2023-06-18 20:00:00
“I have already been here” or “I have experienced this situation before” are phrases that we say when we experience an episode of already seenalso know as paramnesia. These are brief, fleeting and unpredictable events, in which an individual is assailed by the sensation of having already been in the place that is, without perhaps ever having set foot in it, of meeting someone they have not seen in their life, or of, just feel something you’ve never experienced.
the haul does not last more than 30 seconds and, although more than 60% of the population has experienced it at some point in their lives, it is an experience that continues to arouse curiosity and bewilderment among the majority of the population. However, studies of the last 20 years in the area of psychiatry and psychology have managed to clarify the mystery behind these phenomena, establishing a scientific reasoning for their appearance. We tell you everything.
The language of neurons in the brain
VERY RECENT STUDIES
The investigation of why behind the sensation of already seen It is not something that has been going on since antiquity and, in fact, is not more than 40 years old. However, it has been the studies and research of the last two decades that have shed light on the mystery behind those experiences.
Specifically, in this field, Alan S. Brown y Anne M. Cleary. Brown is a professor of psychiatry at and epidemiology at the Columbia University Medical Centerin it New York State Psychiatric Institute and in the Mailman College of Public Health. He has behind him a large number of publications, among which his study A review of the déjà vu experience (A review of the feeling of déjà vu)published in 2003 and in which he proposes a large study on the already seen. For her part, psychologist Cleary is a professor of psychology at the Colorado State University and has more than 80 publications related to the functioning of memory.
WHAT IS THE ORIGIN OF DÉJÀ VU?
In his book, Brown proposes 4 possible justifications for feelings of already seenalleging that, probably, there is not a single person responsible, but that any of them could trigger this type of experience.
DOUBLE PROCESSING
Brown claims that the already seen It could be triggered by the loss of synchronization of two processes that usually occur synchronously. That is, it may be that your brain is processing the information received from a new situation and, simultaneously, is recovering certain complementary information. Well, if these two processes lose parallelismthe sensations can be mixed, merging both pathways and giving the sensation of already seen.
NEUROLOGICAL CAUSE
Another possible reasoning that he contributes in his work is a momentary failure in some temporal cortex circuitry. The origin of this justification can be found in studies with patients suffering from temporal cortex epilepsy, since it has been verified that, before suffering an attack due to failures in this sector, patients experience multiple episodes of already seen. In addition, slight experiments in humans have shown that the application of small electrical discharges in the area of the temporal cortex can stimulate it and cause these sensations in volunteers.
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AMNESIC CAUSE
The psychiatrist attributes another cause to simply a confusion of one’s memory due to the similarity between various situations. Thus, he affirms that it is possible that the already seen occur as a memory of a situation similar to the one experienced in the present. Confirming this, the psychologist Cleary carried out various investigations demonstrating that the mind stores information in a fragmented way and it is not complete, so it is very easy that when there are certain elements that are similar, for example the sign of a street or the color of a house, the sensation of having lived it before arises.
THE DOUBLE PERCEPTION
Finally, Professor Brown refers to the brain distractions, claiming that it is possible for the brain to “turn off” after capturing part of a scene. Thus, when he resumes attention, it would be normal for him to attribute a certain familiarity to that scene and a false memory is assigned to it, since the information of the present was still registered unconsciously.
SOME CURIOUS FACTS
Studies with numerous volunteers allowed Brown to discover certain curiosities regarding the appearance of the already seen. For example, she found that the experience occurred more frequently in individuals undergoing high levels of stress and fatigue, as well as in people who were experiencing episodes of anxiety. He stated that this was because, at times like this, the brain could be very immersed in these problems and “distracted” from reality, which would trigger any of the aforementioned situations.
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In addition, he established that it was a process that was beginning to be seen in individuals from 8 to 9 years of age, since before the brain did not have the necessary development, and that its frequency increases proportionally with age. The justification has to do with the aging of the brain: small failures in the functioning of this organ may be more common and, in addition, the multiple experiences lived make it more difficult for new memories to be formed.
Finally, because the volunteers in his studies presented a large number of differences between them, he was also able to elaborate a bias according to their economic and cultural situation. This allowed him to observe that the experience of the already seen occurred more frequently for people with higher socioeconomic and educational level.
THE MYTHS AROUND DÉJÀ VU
The strangeness and unpredictability of this phenomenon is something that has aroused curiosity in society for hundreds of years, for which reason there are multiple myths and falsehoods that have been taken around this concept. The most common are in the field of medicine itself and allege that the already seen are due to memory problems, cerebral seizures or neural failure, which is not true. In fact, you should not worry, because the harmless nature of these events is proven.
In more paranormal areas, it has even been claimed that the already seen represent a ability to predict the future, claiming that these new situations are really remembered because they were predicted to happen. However, in a 2008 studythe psychologist Anne Cleary completely dismantled the myth, verifying that people who had suffered the experience did not show more ability than others to predict the future, however, it did give these people the firm feeling that they could.
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