Deja Vu

[richnfg]

Hello.
This has been a topic on my mind for a very long time now and I thought I would share my ideas here in hope for some feedback. (Note: I'm not sure if this is in the correct section, please move, if necessery!) I am not jumping to any conclusions here but just wanted to express an idea!

Everyone must of had that feeling of Deja Vu before? The feeling where you think you have seen a certain scenario before (I have had it once that I could even finish what the person speaking to me was saying just because of this "Deja Vu" feeling.
This all depends on my understanding of higher dimensions, but I think if you live in 5 dimensions (we live in 4) then you can freely move through time and what I am getting at is if Deja Vu experiences may simply be leaks from higher dimensions? Could you somehow be absorbing this information leak from a higher dimension subcontiously and then when it comes to that time that is the reason for this Deja Vu feeling?

I really have no idea how this would work but I was wondering if anyone knew anything more about this or has any comments. It has been on my mind for a while now!

Thanks, Rich

[Pythagorean]

I'd always assumed deja vu was just a sense of familiarity of the characteristics of the situation, and not so much an actual sharing of two different times.

That is, It's largely a psychological phenomena, rather than one of time or space.

[richnfg]

Hmmm...yes. But what about them times where you just know its been exactly the same before? Surely thats a little more than familiar with the situation. But then, I guess, that can be down to personal experience.

[Pythagorean]

Hmmm...yes. But what about them times where you just know its been exactly the same before? Surely thats a little more than familiar with the situation. But then, I guess, that can be down to personal experience.

People tend to think they 'know' things a lot. The people that 'knew' everything over the ages have asseted that: the earth was flat, Earth was the center of the universe, flight was impossible, and a thing like TV could never be invented.

That's one of the major issues of science. Seperating what you 'know' from what you can observe and measure repeatedly.

I've never had the experience, and I'd have to admit I'm skeptical. It sounds like something I would have came up after smoking a joint in high school.

[selfAdjoint]

I think this thread should be on the Skepticism and Debunking board, so I am going to transfer it there.

[Math Is Hard]

I'd always assumed deja vu was just a sense of familiarity of the characteristics of the situation, and not so much an actual sharing of two different times.

That is, It's largely a psychological phenomena, rather than one of time or space.

I'd categorize it as a neurological phenomenon. There was a discussion about it here:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=90814

[waht]

I used to have deja-vu alot especially in my teen years. I was absolutely convinced I had a vision couple seconds into the future. But as much as I'd like to believe, this phenomena is actually a glitch in the brain caused by mini-seizures.

Well that's the current psychological explanaton.

[Ivan Seeking]

I realize that Zooby is well read on the subject of simple partial seizures, but the supporting evidence for the statements in the linked thread is pretty thin. A few references beyond a drug site would be nice.

Also, does this account for all experiences? If I walk into a room and have a sense of deja vu, and later I remember that I was once there as a small child, have I experienced a simple partial seizure? Clearly there are other reasons why one might have a feeling like this. And here is another problem with this sort of thing: If I feel a breeze on my arm or hear a buzzing sound, it may be a breeze or a buzzer, or it may be a simple partial seizure, but the existence of simple partial seizures does not exclude the existence of wind or buzzers.

[Math Is Hard]

Most of what I read about it links it to the temporal lobe region near the hippocampal formations. I definitely am not that knowledgeable about it since I am more interested in parietal lobe functions and focus most of my studying there. Would I say that a mini-seizure in this region explains all experiences? Probably not. But there does seem to be some evidence of at least a single dissociation for the phenomenom:
http://pn.psychiatryonline.org/cgi/content/full/39/22/25
Dèjá vu experiences are a common feature of temporal lobe seizures and have often been reported after stimulating healthy subjects' medial temporal lobes. Such evidence suggests that the middle area of the temporal lobes gives rise to such experiences.

[-Job-]

I've identified that i get the feeling of Deja Vu, for example, in the following scenario:
- at one point i see an object, like a toothbrush, and i think of something, or the toothbrush reminds me of something.
- later on, if i see the same object and think the exact same thing, i get the feeling of Deja Vu,.

I think the reason sometimes the feeling is hard to explain is because either the first or, more likely, the second thought might happen unconsciously, as a reflex, so you might not be aware of what triggered the feeling.
For example, have you ever, while flipping through the pages of a book, have a word pop into your head without you ever actually seeing (or remembering seeing) the word? Whenever this happens to me i always scan the page for what might have triggered the word to get into my head. If i closely study the path my eyes followed when they moved across the page i always either find the word or some syllables, maybe in different lines, that form the word.
Similarly, in the same way the word got into my head when i was flipping through the pages, sometimes, unconsciously, maybe from seeing an object from the corner of my eye, something may trigger a thought to get into my head. If this has happened before i will get the feeling of Deja Vu. If i'm unable to identify what triggered this then i won't be able to explain it, which is common.
I'm pretty confident that this is what deja vu is, i usually pay close attention whenever i get the feeling, and i find that this explanation works for me.

[moose]

It's kinda weird when you get deja vu, in your dreams!

When it happens in real life, it's kinda weird. When it happens to me, I usually feel that it happened once only slightly before it actually happens (giving me no time to think)...

[zoobyshoe]

I realize that Zooby is well read on the subject of simple partial seizures, but the supporting evidence for the statements in the linked thread is pretty thin. A few references beyond a drug site would be nice.
You should have read the whole thread:

Actually, I just realized I could take a pic of the EEG of a deja vu and post it:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b95/mrzshoe/firstbatch.jpg
This guy has depth electrodes implanted right into various parts of his limbic system through holes drilled in his skull in an attempt to locate his seizure focus prior to epilepsy surgury.
This is from a paper called The Role Of The Limbic Sysytem in Experiential Phenomena of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy by Pierre Gloor, et. al. Annals of Neurology, Vol12 No2 August 1982

In addition, in another thread on the subject I linked to this abstract:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=8149215&dopt=Abstract

Also, does this account for all experiences? If I walk into a room and have a sense of deja vu, and later I remember that I was once there as a small child, have I experienced a simple partial seizure?Clearly there are other reasons why one might have a feeling like this. And here is another problem with this sort of thing: If I feel a breeze on my arm or hear a buzzing sound, it may be a breeze or a buzzer, or it may be a simple partial seizure, but the existence of simple partial seizures does not exclude the existence of wind or buzzers.
The sensory and emotional experiences of simple partial seizures call attention to themselves for being inexplicable in normal terms. The hyperfamiliarity of a deja vu is so striking because the person can't account for it. It doesn't strike you as a memory of childhood, or anything you can point to in your past. It is weird and noteworthy for seeming like nothing but a memory of the present.

Likewise, if a simple partial causes a loud buzzing sound or feeling of a breeze, it is remarkable because there is nothing around to account for it.

Of course authentic memories, sounds, and buzzers aren't simple partial seizures.

[zoobyshoe]

I definitely am not that knowledgeable about it since I am more interested in parietal lobe functions and focus most of my studying there.
What interests you about the parietal lobes? Most people seem to get interested in the frontal or temporal lobes.

[zoobyshoe]

I've identified that i get the feeling of Deja Vu, for example, in the following scenario:
- at one point i see an object, like a toothbrush, and i think of something, or the toothbrush reminds me of something.
- later on, if i see the same object and think the exact same thing, i get the feeling of Deja Vu,.

I think the reason sometimes the feeling is hard to explain is because either the first or, more likely, the second thought might happen unconsciously, as a reflex, so you might not be aware of what triggered the feeling.
For example, have you ever, while flipping through the pages of a book, have a word pop into your head without you ever actually seeing (or remembering seeing) the word? Whenever this happens to me i always scan the page for what might have triggered the word to get into my head. If i closely study the path my eyes followed when they moved across the page i always either find the word or some syllables, maybe in different lines, that form the word.
Similarly, in the same way the word got into my head when i was flipping through the pages, sometimes, unconsciously, maybe from seeing an object from the corner of my eye, something may trigger a thought to get into my head. If this has happened before i will get the feeling of Deja Vu. If i'm unable to identify what triggered this then i won't be able to explain it, which is common.
I'm pretty confident that this is what deja vu is, i usually pay close attention whenever i get the feeling, and i find that this explanation works for me.

Job, I'm not sure that what you're describing is the experience refered to as a deja vu. It sounds more like you are actually remembering something, actually being reminded of something that you can't quite recall, but maybe could if you tried.

A deja vu is an extremely mysterious and powerful experience where your current situation suddenly seems remarkably familiar when you concurrently know it cannot be familiar. Not everyone has had a deja vu and I think that people who haven't are somewhat confused about what it's like, and maybe think they have had one. It isn't a matter of something seeming vaguely familiar, it's an overwhelming, stop-you-in-your-tracks, flood of familiarity attached to a situation you intellectually know is not one you've ever been in before. The strength of this feeling is unbelievable. It seems 20 times more familiar than anything that actually is familiar. It's distinctly unnatural feeling: the present seems like an exact repeat of itself down to the smallest detail, as if your mind had skipped back in time and was reliving a moment all over again.

Your description of being reminded of what you were thinking about the previous time you were looking at a toothbrush doesn't sound like an authentic deja vu to me.

[Ivan Seeking]

You should have read the whole thread:

I looked it over and only saw one link. The other references can't easily be verified.

Of course authentic memories, sounds, and buzzers aren't simple partial seizures.

Of course.

If there is such a thing as a genuine precognitive or similar experience, then it might also be mistaken for what you describe as deja vu.

I was struck recently by a story from a woman who, due to what was described as precognition, insisted that her husband not take one of the doomed AA flights on 911. It saved his life.

The question is not whether clinical observations and explanations for deja vu are correct. The question is whether or not there could be more to the story.

[Math Is Hard]

What interests you about the parietal lobes? Most people seem to get interested in the frontal or temporal lobes.
I am interested in dyscalculia and acalculia and how the symptoms can arise after left parietal lobe damage.

[zoobyshoe]

I looked it over and only saw one link. The other references can't easily be verified.
If you google simple partial seizures symptoms you'll find that deja vu's are mentioned in just about all lists. For the sake of ease of reading I generally just provide one link when explaining that deja vu's are simple partials. If the questioner seems naive about neurology I try to find a simpler link geared toward the layman with the least medical jargon to slog through.

