It’s just one study, and the researchers urge that their results will need to be confirmed before anything definitive can be said here. But the hippocampus was quiet instead, the researchers observed activity in the frontal regions of the brain, areas associated with decision-making.
If, as the current hypothesis goes, déjà vu is the birth of a false memory, then as this was going on you’d expect to see activity in the hippocampus, which is involved with memory formation. The study volunteers gave their answers from inside an fMRI, allowing the researchers to scan their brains while they went through that mental tug-of-war (“I think I’ve heard that before - but I couldn’t have! But, no, I think I have!”). They felt like they’d heard the word, but they knew from the s question that they couldn’t have - still, they really felt like they had! Déjà vu, all over again. Later, they asked them whether or not they’d heard the word sleep - and this brought on a confusing pattern of thoughts. No, the volunteers answered (correctly), they hadn’t. (They didn’t.) But these researchers modified this experiment: After reading the list, they asked their volunteers if they’d heard a word beginning with s. They borrowed this from scientists who study false memories, because when you give people this list, and then ask them later if they recall hearing the word sleep, they tend to say that, yes, they did hear the word sleep. This theory is called dual processing, and it is the most widely accepted take on this mysterious phenomenon among psychologists.
Deja vu theory series#
The researchers read their volunteers a series of related words: bed, pillow, night, duvet. One theory suggests that déjà vu is caused by memories failing to form correctly in the brain.