brain regions were, and HM'southward life essentially came to a grinding halt. He was unable to class any new witting memories from so on, not remembering the doctors and others who came to treat or visit him.

I had always causeless that déjà vu was a phenomenon of the hippocampus, our main memory middle. Only Zeman says that it more probable involves an adjacent surface area, called the perirhinal cortex, which allows usa to recognize when things are familiar.

"Say your boss comes into the room and yous look up—you have an immediate familiarity response," Zeman says. That's a little dissimilar from recollection, which would be like you request yourself when you concluding saw your boss."

The electric current theory is that epileptic déjà vu is caused by abnormal discharges of electricity in that familiarity region. When that expanse is hyperactive, you experience familiarity that'southward not accompanied by recollection—which is why it feels and then weird.

"Maybe you're sitting in a café where you lot've never been before, y'all get activeness in the familiarity area, and suddenly the whole experience of sitting in that location seems intensely familiar, only you have no way of justifying that because you lot can't," he says. "Because yous take never been there before. Y'all can't fish out a memory. That'due south why this strange combination leads to the feeling that the familiarity is false."

I tell Zeman that it sounds to me like the opposite of Capgras syndrome, or imposter syndrome—when you recollect that people who you lot know, like your spouse or all-time friend—are really imposters. But Zeman corrects me again, and reveals how subtly varied these concepts are in the encephalon—even seemingly bones tasks similar seeing and recognizing people.

In Capgras syndrome, it'south really the amygdala, which is involved in emotional judgments, that goes awry, he says. You can recognize someone as familiar, just not have that supported by the right emotions, the ones yous would normally feel looking at your husband, wife, or friend. "It might atomic number 82 you to the conclusion that your relative must've been replaced by somebody else," he explains. "They look as they should, just they don't feel as they should."

I tend to bask getting déjà vu. Information technology has a style of making even the about mundane details take on a magical air. Only Zeman says that people with epilepsy can be bothered by it. Not only is their feel of it heightened, and often longer, information technology can likewise be accompanied by fear and feet, since it is usually followed past a total-blown seizure.

How can this warning bell for a seizure manifest in people who don't have epilepsy? Zeman says we don't completely know. 1 theory is that ordinary déjà vu is a kind of seizure that good for you people experience. (Wilder Penfield, a famed Canadian neurosurgeon even called déjà vu "little seizures.")

Only that idea isn't widely accepted by many neuroscientists, and information technology'due south difficult to find any show for it considering most good for you people don't get intracranial brain recordings. One study that Zeman collaborated on constitute that there might exist a subtle reduction in book in areas like the medial temporal lobe in good for you people who experience déjà vu, compared to those who said they'd never had it. At that place's some thought that a change in the structure of their brain might explain how a person without epilepsy could have déjà vu.

"Simply I think that the true answer," he says, "is that we yet don't know what the underlying mechanism of normal physiological déjà vu is."

Chris Moulin's patient was a homo in his 80s who had been diagnosed with Alzheimer's, just didn't have the typical symptoms.

He wasn't forgetful; in fact, he claimed that everything he did he had already done: He wouldn't sentinel Television receiver considering he said he had seen all the shows before; he refused to read the newspaper because "even the news seemed the same," Moulin remembers. The homo said he had already met Moulin before, too. He had already washed all the tests Moulin was doing on him, had been asked all of the questions Moulin was asking him. He appeared to be stuck in some kind of time loop.

Moulin, a cognitive neuropsychologist at Université Grenoble Alpes, is now i of the leading researchers in déjà vu today. He became interested in déjà vu when, after meeting this man, he consulted his handbook of memory disorders and constitute no details on it, aside from a small mention of temporal lobe epilepsy.

"That started a kind of accidental career in déjà vu," he tells me. "I am a memory researcher, and do other things. I used to say that was my twenty-four hour period job, and my hobby was déjà vu, merely now the déjà vu is slowly taking over."

Moulin says this man represented an extreme case. Now that he'due south been studying déjà vu for a while, he makes the stardom between those who know that their sense of familiarity can't exist right, and those who recollect they truly have experienced a given moment earlier.