Here's a link to a serious medical paper for you with all the jargon:

http://www.emedicine.com/NEURO/topic342.htm

From that link, here's a relatively comprehensive list of simple partial symptoms:
* Motor simple partial seizures

o Clonic discharges in the sensorimotor cortex cause jerky, rhythmic movements that may remain restricted to one body segment or spread by “jacksonian march.”

o Benign focal epilepsy of childhood accounts for 15-25% of childhood epilepsy and eventually remits by age 16 years.

+ Typical seizures are simple and motor, affect the face or arm, and occur soon after falling asleep or awakening.

+ As it usually remits by age 16 years, this syndrome does not always require treatment.

o Another subtype, epilepsia partialis continua (ie, Kojewnikoff syndrome), includes stereotypical periodic to semiperiodic clonic activity that may persist for years and is often refractory to treatment.

+ Clonic jerking usually involves the thumb or great toe, and may or may not spread to other body parts.

+ This activity has been associated with stroke, tumor, trauma, hypoxia, Rasmussen encephalitis, syndrome of mitochondrial encephalomyopathy, lactic acidosis, and stroke (MELAS), subacute sclerosing panencephalitis (SSPE), and adult nonketotic hyperglycinemia.

o Tonic-supplementary motor area (SMA) and premotor region discharges produce sustained contractions and unusual postures of a limb.

+ In 72% of cases SMA seizures are not associated with impaired consciousness.

+ Versive-smooth or jerky, tonic contractions of head and eye muscles, usually on the side contralateral to the discharge, often are followed by a secondarily generalized tonic-clonic seizure.

+ Phonatory activation of the primary or supplementary motor cortex produces vocalizations, speech arrest, or aphasia.

* Sensory simple partial seizures

o Somatosensory-primary sensory cortex seizures usually elicit positive or negative sensations contralateral to the discharge.

o Symptoms associated with seizures from the postcentral gyrus include tingling, numbness, pain, heat, cold, agnosia, phantom sensations, or sensations of movement.

o Abdominal pain usually originates from the temporal lobe, and genital pain from the mesial parietal sensory cortex.

o The posterior parietal cortex is the likely origin of limb agnosia.

o Supplemental sensory-secondary sensory cortex seizures may have ipsilateral or bilateral positive or negative sensations or vague axial or diffuse sensations.

o Visual-calcarine cortex discharges produce elemental hallucinations including scintillations, scotomata, colored lights, visual field deficits, or field inversion.

o The visual association cortex is the probable location of origin of complex visual hallucinations and photopsias.

o Auditory SPS from the auditory cortex typically are perceived as simple sounds, rather than words or music.

o Olfactory-uncinate seizures originate from the orbitofrontal cortex and the mesial temporal area. Perceived odors are usually unpleasant, often with a burning quality.

o Gustatory seizures usually are associated with temporal lobe origin, although the insula and parietal operculum also have been implicated. Perceived tastes are typically unpleasant, often with a metallic component.

o Vestibular seizures originate from various areas, including frontal and temporal-parietal-occipital junction. Symptoms include vertigo, a tilting sensation, and vague dizziness.

o Psychic SPS arise predominantly from the temporal and limbic region, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Perceptual hallucinations or illusions are usually complex, visual or auditory, and are rarely bimodal.

+ Includes the déjà vu and jamais vu phenomena

+ Emotional: Fear is usual, but SPS can elicit happiness, sexual arousal, anger, and similar responses.

+ Cognitive: These responses include feelings of depersonalization, unreality, forced thinking, or feelings that may defy description.

* Autonomic simple partial seizures

o Abdominal sensation phenomena

+ These are common in mesial temporal epilepsy but can arise from the operculum and occipital region.

+ Symptoms include nausea, pain, hunger, warmth, and “epigastric rising” sensations, and may be associated with piloerection (ie, gooseflesh).

o Cardiovascular sensations

+ The most common cardiac manifestation of any seizure is sinus tachycardia with arrhythmias, with bradycardia occurring infrequently.

+ Some patients have chest pain or a sensation of palpitation that mimics cardiac disease.

+ Respiratory inhibition has been reported with electrical stimulation of the temporal regions.

o Pupillary symptoms - Miosis, mydriasis, hippus, and unilateral pupillary dilatation

o Urogenital symptoms

+ Seizures from the superior portion of the posterior central gyrus can result in genital sensations, while sexual auras arise more from the limbic or temporal regions.

+ Ictal orgasms have been reported, although rarely, in association with seizures arising from various cerebral locations.

o Other autonomic symptoms - Rarely perspiration, lacrimation, ictal enuresis, or flushing

* Postictal neurological deficits can occur after an SPS as a negative manifestation of the function affected by the seizure (eg, Todd paralysis).

Notice the section labeled "psychic" symptoms. Here you'll find the deja vu mentioned. (Note that the use of the word "psychic" here, means of, or pertaining to, the psyche, i.e. the mind, and shouldn't be construed to refer to anything paranormal.)

o Psychic SPS arise predominantly from the temporal and limbic region, including the amygdala, hippocampus, and parahippocampal gyrus. Perceptual hallucinations or illusions are usually complex, visual or auditory, and are rarely bimodal.

+ Includes the déjà vu and jamais vu phenomena

+ Emotional: Fear is usual, but SPS can elicit happiness, sexual arousal, anger, and similar responses.

+ Cognitive: These responses include feelings of depersonalization, unreality, forced thinking, or feelings that may defy description.

If there is such a thing as a genuine precognitive or similar experience, then it might also be mistaken for what you describe as deja vu.

I was struck recently by a story from a woman who, due to what was described as precognition, insisted that her husband not take one of the doomed AA flights on 911. It saved his life.

The question is not whether clinical observations and explanations for deja vu are correct. The question is whether or not there could be more to the story.
Once again it seems you're arguing against me without having even read what I said. I discussed this in the thread linked to by Math Is Hard with a member named Seraphim. Please read that exchange. If a person has a precognitive feeling about the future that authentically comes to pass then it is some kind of authentic precognition, and not the illusion of precognition that sometimes accompanies a deja vu. The illusion of precognition that arises from a deja vu is quite noteworthy for being innaccurate.

Back when I was having a couple hundred deja vu's a day I started making a point of noting what I was certain was going to happen next and found out I was wrong about 99% of the time despite the fact I was always completely certain I knew, the feeling I had lived through this moment already was so intensly strong.

On the other hand, and in contrast to that, I once had an anomalous experience where the situation I was in caused me to "remember" that I had literally seen this situation before, projected in front of my eyes like a movie at some point in the past. I could remember when and where that projection had taken place. This was a distinctly different experience than a deja vu. This may have been an instance of authentic precognition, I'm not sure. The regular deja vu's I used to have all the time were definitely not.

[zoobyshoe]

I am interested in dyscalculia and acalculia and how the symptoms can arise after left parietal lobe damage.
In that case you may be interested in a rare genetic disorder called William's Syndrome. Oliver Sacks did an hour long special on TV about it as part of a four part series on rare syndromes a few years back. People with William's Syndrome are born without the gene for elastin. In addition to the way this affects their skin, it also produces four other remarkable results. The most amazing of these is that they have superhearing and can hear a whisper a hundred feet away. Another, a deficit, is that they have no sense of the passage of time. The third is that they all seem to be extremely attracted to music and seem to experience an almost synaesthetic feeling of physical pleasure when listening to it. Alot of them learn to play musical instruments and sing, though not particularly well. The fourth, the one that would interest you, is that they are completely unable to handle numbers and math and spatial relations.

At the time this show aired they didn't know much about this syndrome and the neurologists interviewed seemed to be in the beginning stages of just sorting out the spatial and math problems trying to determine the exact extent of these. I don't know what they've found out in the meantime, but it seems a fair guess that the parietal lobes are implicated.

[Math Is Hard]

In that case you may be interested in a rare genetic disorder called William's Syndrome. Oliver Sacks did an hour long special on TV about it as part of a four part series on rare syndromes a few years back. People with William's Syndrome are born without the gene for elastin. In addition to the way this affects their skin, it also produces four other remarkable results. The most amazing of these is that they have superhearing and can hear a whisper a hundred feet away. Another, a deficit, is that they have no sense of the passage of time. The third is that they all seem to be extremely attracted to music and seem to experience an almost synaesthetic feeling of physical pleasure when listening to it. Alot of them learn to play musical instruments and sing, though not particularly well. The fourth, the one that would interest you, is that they are completely unable to handle numbers and math and spatial relations.

At the time this show aired they didn't know much about this syndrome and the neurologists interviewed seemed to be in the beginning stages of just sorting out the spatial and math problems trying to determine the exact extent of these. I don't know what they've found out in the meantime, but it seems a fair guess that the parietal lobes are implicated.
Thanks for the tip. I would not have thought about looking at William's syndrome in relationship to this. I remember reading about children with WS in a biology class and I was struck by their similar physical appearance (they look like pixies). I do remember reading that they had severe learning and developmental disabilities, but didn't know much about the nature of them. So your hunch may be right. I found this article:
Evidence for superior parietal impairment in Williams syndrome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15642924
Parietal lobe impairment is hypothesized to contribute to the dramatic visual-spatial deficits in Williams syndrome (WS). The authors examined the superior and inferior parietal lobule in 17 patients with WS and 17 control female adults (CNLs). The right and left superior parietal lobule gray matter volumes were significantly smaller in patients with WS than in CNLs, even after controlling for total cerebral gray matter. Impaired superior parietal function could explain WS visual-spatial and visual-motor problems.
Unfortunately I wasn't able to read the entire article and find out if there were any significant differences found in the inferior parietal lobule which is supposed to very important for manipulation of numbers.

I've also read about a peculiar disorder called Gerstmann Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerstmann_syndrome
It's really odd because one of the symptoms is inability to recognize one's own fingers, but it goes along with dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and left-right orientation. One of the theories about the finger agnosia/dyscalculia connection is that early learning of math concepts is strongly tied to finger-counting.

What I have found really compelling are cases where adults lose different math abilities due to stroke or brain injury, and it seems to be consistently occurring with left parietal lobe damage. I was thinking about starting a thread on this topic, but I don't know how many people would be interested.

But back to Deja Vu...

[zoobyshoe]

Thanks for the tip. I would not have thought about looking at William's syndrome in relationship to this. I remember reading about children with WS in a biology class and I was struck by their similar physical appearance (they look like pixies). I do remember reading that they had severe learning and developmental disabilities, but didn't know much about the nature of them. So your hunch may be right. I found this article:
Evidence for superior parietal impairment in Williams syndrome.
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=15642924

Unfortunately I wasn't able to read the entire article and find out if there were any significant differences found in the inferior parietal lobule which is supposed to very important for manipulation of numbers.

I've also read about a peculiar disorder called Gerstmann Syndrome.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerstmann_syndrome
It's really odd because one of the symptoms is inability to recognize one's own fingers, but it goes along with dyscalculia, dysgraphia, and left-right orientation. One of the theories about the finger agnosia/dyscalculia connection is that early learning of math concepts is strongly tied to finger-counting.

What I have found really compelling are cases where adults lose different math abilities due to stroke or brain injury, and it seems to be consistently occurring with left parietal lobe damage. I was thinking about starting a thread on this topic, but I don't know how many people would be interested.

But back to Deja Vu...
Dr. Bellugi, one of the authors of the WS article you linked to, was the main neurologist Sacks interviewed in his TV special about it. She did alot of tests on a little girl named Heidi. In one, Heidi was asked to copy the arrangement of 5 or 6 wood blocks. They were a mix of cubes and rectangular ones. Heidi seemed completely unable to grasp the original arrangement, and couldn't reproduce it with the second identical set they gave her. In another scene they showed Heidi a dozen cinammon buns on a plate and asked her to count them. This she could do by pointing to each one and counting aloud as she went along. Then they covered all but three of the buns with a cloth and asked her how many there were on the plate. She counted three. They reminded her that the ones under the cloth were still there. Still, she insisted there were only three buns on the plate.

I was personally confused about what kind of deficit this latter demonstration indicated, but it was clear that the covered buns somehow ceased to exist for her when she couldn't see them.

The inability to recognize the fingers in Gerstmann Syndrome sounds like a proprioceptive deficit, which I've always read to be associated with parietal problems. My brother-in-law who has MS cannot sense the position of his feet. He has to watch them when he walks to know where they are. Some people have simple partials where their proprioceptive "knowledge" of various body parts shuts off, and they are startled by the sight of their own limbs, the limbs don't feel like they belong to them.

The theory that agnosia for the fingers could lead to math deficits sounds pretty logical to me. I still count on my fingers.

[Ivan Seeking]

Once again it seems you're arguing against me without having even read what I said.

AFAIK I'm not arguing against you, and I haven't had the time to read everything. I was just making a point relevant to this forum.

In cases you didn't read it, the first thing that I did was to point out that you are well read on the subject.

[-Job-]

Job, I'm not sure that what you're describing is the experience refered to as a deja vu. It sounds more like you are actually remembering something, actually being reminded of something that you can't quite recall, but maybe could if you tried.

A deja vu is an extremely mysterious and powerful experience where your current situation suddenly seems remarkably familiar when you concurrently know it cannot be familiar. Not everyone has had a deja vu and I think that people who haven't are somewhat confused about what it's like, and maybe think they have had one. It isn't a matter of something seeming vaguely familiar, it's an overwhelming, stop-you-in-your-tracks, flood of familiarity attached to a situation you intellectually know is not one you've ever been in before. The strength of this feeling is unbelievable. It seems 20 times more familiar than anything that actually is familiar. It's distinctly unnatural feeling: the present seems like an exact repeat of itself down to the smallest detail, as if your mind had skipped back in time and was reliving a moment all over again.

Your description of being reminded of what you were thinking about the previous time you were looking at a toothbrush doesn't sound like an authentic deja vu to me.

That may be the case, i can't say i've ever had such an overwhelming feeling of deja vu as you described, but it has happened before. For example, i remember, when i was into collecting Magic The Gathering cards, buying a pack which contained a particular card and feeling that me being in that place (an alley) looking at that card had happened before, though i was very confortable that that couldn't be the case (it was my second/third pack and i had never seen the card before in my life). With the toothbrush, i initially had the feeling that what was happening had happened before, and it felt like Deja Vu until i understood that the reason was because the thought process triggered by the toothbrush was exactly the same as it had happened once before. It seemed very clear cut and i said to myself "ah, so that's why that happens".

[zoobyshoe]

That may be the case, i can't say i've ever had such an overwhelming feeling of deja vu as you described, but it has happened before. For example, i remember, when i was into collecting Magic The Gathering cards, buying a pack which contained a particular card and feeling that me being in that place (an alley) looking at that card had happened before, though i was very confortable that that couldn't be the case (it was my second/third pack and i had never seen the card before in my life).
This sounds like a deja vu the way you've described it. But when you go on to explain it being like this:
With the toothbrush, i initially had the feeling that what was happening had happened before, and it felt like Deja Vu until i understood that the reason was because the thought process triggered by the toothbrush was exactly the same as it had happened once before. It seemed very clear cut and i said to myself "ah, so that's why that happens".

it doesn't sound like a deja vu any more, but an authentic memory. The second experience had simply reminded you of the first. In other words, the reason it seemed familiar is because it was familiar. With a deja vu the whole weirdness and mystery arises from the fact that it is actually not familiar at all, you're sure of this, yet it feels superfamiliar, more familiar than anything you actually know to be familiar.

If you look at the EEG tracing of the patient having a deja vu I posted you can see how radically the neuronal activity jumps when it starts. It is this avalanche of unprovoked neuronal firing in the part of the brain that governs memory that accounts for the power and inexplicablness of the experience. The feeling that you're experiencing a memory when you actually arent is falsely and intensly generated from within the brain. It seems it must have something to do with the situation around you, but it actually doesn't at all, which is why a person can never figure out why the present should seem so remarkable familiar.

[-Job-]

This sounds like a deja vu the way you've described it. But when you go on to explain it being like this:


it doesn't sound like a deja vu any more, but an authentic memory. The second experience had simply reminded you of the first. In other words, the reason it seemed familiar is because it was familiar. With a deja vu the whole weirdness and mystery arises from the fact that it is actually not familiar at all, you're sure of this, yet it feels superfamiliar, more familiar than anything you actually know to be familiar.

If you look at the EEG tracing of the patient having a deja vu I posted you can see how radically the neuronal activity jumps when it starts. It is this avalanche of unprovoked neuronal firing in the part of the brain that governs memory that accounts for the power and inexplicablness of the experience. The feeling that you're experiencing a memory when you actually arent is falsely and intensly generated from within the brain. It seems it must have something to do with the situation around you, but it actually doesn't at all, which is why a person can never figure out why the present should seem so remarkable familiar.

The only difference between the toothbrush and the card, that i can identify, was that with the toothbrush i came to an explanation. Perhaps the proper definition of Deja Vu does not involve finding out what caused the feeling, but the neuronal activity has to be triggered by something. Judging from the neuronal activity would you say the possiblity of it having been triggered by a memory is out of the question? I would say a memory is not unlikely to be the trigger. There can be some subtleties in an environment that when combined bring up a memory. Maybe in the past i have been in a place with blue walls, right before going to work, with a man humming a Beatles song, and i start to think about the Beatle's song "A hard day's night" which leads me to think about my dog and that funny she did recently. These things will be weakly related into a memory.
If in the future without noticing i'm in a place with blue walls, hearing any beatles song, and for some reason, any at all, i start to think about my dog, and that funny thing she once did, then these things can trigger that weak memory. But i won't be aware of the memory because it's not the same place, it only has blue walls, it's not the same beatles song, it's just a beatles song, and it's not the same thought process, it just begins and ends the same. All of this can trigger a memory and yet it maybe impossible for me to identify why the situation seems familiar. Why would it be the blue walls and not ceiling fan? There are many details, how can i identify the ones that triggered the memory? Many times we can't, and we're just left with the feeling of familiarity, Deja Vu. Whether or not neuronal activity is triggered by this is open for debate, but if i have experienced deja vu i'm confient that it is, although i admit the possibility that i never experienced proper deja vu (even though i have no reason to believe that)

[zoobyshoe]

The only difference between the toothbrush and the card, that i can identify, was that with the toothbrush i came to an explanation. Perhaps the proper definition of Deja Vu does not involve finding out what caused the feeling, but the neuronal activity has to be triggered by something. Judging from the neuronal activity would you say the possiblity of it having been triggered by a memory is out of the question?
Compare this small seizure in the part of the brain that governs memory to the full body convulsions of a Grand Mal seizure. Is it possible the grand mal convulsions were triggered by actually moving the muscles? That's what you're asking me.

[-Job-]

That's not true. You're making the assumption that, as with a Grand Mal seizure, this "small seizure" activity correlated with Deja Vu is random and caused by abnormal functioning of the brain. Should we make that assumption for every "small seizure"? Where does normal activity end and a "small seizure" begin? What brain process can't be correlated to a "small seizure"? Does sex generate a small seizure in certain areas of the brain? Is this brain activity abnormal and uncaused or at least with a cause not identifiable by the subject?

[zoobyshoe]

That's not true. You're making the assumption that, as with a Grand Mal seizure, this "small seizure" activity correlated with Deja Vu is random and caused by abnormal functioning of the brain. Should we make that assumption for every "small seizure"?
Yes, this kind of hypersynchronous firing is not normal and the result is a distorted experience just like muscular seizures represent distorted, abnormal muscular activity.

http://www.emedicine.com/neuro/topic415.htm
Seizures are the manifestation of abnormal hypersynchronous discharges of cortical neurons.
and:
Seizures are paroxysmal manifestations of the electrical properties of the cerebral cortex. A seizure results when a sudden imbalance occurs between the excitatory and inhibitory forces within the network of cortical neurons in favor of a sudden-onset net excitation.

Where does normal activity end and a "small seizure" begin?
First off: a "small" seizure, that is: a simple partial seizure, is small only in that it is limited to a small part of the brain. The actual activity of the smaller number of neurons involved during a simple partial is just as pathological as during a full brain seizure. They aren't seizing more gently or anything like that. There is a definite threshold that is crossed when the neurons begin to fire both more strongly than normal and provoke nearby neurons to do the same. The paper I linked to above goes into the technical details of this if you want to slog through it with a medical dictionary.
What brain process can't be correlated to a "small seizure"?
You don't seem to understand that the firing of neurons is not a seizure. A seizure is a particular kind of abnormal, exaggerated and uncontrolled firing of neurons. This can happen anywhere in a persons brain, or to just about the whole brain at once. It is always disruptive and causes malfunctioning of the brain processes affected.

We percieve everything around and in us by virtue of the smooth, proper functioning of our brains. We percieve, think and feel and plan with our brains. When some small or large population of neurons begins to malfunction for any reason, be it seizure, stroke, Multiple Sclerosis, Parkinson's, Alzheimer's, or any brain disease, a person's perceptions, thought processes, emotions, and body functions can be grossly distorted, exaggerated, or stop functioning altogether.