"Typically, when nosotros have déjà vu we know that there's something at fault," Moulin says. "We know that we're finding something familiar only it before long passes and we think, 'Oh, that was strange.' There's a conflict in our interpretations. But some people are seduced by their feelings of familiarity so they actually do think that they had the conversation before. Then they justify reasons for how they could have had the conversation earlier, or read the newspaper before, and they invent stories to justify this strong conventionalities. This is a memory disorder called confabulation."

The confabulations of the man with Alzheimer's went like this: When his wife would bring him the newspaper in the morning, and he wouldn't read information technology, he would say, "When you were comatose in bed, I actually got up, went to the newsstand, and they were unloading the paper from the newspaper shop, and that's how I already read it. And so I snuck dorsum in the house, came back to bed, and so went back to sleep." Of class, none of information technology was true. It was a way for him to explain to himself how the paper seemed then overwhelmingly familiar.

In general, Moulin thinks that in that location is probably a spectrum of déjà vu, from the intensity of the feel itself to how much yous know it to exist false. In healthy people, he now considers being able to recognize when you take déjà vu a healthy symptom. If yous feel that something is overly familiar, but you know that's non correct, information technology'south a sign that you're highly cognizant of what's going on in your brain.

Moulin tells me that the latest theories on déjà vu involve other parts of the encephalon aside from just the familiarity regions. He says that the temporal-lobe hypothesis came about largely considering you can artificially induce déjà vu by stimulating those areas. But Moulin thinks that might not be enough. Over-activity just in the familiarity areas would pb only to a feeling of familiarity—like thinking yous know somebody on the street when you lot don't. Simply the typical déjà vu isn't merely familiarity simply also the self-awareness that that familiarity is imitation.

That chip of it—the sensation part—led Moulin and others to call back the prefrontal cortex is involved also, every bit a kind of control mechanism that helps monitor and organize the entire memory system. In the case of déjà vu, the prefrontal cortex is watching what'southward going on in the retentiveness regions, and then detects a conflict between what'south logically possible and what the memory system is saying is familiar. "That once again fits in with this story that normal déjà vu is a healthy thing," Moulin says—because your prefrontal cortex is astute enough to observe that this over-activity in the retentivity system isn't quite right.

"Young people become information technology more than onetime people get it," he says. "I call back every bit you lot get older, you lot lose the precision in the memory arrangement and the fine-grained control of what's happening in that system. I announcer I talked to described it as a fact-checking arrangement, and I really like that idea: That déjà vu is just a sign that there'due south something to stop you getting carried away with your sense of familiarity."

Moulin distinguishes between ii kind of déjà vu's, which accept been accepted by other déjà vu researchers. One is the archetype déjà vu—a sense of familiarity with your electric current experience that you know is false.

The 2nd kind, Moulin calls déjà vécu, which translates to already lived. People with déjà vécu don't only experience equally if something is familiar, it actually seems that they have lived that moment before, and that they know what will happen next—but still with an overarching knowledge that those memories can't be existent. (This is unlike confabulation, which has no self-awareness that the experiences a person remembers never happened.) Déjà vécu can include recalled fragments of memories, "as if you lot're on the verge of actually pinpointing the déjà vu and it may be combined with a feeling that you tin can sense the future," he says.

These 2 different experiences might implicate unlike brain regions: While déjà vu is coming from the perirhinal cortex, or the familiarity region, déjà vécu might exist involving the hippocampus, considering it'south more like an actual fake recollection.

Zeman says he has seen several people whose experiences fit the description of déjà vécu more than déjà vu, because they are and then overpowering. Similar Shona, a woman in her mid-twenties who woke upward one morning, ate breakfast, got ready for piece of work, merely felt she was "interim in a film that she had seen before."

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"She felt she had lived but these aforementioned moments, just this same day before," Zeman describes in his book, Portrait of the Brain. "She was mysteriously caught up in a repeat functioning, indicate for point: throughout the day she had the sense of knowing precisely what would happen adjacent."

Later on several days of constant déjà vu, Shona got medical help, after start being sent to a psychiatric hospital. She had likewise started to have "peculiar bodily feelings," like "tingling in the left side of her face, a feeling of floating in the air looking down on her body, and a feeling of compulsion to do things."