Does sex generate a small seizure in certain areas of the brain?
Good question. This came up in a thread on an Epilepsy forum once. Is the activity of the parts of the brain responsible for things like orgasms and sneezes anything like seizure activity? Everyone's intuition about it was that things like this seemed to have the same kind of intensity. No one bothered to research it, though, and we left it at wondering.

I'd say there are some obvious important differences. Sneezes and orgasms are provokable in perfectly healthy people by stimulating the right sensory organs. There is no built in, natural way to provoke a seizure in a healthy person (memories don't cause deja vu's, moving the muscles doesn't cause convulsions). Sneezes and orgasms serve a purpose and they are self limiting.

The other thing that came up is hiccups. These are more suspect. They are often not self limiting, seem to go out of control, and they don't seem to serve a purpose.
Is this brain activity abnormal and uncaused or at least with a cause not identifiable by the subject?
Seizure activity is always abnormal and there's always a cause: it's always a symptom that something else is wrong. (Seizures are not a disease unto themselves.) There is always some lesion or chemical problem or oxygen starvation or something that causes it. The paper I linked to in my post to Ivan about simple partials has a list of some common causes:

Causes: Any localized structural lesion of the brain can result in SPS, including the following:

* Developmental abnormalities

* Vascular lesions

* Meningitis/focal encephalitis

* Trauma

* Tumors

* Hypoxic insults

* Postsurgical changes

* Metabolic and electrolyte shifts

* Endocrine disorders

* Medications and toxins

Note especially, "Metabolic and electrolyte shifts". This sort of thing can happen to anyone as a result of being overstressed, overtired, poorly nourished, dehydrated, etc. Notice also "Endocrine disorders". Your endocrine system is quite complex and anything that throws it out of whack might predispose you to a temporary bout with simple partials. Anyone might have a simple partial, or a few of them, without there being anything permanently or seriously wrong with them.

[zoobyshoe]

If in the future without noticing i'm in a place with blue walls, hearing any beatles song, and for some reason, any at all, i start to think about my dog, and that funny thing she once did, then these things can trigger that weak memory. But i won't be aware of the memory because it's not the same place, it only has blue walls, it's not the same beatles song, it's just a beatles song, and it's not the same thought process, it just begins and ends the same. All of this can trigger a memory and yet it maybe impossible for me to identify why the situation seems familiar. Why would it be the blue walls and not ceiling fan? There are many details, how can i identify the ones that triggered the memory? Many times we can't, and we're just left with the feeling of familiarity, Deja Vu. Whether or not neuronal activity is triggered by this is open for debate, but if i have experienced deja vu i'm confient that it is, although i admit the possibility that i never experienced proper deja vu (even though i have no reason to believe that)
I see you added to this post after I responded so I'll address your addition.

What you're describing with the memory that you can't place is not a deja vu. It's just a memory you can't place. Everyone has had this experience: you are unconsciously reminded of something by some subliminal trigger you're not aware of.

I have had this problem before: if someone hasn't actually had a deja vu they assume I'm talking about this sort of vague memory. I find it's impossible to communicate what they're really like to someone who's never had one and the people who've never had one sometimes think they have because of the kind of thing you're talking about. Sometimes I'll be watching a movie on TV and I'll suddenly be struck by the strange feeling that it seems familiar even though I'm not aware of having seen it before. Then later I'll suddenly remember that I did see part of it once several years before but changed the channel out of boredom. This is not a deja vu. Likewise I once was overwhelmed by an amazingly pleasant sense of familiarity when I was in a friend's garage and bent down to pick a wrench up off the floor. For some reason some rusty old cans on the floor smelled exactly like the old tools in my grandmother's tool shed and it reminded me of a whole period in my childhood I hadn't thought about in a long time. It took me a while to place the smell, though. I couldn't remember at first where I'd smelled it before. This was a powerful experience, yes, but it was nothing like a deja vu. And, of course, it wasn't a seizure, just a memory.

A deja vu is quite different. You have the distinct feeling your life is a recording that is being played over again. Everything around you down to the smallest detail seems superfamiliar. You don't feel merely reminded of something you can't put your finger on. You know what is familiar: everything! All the things around you and every thought in your head. Your life seems like a recording that has been rewound a moment and is being replayed with your memory of the previous playing intact.

Still, even that doesn't do the experience justice because if you repeat a song on a CD, for instance, the second playing doesn't amaze you for being familiar. A deja vu does: everything seems superfamiliar, and that fact amazes you. If you happen to speculate about what might happen next, that speculation seems amazingly familiar, and you suddenly believe this is because you know what is going to happen next. If it doesn't happen, the fact it didn't happen seems amazingly familiar, and you say to yourself: "Oh yeah! I made that same mistake about what was going to happen next the last time I lived through this time loop!" No matter what happens it all gets dosed with the same superfamiliarity.

I have talked to many people who've had the same experience of a deja vu that I'm describing, and it was clear from everything they said that we were talking about the same thing. There is generally a ramping up of emotion when they talk about it, an increase in exitement, because it is such a mind-blowing, unforgettable experience. However, you can't gage this sort of thing over the internet and I'm starting to wonder if everyone who reports they've had a deja vu has actually had one.

[-Job-]

I know what you're saying Zoob, but the way you're putting is not the way it's interpreted. It doesn't feel like a memory, like as what you described with the movie and the smell. It's not about something concrete seeming familiar, it's the impression that the situation has happened before. When i mention familiarity, i'm just suggesting that it's unconsciously triggered by some familiarity with the situation, that it's caused by this familiarity, even though you're not aware of anything concrete seeming familiar.
For example, recently before i went to bed there was a mosquito in my room, i can't sleep if there is a mosquito in the room. I had seen it but i didn't know where it was so in my attempt to move it from its hiding place i started to move things. I eventually came to my bed and shook the bed sheets, then looked at the floor in front of the bed and while doing this i had the feeling of Deja Vu, namely that this exact same thing had happened before, namely me being there doing the exact same thing for exactly the same reason. It's a familiarity with the sequence of input-thought-reaction, i.e. the situation, not with anything concrete.
I think this is what the majority of the people, who claim to have experienced Deja Vu, experience, which is possibly not the "clinical Deja Vu" that you mentioned and that is associated with a small seizure.
I think i'll leave it at that.

[Math Is Hard]

Can the deja vu experience vary in intensity or how long it lasts? I think there were a couple of times I had deja vu and it was just a vague feeling of familiarity lasting for a split second. I have also had a longer deja vu feeling that I've had during a conversation with someone. I know it lasted longer because I was analyzing the experience while I was talking, and I was telling the person I was having deja vu and felt I had had that conversation with her before.

[-Job-]

I think if you were to analyze the conversation, possibly, you'd find that the familiarity you experienced was triggered by some aspects of the conversation (i.e. the line of reasoning, not necessarily the wording).
When a situation causes a subject to consider A and B, and conclude A + B => C, it's not a wild assumption that the brain will associate A and B with C. If a situation comes up that leads a subject to consider A + B = C again, it's not unreasonable that the subject might feel that the situation has occured in the past, because the association is already there, independently of how the association was brought by, both times.
This might be testable.

[zoobyshoe]

I know what you're saying Zoob, but the way you're putting is not the way it's interpreted. It doesn't feel like a memory, like as what you described with the movie and the smell. It's not about something concrete seeming familiar, it's the impression that the situation has happened before. When i mention familiarity, i'm just suggesting that it's unconsciously triggered by some familiarity with the situation, that it's caused by this familiarity, even though you're not aware of anything concrete seeming familiar.
For example, recently before i went to bed there was a mosquito in my room, i can't sleep if there is a mosquito in the room. I had seen it but i didn't know where it was so in my attempt to move it from its hiding place i started to move things. I eventually came to my bed and shook the bed sheets, then looked at the floor in front of the bed and while doing this i had the feeling of Deja Vu, namely that this exact same thing had happened before, namely me being there doing the exact same thing for exactly the same reason. It's a familiarity with the sequence of input-thought-reaction, i.e. the situation, not with anything concrete.
I think this is what the majority of the people, who claim to have experienced Deja Vu, experience, which is possibly not the "clinical Deja Vu" that you mentioned and that is associated with a small seizure.
I think i'll leave it at that.

I can't sort out if what you're experiencing should really be called a deja vu. The explanation that satisfied you, that you had simply triggered a similar train of thought, just wouldn't work to explain the intensity of the superfamiliarity.

For clarity's sake and precision the term should only be used in conjunction with the very extreme and unmistakable experience caused by a simple partial. Neurology got dibs on it long ago. It shouldn't be used to refer to authentic memories a person can't quite place, or to situations where the dynamics of a previous situation are authentically repeated. If people are thinking of these two latter things it is no wonder they would object to the notion it's a seizure.

[-Job-]

I think the question can be reduced to whether it is possible to build two scenarios such that a subject, made to experience both scenarios in succession (not necessarily immediate succession), can be made to feel Deja Vu.

[zoobyshoe]

Can the deja vu experience vary in intensity or how long it lasts? I think there were a couple of times I had deja vu and it was just a vague feeling of familiarity lasting for a split second. I have also had a longer deja vu feeling that I've had during a conversation with someone. I know it lasted longer because I was analyzing the experience while I was talking, and I was telling the person I was having deja vu and felt I had had that conversation with her before.
All mine were all superintense and unmistakable untill after a couple years I learned a trick to stop them from escalating to full intensity. Now I can say I've had some "mild" ones, refering to one's I have defused.

The length of mine is always about the same: two or three seconds of very strong familiarity that then attenuates to normal over the next few seconds. I've always assumed most people's were about the same duration and have never thought to ask people about this.

The ones I've read about that last for any appreciable length of time lead to spreading of the seizure activity to include all kinds of other symptoms. Some people have deja vu's that become compounded by extreme feelings of fear, dread, or embarrassment, for example. In others they lead to a chaotic collage of memories with strong but hard to describe emotions attached to them. In others it leads into a complex (as opposed to simple) partial seizure where there is a gross defect of consciousness.

So, I can't really say if there are people out there having mild deja vu's that are seizures because if there are they've never been given any clinical attention. The people I've talked to who clearly understand what I mean when I raise the subject all descibe experiences as intense as mine. They become visibly exited relating their story: it's clearly a remarkable, unforgettable thing for them. These are just normal people who've had one once, twice, or a few times, not people diagnosed with seizure disorders.

[Math Is Hard]

I think the question can be reduced to whether it is possible to build two scenarios such that a subject, made to experience both scenarios in succession (not necessarily immediate succession), can be made to feel Deja Vu.
This got me thinking how hard it would be to try to reproduce deja vu or a deja vu-like experience in a lab with means other than direct brain stimulation. It seems that this actually has been attempted, though:
In the final box are "double perception" theories of déjà vu, which descend from Allin's 1896 suggestion that a brief interruption in our normal process of perception might make something appear falsely familiar. In 1989, in one of the first laboratory studies that tried to induce something like déjà vu, the cognitive psychologists Larry L. Jacoby and Kevin Whitehouse, of Washington University in St. Louis, showed their subjects a long list of words on a screen. The subjects then returned a day or a week later and were shown another long list of words, half of which had also been on the first list. They were asked to identify which words they had seen during the first round.

The experimenters found that if they flashed a word at extremely quick, subliminal speeds (20 milliseconds) shortly before its "official" appearance on the screen during the second round, their subjects were very likely to incorrectly say that it had appeared on the first list. Those results lent at least indirect support to the notion that if we attend to something half-consciously and then give it our full attention, it can appear falsely familiar.

http://chronicle.com/free/v50/i46/46a01201.htm
I thought this entire article was a good read. It discusses alternative theories of deja vu and historical perspectives on the phenomenon.

There's a great quote from Nathaniel Hawthorne describing it as "that odd state of mind wherein we fitfully and teasingly remember some previous scene or incident, of which the one now passing appears to be but the echo and reduplication."

[zoobyshoe]

We don't normally think of familiarity as an emotion, but if you examine the whole issue in context it's clear that it is, and that a deja vu is the erroneous triggering of an emotional reaction.

Notice that the deja vu has it's opposite, the jamais vu. This is a simple partial during which the sence of familiarity shuts off altogether. The result is that things and situations the person intellectually knows to be familiar feel completely foreign, alien, and strange. The person is confronted by something that looks exactly as they remember it, but fails to elicit any feeling that it's familiar. It seems "wrong" somehow, not the same, as if it's essence had been removed. The same goes for people and places, not just objects, a person might encounter during a jamais vu. They seem like souless copies of the originals.

Familiarity therefore, has to be understood, not as a quality inherent in what we percieve, but as an internally generated reaction to what we percieve. Normally the brain generates a realistic level of this feeling, probably by comparing the current situation to memory. We perceve something, and in a split second the brain has determined the level of our familiarity with it and generated a physiological reation, a "feeling" appropriate to that level. If it fails to do so, as when the hippocampal/amygdala activity is inhibited during a jamais vu things that should feel perfectly familiar won't. If the opposite happens, if the hippocampal/amydala activity is sent into a paroxysmal overreaction the thing will seem falsly superfamiliar.

Repeated exposure to something doesn't produce a feeling of superfamiliarity. In fact, the more we're exposed to something the less we tend to notice it. I'm very familiar with the sight of the laptop in front of me, for example. I see it several hours a day. All this exposure to it doesn't accumulate into a feeling of superfamiliarity, though. I never look at it and become amazed at how familiar it seems.

All emotions are generated in the limbic system of the brain. Normally they are more or less appropriate to the situation and serve some purpose. Fear makes us run from a burning building, amusement relieves stress, etc. But because of the way the brain works any of these emotions can be inappropriately triggered, or, fail to arise when they should.

Deja vu's aren't authentic recognition of things we are familiar with. They are the erroneously amplified activity of a part of the brain that governs the feeling of familiarity, which then becomes falsly associated with our surroundings. (Remember: we think the familiarity is a quality of what we're looking at instead of realizing it's actually a reaction we have to it.) You can't reproduce this experience by repeated exposure to the surroundings because they never actually have anything to do with it in the first place. On the other hand, if you were to electrically stimulate someone's hippocampus where feelings of familiarity are generated you could make anything and everything seem superfamiliar to them.

[Pythagorean]

I'd categorize it as a neurological phenomenon. There was a discussion about it here:
http://www.physicsforums.com/showthread.php?t=90814

interesting. I didn't think it had been pinpointed that well.

[K.J.Healey]

Is a sign of frequent deja vu indicative of any possible neurological damage or problems? Is it "normal" to have it? How often is "normal"?

I get Deja-vu probably once or twice a month. The most frequent style I get is walking into a room in which I have never been and saying to myself "Ive been here before..." and then going "Yea, i knew she was going to say that, and I knew that waitress was going to drop that" though I obviously didnt think about it prior. Its about 5 seconds of complete familiarity.
One thing I've noticed is that my brain instantly recognizes it for what it is. The voice in my head says "this seems really familiar, as if it has happened before, BUT IT HASNT"
It doesn't feel as if its an actual memory that you SHOULD have recollected, but rather some dreamt-up creative storyline that you know never existed, but followed the same plot. As if you were remembering a dream as it happened before you. Or that life was following the same lines as a book you had read 10 years ago. You get the feeling of "oh yea i remember that part"
Once again though, the logical part of my mind tells me instantly that the feelings I have of familiarity are not founded and that I haven't been there/seen that before.

[zoobyshoe]

interesting. I didn't think it had been pinpointed that well.
There seems to be some inexplicable gap between neurologists and everyone else. Neurologists have known the deja vu is a simple partial for decades. I think they keep this to themselves because the word seizure is so alarming to most people. The result, though, is that there always seems to be a research team somewhere barking up the wrong tree trying to figure out what deja vu's are from scratch.

The article linked to by Math Is Hard reminds me of an old joke: A guy sees a woman searching the ground in a parking lot at night. "Did you lose something?" he asks? "Yes" she says, I lost a hundred dollar bill." He walks over to where she's searching and offers to help. "Oh", she says, "I'm pretty sure I didn't lose it here. I think I must have dropped it over there." and she points to a spot a hundred yards away. "I'm only looking here because the light's so much better."

Even though the guy in MIH's link knows about simple partials he still keeps searching for a different explanation of deja vu's in all the wrong places because, I think, he wants an explanation he likes better.

[zoobyshoe]

Is a sign of frequent deja vu indicative of any possible neurological damage or problems? Is it "normal" to have it? How often is "normal"?

I get Deja-vu probably once or twice a month. The most frequent style I get is walking into a room in which I have never been and saying to myself "Ive been here before..." and then going "Yea, i knew she was going to say that, and I knew that waitress was going to drop that" though I obviously didnt think about it prior. Its about 5 seconds of complete familiarity.
One thing I've noticed is that my brain instantly recognizes it for what it is. The voice in my head says "this seems really familiar, as if it has happened before, BUT IT HASNT"
It doesn't feel as if its an actual memory that you SHOULD have recollected, but rather some dreamt-up creative storyline that you know never existed, but followed the same plot. As if you were remembering a dream as it happened before you. Or that life was following the same lines as a book you had read 10 years ago. You get the feeling of "oh yea i remember that part"
Once again though, the logical part of my mind tells me instantly that the feelings I have of familiarity are not founded and that I haven't been there/seen that before.

Once or twice a month is pretty much harmless and no neurologists would bother treating anyone for that.

You could probably get rid of them altogether by eating a consistant, balanced diet, sleeping well every night, completely avoiding alcohol, and getting light, moderate excercise everyday.

I met a woman a few months ago who had a few simple partials every day. I advised her to see a neurologist. He confirmed they were simple partials, but, since she had just quit drinking and joined AA, he wasn't going to treat her at all. He wanted to wait and see how much they subsided after she stopped triggering them by drinking so much.

edit: if you are also having any other weird experiences you can't explain, especially anything you might call "missing time" or "amnesia" then it would indicate that you should be concerned. It could mean you're having the much more serious complex partial seizures.

[K.J.Healey]

Once or twice a month is pretty much harmless and no neurologists would bother treating anyone for that.

You could probably get rid of them altogether by eating a consistant, balanced diet, sleeping well every night, completely avoiding alcohol, and getting light, moderate excercise everyday.

I met a woman a few months ago who had a few simple partials every day. I advised her to see a neurologist. He confirmed they were simple partials, but, since she had just quit drinking and joined AA, he wasn't going to treat her at all. He wanted to wait and see how much they subsided after she stopped triggering them by drinking so much.

edit: if you are also having any other weird experiences you can't explain, especially anything you might call "missing time" or "amnesia" then it would indicate that you should be concerned. It could mean you're having the much more serious complex partial seizures.

No, no missing time. But though I'm still fairly young (23), does anyone else get the distinct feeling that as we get older and older the passing of time speeds up more and more and more? I don't mean immediate local passing of time, but more like weeks, months and years pass faster and faster. I thought at first it was a memory issue where the less immediate things I'm remembering leads to a feeling of less things to recall, therefor a feeling of less time passed than actual. Fortunately though, it still seems my memory is more accurate and deep than 90% of the people around me (both from observation and from them telling me so).

Anyone else get that feeling of time getting shorter and shorter?

[selfAdjoint]

No, no missing time. But though I'm still fairly young (23), does anyone else get the distinct feeling that as we get older and older the passing of time speeds up more and more and more? I don't mean immediate local passing of time, but more like weeks, months and years pass faster and faster. I thought at first it was a memory issue where the less immediate things I'm remembering leads to a feeling of less things to recall, therefor a feeling of less time passed than actual. Fortunately though, it still seems my memory is more accurate and deep than 90% of the people around me (both from observation and from them telling me so).

Anyone else get that feeling of time getting shorter and shorter?


Well that's partly true of everyone. Consider that when you were 5 the time between your birthdays was a fifth of your life and now it's one-twenty-ninth, almost six times "shorter" in terms of experienced history. But the other part is that if your mind is active and happily occupied, and your life has a little variety in it, time doesn't flit quite so fast. The space between my birthdays (I am 73) doesn't seem half as long as when I was 36.

[Math Is Hard]

Another attempt at producing a deja vu-like experience -- using hypnosis:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/5194382.stm
The Leeds team set out to create a sense of deja vu among volunteers in a lab.

They used hypnosis to trigger only the second part of the recognition process - hoping to create a sense of familiarity about something a person had not seen before.

The researchers showed volunteers 24 common words, then hypnotised them and told them that when they were next presented with a word in a red frame, they would feel that the word was familiar, although they would not know when they last saw it.

Green frames would make them think that the word belonged to the original list of 24.

...

After being taken out of hypnosis, the volunteers were presented with a series of words in frames of various colours, including some that were not in the original 24 and which were framed in red or green.