When she was examined, they found that she had had epilepsy when she was younger. Through EEG they noticed abnormal action in the right side of her brain and diagnosed her with nonconvulsive status epilepticus, or epilepsy without seizures. After being treated for her epilepsy, the déjà vu went away. "Shona was greatly delighted to discover the world restored to its but roughly familiar, obligingly unpredictable former self," Zeman writes.

When she recovered from her déjà vu, though, she could no longer recognize faces, a condition chosen prosopagnosia. Zeman says they found a vascular abnormality in the part of the encephalon where facial recognition takes identify. That abnormality had initially manifested every bit déjà vu earlier emerging equally prosopagnosia. When Zeman met her in 2000, she couldn't recognize famous people on Telly and her relatives had to introduce themselves by proper noun each time they came to come across her.

Moulin cautions that sometimes people use the phrase déjà vécu to describe patients that accept retentiveness delusions, the confabulation that everything is repeating—like his first patient. Just in déjà vécu, self-awareness is central. In fact, Zeman's offset patient, the 1 who wanted her loud popping dissonance to go away, was an apt instance of déjà vécu—hers was a stronger, more persistent feel than déjà vu. But she didn't actually believe her life was repeating, or that they were actual memories she was retrieving. She didn't come up up with stories to explain what was happening. "Information technology felt to her very much like an illusion and a strange sensation," Moulin says.

There may exist a need for even greater refinement of the many déjà-similar experiences, to dissever them out, especially if they have different underlying mechanisms. (In that location's even a phenomenon now, considered divide, known as déjà-rêvé, which is an intense recollection of 1's dreams. It too has been shown to be provoked through electric stimulation in the brains of epileptics, and has been reported past people with epilepsy during seizures.)

I am a person who gets déjà vu regularly. Not enough to qualify as persistent, but I think more than almost. I enquire Moulin what he thinks this ways. Has my in-brain fact checker had likewise many cups of java? Is my brain really good at noticing even the slightest errors in over-familiarity?

Moulin says that people with déjà vu could be more in touch with the signals being given off by their cognitive systems, or especially sensitive to how their familiarity systems are working. But Moulin says nosotros don't know why some people get it more than others. He says he's met extremely bright people who have never experienced information technology, then unfortunately for me information technology's not necessarily a marker of intelligence or an exceptional brain.

He does wonder if people who don't go déjà vu have the same human relationship with their memory than those who accept it a lot. "People who feel déjà vu might utilize more of their cogitating abilities to think most what's going on in their retention system," he says. "Maybe they have this sort of memory they don't trust all the time. Whereas people who don't take déjà vu, they only explain everything away once they find something familiar. They try and detect a reason for why they find it familiar and they don't relish the same mysterious relationship with their own memory."

Moulin says that he used to have déjà vu more than most, even earlier he started his inquiry. "I think that's quite consistent with how I was always interested with how things were working," he says. "You lot can't really create déjà vu, merely you can cultivate the way of thinking about what you're thinking near. That might make you a scrap more likely to observe it than other people."

Moulin asks me if I remember my commencement time experiencing déjà vu, saying that in most people, it starts around the age of 10, simply not earlier. "I remember my first. I don't know if you retrieve your starting time," he says.

I do remember my first—I was ix or 10 and on the playground at my elementary school. I never forgot information technology because information technology was so powerful and strange. It'southward also odd to recollect it—a real retentivity of a feeling of simulated familiarity.

"Yes, then you lot become into all kinds of recursive Donnie Darko kind of loops," Moulin laughs. Simply the fact that déjà vu doesn't happen commonly at much younger ages supports the "fact-checker" theory that Moulin holds. "Earlier that age nosotros don't have those reflective capacities," he says. "We haven't learned nevertheless to mistrust or evaluate our memory arrangement and we don't actually coordinate and think about our retentiveness in the aforementioned way that we do every bit adults."

And for people who have never had it, information technology'southward a hard thing to explain. It's a powerful feeling, but subjective, one of the many challenges that comes with studying it—even if it can reveal the intricacies and mechanisms of memory, recollection, and familiarity in potentially new ways. Moulin says that he'southward met researchers or academics who have never experienced it themselves, and can't exist sure it exists.

"To them," he says, "I might also be researching ghosts."

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Source: https://www.vice.com/en/article/gymn5m/there-is-more-than-one-kind-of-deja-vu

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