Of the 18 people studied so far, 10 reported a peculiar sensation when they saw new words in red frames and five said it definitely felt like deja vu.

[zoobyshoe]

It is estimated that as many as 97% of people have experienced deja vu.
I have heard this figure before but I now don't trust it since it's not clear to me that everyone who says they've had one is actually having the "authentic" deja vu experience. In my own experience I would estimate that only a third of all the people I've met seemed to have experienced the same thing I have.
Two key processes are thought to occur when someone recognises a familiar object or scene.

First, the brain searches through memory traces to see if the contents of that scene have been observed before.

If they have, a separate part of the brain then identifies the scene or object as being familiar.

In deja vu, this second process may occur by mistake, so that a feeling of familiarity is triggered by a novel object or scene.
This is a misunderstanding of a deja vu. The feeling isn't triggered by the novel object or scene. It happens when it happens, but invariably gets falsly ascribed to the external surroundings. It's rather like the old story of the love potion that makes you fall in love with the first person you meet. The feelings of love come from the potion but are falsly assumed to have been triggered by the first person who show up. What it says later is more like it:
And previous work in France has found that electrically stimulating parts of the temporal lobe can trigger a sensation of familiarity with everything a person encounters.

I find this claim to be problematic:
Of the 18 people studied so far, 10 reported a peculiar sensation when they saw new words in red frames and five said it definitely felt like deja vu.
They were instructed under hypnosis to experience the words as familiar and so it isn't of any particular interest that they reported that they did. It doesn't mean they experienced any authentic deja vu feeling, just that they were faithfully presenting the behavior of someone who had. This is how hypnosis works: the hypnotist elicits a loyalty from the subject to stick with the suggestion. You may recall Feynman's story of being hypnotized, and how he felt an inexplicable obligation to behave in accordance with the post hypnotic suggestion. He didn't authentically feel unable to return to his seat by a certain route. Instead, what he felt was a strong, urgent need to act as if he felt unable to do it, a kind of loyalty to the hypnotist to play the game.

I doubt if anything like a real deja vu was created here.

[-Job-]

Zoob, maybe the Deja Vu you describe as having experienced isn't the classical Deja Vu, but something of a bigger scale, or something different altogether.
I've always thought of Deja Vu as a common, low intensity experience.

[Math Is Hard]

My thinking is that maybe the Deja Vu phenomenon needs a clearer taxonomy. There could be different causal bases, and there could also be different effects that would influence how each is categorized. I am not by any any means dismissing temporal lobe simple partial seizures as the basis for the majority of them, but maybe they only create one or two types of experience which are causally and qualitatively unique.

Outside of that, there could be other types of reported Deja Vu experience which might be worth exploring. Some may be hypnotically induced, dream memory induced, or chemically induced, (or other) and they could certainly vary in intensity or length of the sensation.

[TuviaDaCat]

i have this problem, that a short after a certain expirience i get the feeling that i already had a similiar expirience a long long ago, but i always find it a false feeling, since i could not retrieve such memory after long scanning... it happens only after the expirience, so im pretty much sure i cant predict the future =)...

so if it would happen to a man a milisecond after the expirience, it would realy seem as deja vu...

but thats all on assuming that the man is ****ed up as the i.

[zoobyshoe]

Zoob, maybe the Deja Vu you describe as having experienced isn't the classical Deja Vu, but something of a bigger scale, or something different altogether.
I've always thought of Deja Vu as a common, low intensity experience.
The deja vu as I experience it is described over and over in neurological studies and, as I mentioned earlier, at least a third of the people I know seem to have had the same experience as me, with the same intensity. I can't even begin to entertain the notion mine aren't classic when I've read and heard mine described in so many sources and by so many people. These milder, iffy-er reports like yours are really the more unusual.

[zoobyshoe]

My thinking is that maybe the Deja Vu phenomenon needs a clearer taxonomy. There could be different causal bases, and there could also be different effects that would influence how each is categorized. I am not by any any means dismissing temporal lobe simple partial seizures as the basis for the majority of them, but maybe they only create one or two types of experience which are causally and qualitatively unique.
I'd rather that the terminology be more precise. Instead of labeling several essentially different things as different classifications of the same thing it would be much clearer and more accurate to have a separate name for each.
Outside of that, there could be other types of reported Deja Vu experience which might be worth exploring. Some may be hypnotically induced, dream memory induced, or chemically induced, (or other) and they could certainly vary in intensity or length of the sensation.
If there are milder experiences of the kind of hippocampal centered seizures that I have then they are simply milder seizures, milder deja vus. I can't, and didn't, say these don't exist. I don't know if they do. No one could say for sure. The reason being that someone like you who may have had one of these, would never be tested with depth electrodes to see if the feeling corresponds to seizure activity. Such an invasive proceedure would never be allowed just for curiosity's sake.

The people whose deja vus have been recorded by EEG were being prepped for brain surgery because of much more serious seizures that weren't responding to medication. The depth implanted electrodes were for the purpose of locating the seizure focus. The deja vus, (and many other simple partials that have been recorded this way) were not the main point of the procedure at all, and I don't think any neurosurgeon in the world would implant electrodes just to study simple partials. They pick these up, incidently, in the process of looking for the more serious seizures.

So there may be mild deja vus that are simple partials, but I can't assert that for certain. I have no EEG recording to show you.

As for experiences that are apparently the result of precognitive dreams, we should call them "Apparent Dream Precognition", not deja vus, and other non-disprovable incidents of precognition we can call "Apparent Precognition," and not deja vus.

I have had experiences different from my deja vus which I would call "Apparent Dream Precognition" and also "Apparent Precognition". I can't lump these together with the deja vus because they are distinctly different in quality, they just weren't the same thing.

The other problem that may be in play here is descriptive ability of the people reporting the experience. If you've only had a genuine one a few times they can come and go before you can overcome your surprise enough to pay attention to them. It is possible Job has had the same thing as me, but couldn't pay close enough attention to it to see that his explanation doesn't actually fit the experience at all. It was actually a long time before I started realizing certain things about them, especially that they were internally generated "feelings" that only seemed attached to the external situation. Likewise it took probably thousands of them before I sorted out why they were creating the illusion of precogition.

Terminology is important. There was a woman posting on the Epilepsy Forum once about her son's "deja vus". I had to explain to her that what she was describing wasn't deja vu's at all, but flashbacks, another fairly common but distinctly different simple partial. The term "deja vu" seemed to her to fit what he was experiencing because he had fast-changing visual hallucinations of scenes from his past: things he'd already seen, hence, she thought, "deja vu". The term sort of fits but has already been dedicated to a specific kind of experience and it's just going to prevent people from understanding one another if we apply it to anything that roughly feels like "already seen". We don't want to create a "taxonomy" where mice are a kind of subset of cats because they both have fur, four feet, tails, and sleep alot.

[Anttech]

A deja vu is an extremely mysterious and powerful experience where your current situation suddenly seems remarkably familiar when you concurrently know it cannot be familiar. Not everyone has had a deja vu and I think that people who haven't are somewhat confused about what it's like, and maybe think they have had one. It isn't a matter of something seeming vaguely familiar, it's an overwhelming, stop-you-in-your-tracks, flood of familiarity attached to a situation you intellectually know is not one you've ever been in before. The strength of this feeling is unbelievable. It seems 20 times more familiar than anything that actually is familiar. It's distinctly unnatural feeling: the present seems like an exact repeat of itself down to the smallest detail, as if your mind had skipped back in time and was reliving a moment all over again.I have this sort of experience happen to me a few times a year. I dont really count them, and actually rather enjoy the experience, it makes me feel 'Human'. It reminds me of some LSD experiances I have had when i was younger, except that was more the feeling of everything taking on a new meaning, rather than everything being familiar, but knowing they are not.

[zoobyshoe]

I have this sort of experience happen to me a few times a year. I dont really count them, and actually rather enjoy the experience, it makes me feel 'Human'.
Indeed, one deja vu is an almost beautiful mysterious experience. People who have few tend to cherish them and talk about them with enthusiasm and wonder.

I used to feel the same about the few I'd had untill my late 30's when I started having several a day. This escalated till I was having several an hour all day long. Unbelievably, it got worse. I started living a life of having two or three a minute all day long. What was once a cool mystery became sheer torture.
It reminds me of some LSD experiances I have had when i was younger, except that was more the feeling of everything taking on a new meaning, rather than everything being familiar, but knowing they are not.
I've never done LSD. I have a sister who did quite a bit of it and she is now a raving lunatic who hears angels talking to her and believes she is the true wife of Jesus. I don't reccomend this drug to anyone.

[bioactive]

I have had deja vu experiences most of my life which were eventually diagnosed as partial seizures. The diagnosis was confirmed by complete elimination of symptoms after treatment with anti-seizure meds.

The experience is very profound. For me, it was an intense feeling of going back to a place that I was completely familiar with, no matter where I was at. The location or the objects around me were not important, and I was completely aware of where I was, and could drive a car during the experience, for example. It was more like going to a familiar place, or, I hesitate to say, a familiar state of existence. In other words, I had the intense feeling of living in a parallel place and having a parallel existence, which I was not aware of most of the time, but was now able to "remember" briefly. It was usually accompanied by a brief feeling of fear or despair because I came to believe I am not fully conscious of what I am experiencing, or that I am missing a big part of my life, or that I have a parallel "dream" world that I keep forgetting about.

Believe me, those of you who are describing "I feel like I have been here before," without adding that it feels like a profound physical/mental/mystical experience on a par with the most extreme mental experiences of your life, are not suffering the kinds of partial seizures I did. There is no chance of mistaking it. I continue, even under medication, to have those odd feelings occasionally, but the true deja vu experiences are completely absent.

After the diagnosis, I came to understand it as a brain dysfunction. I remembered telling the doctors I talked to that I remembered the first time I ever experienced the feeling. I was in a full contact tae kwon do fight, and got "knocked out." As I came to consciousness, I had a very, very powerful deja vu experience. I now believe that my brian may have been damaged by that punch.

I also came to believe that seizures may be responsible for some of the odd belief systems in the world today. If I were not a scientist who believes that the world is made out of stuff, and that all my feelings come from the interaction of matter in my neuronal system, I might be led to believe that I was "remembering" an alien abduction. Or I might believe I was "communicating" with a higher power and start writing on stone tables.

Zooby I feel like you. They were interesting until the frequency increased in my early 50s.

Anyway, I'm glad I stumbled across this conversation and thanks for giving me a forum to tell my story.

Jim

[Anttech]

I've never done LSD. I have a sister who did quite a bit of it and she is now a raving lunatic who hears angels talking to her and believes she is the true wife of Jesus. I don't reccomend this drug to anyone.Can happen, its not something to be toyed with.

[Math Is Hard]

If there are milder experiences of the kind of hippocampal centered seizures that I have then they are simply milder seizures, milder deja vus. I can't, and didn't, say these don't exist. I don't know if they do. No one could say for sure. The reason being that someone like you who may have had one of these, would never be tested with depth electrodes to see if the feeling corresponds to seizure activity. Such an invasive proceedure would never be allowed just for curiosity's sake.

The people whose deja vus have been recorded by EEG were being prepped for brain surgery because of much more serious seizures that weren't responding to medication. The depth implanted electrodes were for the purpose of locating the seizure focus. The deja vus, (and many other simple partials that have been recorded this way) were not the main point of the procedure at all, and I don't think any neurosurgeon in the world would implant electrodes just to study simple partials. They pick these up, incidently, in the process of looking for the more serious seizures.

So there may be mild deja vus that are simple partials, but I can't assert that for certain. I have no EEG recording to show you.

Of course we would not go poking around a healthy brain with electrodes -but we could certainly study healthy brains with fMRI imaging. It ain't cheap, but this type of research is done pretty frequently here at my uni. I would be curious to see which brain areas, if any, increase in activity in the case of an "induced deja vu" experience such as reported after the hypnosis experiment.

[zoobyshoe]

The experience is very profound. For me, it was an intense feeling of going back to a place that I was completely familiar with, no matter where I was at. The location or the objects around me were not important, and I was completely aware of where I was, and could drive a car during the experience, for example. It was more like going to a familiar place, or, I hesitate to say, a familiar state of existence. In other words, I had the intense feeling of living in a parallel place and having a parallel existence, which I was not aware of most of the time, but was now able to "remember" briefly. It was usually accompanied by a brief feeling of fear or despair because I came to believe I am not fully conscious of what I am experiencing, or that I am missing a big part of my life, or that I have a parallel "dream" world that I keep forgetting about.
Here's a quote from the introduction to:
-Anatomical origin of deja vu and vivid 'memories' in human temporal lobe epilepsy
(Abstract linked to in an earlier post.):

"In 1876, Jackson (1931) described a 'dreamy state' occuring in certain epileptic subjects. Although aspects of the dreamy state had been recognized as early as the 10th century by an Arab physician , it was Jackson (1931) who first described clearly all its aspects speculating with amazing accuracy on its neural substrate and giving it its name..."

..."These phenomena occur withing a 'voluminous' mental state that the patient sometimes describes as 'dreamy'; hence the name. In addition, Jackson felt that a critical component of the dreamy state was a doubling of consciousness, which he termed mental diplopia: a depressed 'normal' consciousness plus a second, parasitic consciousness: the simultaneous objective consciousness of the exterior world together with the subjective consciousness of an interior world."



I'm glad you mentioned about each occurance reminding you of this "parrallel existence" you were afraid you were going to forget again when it was over. At first I had this same sense of alarm each time I entered the state of mind where I could "sense" the universe was a mere recording that could be played over and over, but I had them so often this fear of forgetting them went away and I practically lived in the "dreamy" state, so my initial alarm that I'd forget the separate but parrallel state of mind eventually waned. For the first year or so, though, I was convinced the "loop" of time would break, I'd return to normal, and all my "knowledge" that the universe was just a recording was going to fade from my consciousness. While the experience is happening it is so powerful I am not at liberty to consider it any kind of illusion.


[QUOTE]Believe me, those of you who are describing "I feel like I have been here before," without adding that it feels like a profound physical/mental/mystical experience on a par with the most extreme mental experiences of your life, are not suffering the kinds of partial seizures I did. There is no chance of mistaking it. I continue, even under medication, to have those odd feelings occasionally, but the true deja vu experiences are completely absent.
I'm afraid that there are people who have not had this experience but who hear people talking about it and mistake what they're saying to be refering to some purely mundane experience of things seeming familiar but not being able to quite recall why. Other people I talk to who haven't had one hear what I'm saying well enough to realize that I'm describing something they have no knowledge of, and are able to respond "No, I'm sure I've never felt anything like that." Reports like Math Is Hard's of experiences that seem to have all the right features except the attention-getting intensity are impossible to say anything definite about. They could, in fact, be more contained seizure activity, but I can't say.
After the diagnosis, I came to understand it as a brain dysfunction. I remembered telling the doctors I talked to that I remembered the first time I ever experienced the feeling. I was in a full contact tae kwon do fight, and got "knocked out." As I came to consciousness, I had a very, very powerful deja vu experience. I now believe that my brian may have been damaged by that punch.
The classic cause of seizures: a head injury.
I also came to believe that seizures may be responsible for some of the odd belief systems in the world today. If I were not a scientist who believes that the world is made out of stuff, and that all my feelings come from the interaction of matter in my neuronal system, I might be led to believe that I was "remembering" an alien abduction. Or I might believe I was "communicating" with a higher power and start writing on stone tables.
The trouble with TLE is that the seizures are in the part of your brain where emotions are generated and they usually supercharge the emotional component of the seizure such that whatever you're experiencing is "backed up" with an emotion many times normal strength. As I said, when I'm actually having a deja vu I am not at liberty to question its reality.
Zooby I feel like you. They were interesting until the frequency increased in my early 50s.
Sheer torture.
Anyway, I'm glad I stumbled across this conversation and thanks for giving me a forum to tell my story.

Jim

It's too bad this thread wasn't directed to the Mind and Brain forum which is really the proper venue for your story.

[zoobyshoe]

Of course we would not go poking around a healthy brain with electrodes -but we could certainly study healthy brains with fMRI imaging. It ain't cheap, but this type of research is done pretty frequently here at my uni. I would be curious to see which brain areas, if any, increase in activity in the case of an "induced deja vu" experience such as reported after the hypnosis experiment.
If the fMRI can distinguish between seizure activity and normal activity it might go a long way toward sorting this out. I don't see that the "where" of the activity would be too informative since we are just about always using the hippocampal region: we are just about always forming and accessing memories.

A more promising type of scan might be something done with a SQUID, I think:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci816722,00.html

I have no information on how deeply into the brain this can sense, though, nor the cost of using it.

[bioactive]

Here's a quote from the introduction to:
-Anatomical origin of deja vu and vivid 'memories' in human temporal lobe epilepsy
(Abstract linked to in an earlier post.):


..."These phenomena occur withing a 'voluminous' mental state that the patient sometimes describes as 'dreamy'; hence the name. In addition, Jackson felt that a critical component of the dreamy state was a doubling of consciousness, which he termed mental diplopia: a depressed 'normal' consciousness plus a second, parasitic consciousness: the simultaneous objective consciousness of the exterior world together with the subjective consciousness of an interior world."

Yes, this is describing something like my experience, Especially the term "parasitic consciousness." I feel like the parallel consciousness is going on all the time without me being aware of it, which is frustrating because I feel it is something important.

I also have a feeling of it being exhausting because the parasitic consciousness involves relentless activity and effort to overcome great obstacles. During an event I am "aware" that I am undergoing all these difficulties in addition to, and in parallel with all the difficulties of my normal life.

All this sounds very Castaneda-ish but in reality I know that it is just brain damage causing perceptual changes. Having taken acid myself I know that it is entirely biological and even odder perceptual changes can occur just through stimulation of certain receptors in the brain.

Thanks for the quote.

[zoobyshoe]

All this sounds very Castaneda-ish but in reality I know that it is just brain damage causing perceptual changes. Having taken acid myself I know that it is entirely biological and even odder perceptual changes can occur just through stimulation of certain receptors in the brain.
Yes, our brains take sensory imput and organize and coordinate it into the coherent and useful experience of "normal" consciousness. Anything that interfers with this unbelievably complex neuronal activity causes corresponding distortions of our experience of the world around us, and also of ourselves.
Thanks for the quote.
You're welcome.

[-Job-]

There are many sensations associated with seizures. Fear and panic, for example. Yet, explanations for panic or fear don't involve seizures.
A seizure is not an explanation, it's random over-activity.

[Math Is Hard]

If the fMRI can distinguish between seizure activity and normal activity it might go a long way toward sorting this out. I don't see that the "where" of the activity would be too informative since we are just about always using the hippocampal region: we are just about always forming and accessing memories.

A more promising type of scan might be something done with a SQUID, I think:

http://whatis.techtarget.com/definition/0,,sid9_gci816722,00.html

I have no information on how deeply into the brain this can sense, though, nor the cost of using it.
Wow - a SQUID?! At first I thought you were pulling my tentacle, but I am going to ask my profs about this. Indeed, one of the things that was mentioned in my last class is how difficult some processes are to "subtract out" with the use of a control task -- namely, neuron firing in the hippocampal regions since this is in action every moment.
What would be interesting to see is if a hypnotically induced deja vu could produce any significant firing in that region over and above normal activity. Could the hypnotic suggestion instigate an over-firing, or a mis-fire in the region, or possibly even produce a small seizure in subjects who were prone to it? If we saw nothing then we would be more inclined to believe that the subjects were just being overly cooperative in their reports.
With fMRI, we can see physical responses of neurons quieting when the subject uses CBT techniques. Subjects with depression, for instance, can settle down frontal lobe activity when an attack comes on. It seems possible that a person could also activate firing in a region through something like a hypnotic suggestion.

I am just bouncing ideas off you.

What I am also curious about is if the brain stimulation that caused the deja vu reports in epileptic patients triggered an actual uncontrolled seizure or if it was just creating a controlled inappropriate firing that would not have otherwise occurred.

[zoobyshoe]

Wow - a SQUID?! At first I thought you were pulling my tentacle, but I am going to ask my profs about this.
Hehehe. I thought you'd think I was joking. However the SQUID is a genuine, if amusingly named, device.
Indeed, one of the things that was mentioned in my last class is how difficult some processes are to "subtract out" with the use of a control task -- namely, neuron firing in the hippocampal regions since this is in action every moment.
I saw a lecture where a grad student presented the thalamus as the probable origin of auditory hallucinations in schizophrenic patients because all her pet scans of hallucinating schizophrenics showed the thalamus to be the only universally active part of the brain in all the scans. Of course she had her head up her behind because the thalamus is a kind of Grand Central Station in the brain and all sensory imput is channeled through it. It is always going to be at work, unless you're in a coma.
What would be interesting to see is if a hypnotically induced deja vu could produce any significant firing in that region over and above normal activity. Could the hypnotic suggestion instigate an over-firing, or a mis-fire in the region, or possibly even produce a small seizure in subjects who were prone to it? If we saw nothing then we would be more inclined to believe that the subjects were just being overly cooperative in their reports.
I am not too interested at this point in sorting out what happened to the subjects in that study because it completely ignores what should be everyone's first suspect in any report of a deja vu: the already documented one.

There is a serious and unnecessary problem going unaddressed which was mentioned in your second link:

In some severe cases it can be distressing to the point of causing depression and some sufferers have been prescribed anti-psychotic medication.

However, experts suspect that many people who experience the sensation are unwilling to discuss it with their doctor.

In other words, people who might have this taken care of rather quickly by a neurologist prescribing anti-epileptic drugs are, instead, suffering for years because no one knows, or will acknowledge, this is seizure activity. This cause has to become well known and understood before we start tinkering around in more or less pointless speculation about other possible alternatives to explain non-problematic experiences 97% of the population seems to have once in a great while. Some anti-psychotic medications and also anti-depressents make seizures worse, but they'll be continued to be given to these people because psychiatrists and GP's and the people out there depressed and bewildered because they're having them chronically have never heard the deja vu is a completely treatable kind of simple partial seizure.
What I am also curious about is if the brain stimulation that caused the deja vu reports in epileptic patients triggered an actual uncontrolled seizure or if it was just creating a controlled inappropriate firing that would not have otherwise occurred.
These were stimulated by one electrode and recorded as seizure activity by the neighboring electrodes. Any of the electrodes can be used both as passive recievers or as a means of delivery for voltage. Each electrode is exposed at graduated points along its depth as well. They are precision made, and hair thin to do the least damage upon insertion.

[zoobyshoe]

There are many sensations associated with seizures. Fear and panic, for example. Yet, explanations for panic or fear don't involve seizures.
A seizure is not an explanation, it's random over-activity.
I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but the simple partials that manifest as fear or panic are notable in that these emotions happen in the absense of any percievable cause. The suffer can find nothing in his mind or environment to justify the inexplicable, extreme emotions.

Here is an example reported in the book Seized:

"On another typical day, at four o'clock, Jill was alone in her office. The day's interviews done, she sat reviewing her notes. Suddenly, she couldn't concentrate. The words she was reading held no meaning for her. She went back over the last few lines in vain. Something far more powerful than her notes was on her mind, 'an awful feeling of absolute panic and fear.' For no apparent reason, she felt certain that 'something really bad' was about to happen. This global, nonspecific terror imobilized her, demanding all the energy and concentration she had. It seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her where she could not reason with herself. Even though the terror was without external basis, she experienced it as though it were utterly justified and true.

This panic, she knew, was a seizure, something like the dread van Gogh occasionally felt. Her doctors had explained to her that epileptic discharge in the part of her brain that controls fear can cause a panic attack. Unfortunately, her knowledge that the feeling is really a seizure does not lessen the intensity of the experience. Each time it happens it feels horrifically real; the seizure presents itself as actual, impending doom. If one of these panic attacks were to last longer than a few hours, she believes, she would have no choice but to kill herself."

-Seized by Eve LaPlante, Pages 55-56
Harper Collins, NY 1993

Most libraries I've checked seem to have this book if you're interested in reading in great detail about Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

[zoobyshoe]

I once told my landlady, who is Chinese, about my deja vu's. She knew what I was talking about, and said that in her culture the explanation for this is as follows:

When a person dies they go to a place of waiting, where they prepare to be reborn in a new life and body. During this time each person is given a "cup of forgetfullness" to drink so that they will not remember their past life in their new one. Everyone is cautioned to drink every last drop of the cup of forgetfullness. Some people, though, are careless and don't drink every last drop. As a result, when they're reborn in their new life, they get small flashes of memory from the past life.

[bioactive]

In other words, people who might have this taken care of rather quickly by a neurologist prescribing anti-epileptic drugs are, instead, suffering for years because no one knows, or will acknowledge, this is seizure activity.

I agree. In my case, if I had not been very energetic and precise in describing my experience, the neurologist might not have identified it as partial seizure. The MRI was negative. We decided to try the anti-seizure medication diagnostically. Since the deja vu experiences ceased after treatment with Depakote, a diagnosis of partial seizures was confirmed.

Many less communicative people unwilling to discuss the details of the experience would not have made it as far as I did with the doctors.

Jim

[-Job-]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say, but the simple partials that manifest as fear or panic are notable in that these emotions happen in the absense of any percievable cause. The suffer can find nothing in his mind or environment to justify the inexplicable, extreme emotions.

Here is an example reported in the book Seized:

"On another typical day, at four o'clock, Jill was alone in her office. The day's interviews done, she sat reviewing her notes. Suddenly, she couldn't concentrate. The words she was reading held no meaning for her. She went back over the last few lines in vain. Something far more powerful than her notes was on her mind, 'an awful feeling of absolute panic and fear.' For no apparent reason, she felt certain that 'something really bad' was about to happen. This global, nonspecific terror imobilized her, demanding all the energy and concentration she had. It seemed to come from somewhere deep inside her where she could not reason with herself. Even though the terror was without external basis, she experienced it as though it were utterly justified and true.

This panic, she knew, was a seizure, something like the dread van Gogh occasionally felt. Her doctors had explained to her that epileptic discharge in the part of her brain that controls fear can cause a panic attack. Unfortunately, her knowledge that the feeling is really a seizure does not lessen the intensity of the experience. Each time it happens it feels horrifically real; the seizure presents itself as actual, impending doom. If one of these panic attacks were to last longer than a few hours, she believes, she would have no choice but to kill herself."

-Seized by Eve LaPlante, Pages 55-56
Harper Collins, NY 1993

Most libraries I've checked seem to have this book if you're interested in reading in great detail about Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

I meant that, possibly, if we knew as much about fear as we do about deja vu, we might be saying that fear is caused by a partial seizure.

[zoobyshoe]

I agree. In my case, if I had not been very energetic and precise in describing my experience, the neurologist might not have identified it as partial seizure. The MRI was negative. We decided to try the anti-seizure medication diagnostically. Since the deja vu experiences ceased after treatment with Depakote, a diagnosis of partial seizures was confirmed.
I like to refer people to this study:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=3137487&dopt=Abstract

when the issue of diagnosis of simple partials arises. It is often not possible to get EEG or MRI confirmation of any problem. Depth implanted electrodes would resolve the issue, but this is much too invasive for mere diagnostic purposes. Your doctor took the only proper alternative in light of the fact your symptoms walked, talked, and quacked like a simple-partial: simply try an AED and see if it works.

Many less communicative people unwilling to discuss the details of the experience would not have made it as far as I did with the doctors.
There was a tragic person who used to post on the Epilepsy form who was institutionalized for seven years as a schizophrenic before someone figured out she was having complex-partial seizures. I hate thinking about this.

[bioactive]

Almost forgot the horror story part of my tale.

My neurologist, unable to find any clear physical evidence of brain trauma, and knowing that I had never been in a state of unconciousness, and knowing that the medication was preventing further seizures, nonetheless turned me in to the California drivers licence office.

When I asked him why, he said he didn't think I was a risk at all, but that if I did happen to have an accident, he could be sued for not reporting me. He stated that he was doing it only for his own protection. At least he was honest with me.

I ended up having to do phone interviews with an officer, and then do a drivers test like a high school student getting their first licence. Both I and the officer that tested me thought it was a silly waste of time.

Imagine the costs to the state, not to mention my lost productivity at work while jumping through these hoops.

[bkvitha]

do dejavus occur through dreams!?

[zoobyshoe]

do dejavus occur through dreams!?
This is hard to sort out. During all of my deja vu's (thousands of them) two or three stood out from all the rest because as soon as they started I was certain the reason the situation seemed familiar was because I had dreamed about it at some time in the previous few weeks. In all other respects these experiences were the same as the kind I usually had. The difference was that, for some reason, I suddenly "remembered" I had dreampt it. I put "remembered" in quotes because I suspect this is some kind of illusion, a false memory, created on the spot. The dreams I'm "remembering" probably never happened.

Neurologist Wilder Pennfield got exited when he discovered that stimulating the temporal lobes of epileptics with tiny voltages could elicit vivid memories of their past. He concluded, at first, this meant all of our memories were stored in the brain and could be retrieved. It turned out later that most of these snatches of "memory" couldn't be linked to real events in the person's past. They seemed to be improvised around real events and people but were things that had never actually, specifically happened. In addition this "memory retrieval" by electrical stimulation couldn't be reproduced in non-epileptics.

That's why I suspect these deja vu's that seem to be recollections of dreams are probably false memories, though I haven't had that particular addition to my deja vu's often enough to sort it out as well as the other things, like the illusion of precognition.

[bkvitha]

This is hard to sort out. During all of my deja vu's (thousands of them) two or three stood out from all the rest because as soon as they started I was certain the reason the situation seemed familiar was because I had dreamed about it at some time in the previous few weeks. In all other respects these experiences were the same as the kind I usually had. The diffe: t. I put "remembered" in quotes because I suspect this is some kind of illusion, a false memory, created on the spot. The dreams I'm "remembering" probably never happened.




To tell you the truth, i've experienced so many of them, through "dreams".

I clearly know that i dreamnt it only a few weeks or months before it occured.

Yeah, maybe it is just false memory.
But how is that sometimes i just "seem" to know the answers for somethings i am really unfamiliar about....?
:bugeye:
Could it be intuition!?

[zoobyshoe]

But how is that sometimes i just "seem" to know the answers for somethings i am really unfamiliar about....?
:bugeye:
Could it be intuition!?
It depends. What sorts of unfamiliar things do you seem to have unexplained answers for?

[Altune]

dejavus, I have had them most of my adult life, They manifest as small Mini dreams I have during my initial Lucid state when I just go to sleep.
I have had several times when speaking with friends about it, have the reocurrence and tell them exactly what is going to happen next. This is not to say that I predicted the future, just small tidbits of time are revealed.
I Dont think it can be diagnosed as small seizures in the brain, unless the seizures make situations happen in your future. I think that some people are highly suseptive to slight variations in time and experiance these visions in real time ( so to speak ) In my experiance all my senses are working, ( during the dream state and the dejavu state ) and it makes for a very strange feeling. I would like to harness this phenomina and use it for some good.
anybody have any luck in such?
Al