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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My

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Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and

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Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our talk about deja vu.

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Speaker 1: That's right, if you didn't listen to part one, go

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Speaker 1: back and listen to part one, because this is this

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Speaker 1: is definitely one of those, uh pair of episodes where

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Speaker 1: you need to experience them in order. But we we

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Speaker 1: kicked off by talking about some personal experiences with deja vu,

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Speaker 1: uh and also getting into some of the rich variety

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Speaker 1: that is to be found under the broad categorization of

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Speaker 1: deja vu experiences. In this episode, we're going to kick

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Speaker 1: off by really getting into some of the major theories

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Speaker 1: and explanations for this thing called deja vu. Right, So,

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Speaker 1: last time I cited there's a major paper on the

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Speaker 1: research on deja vu that was published in two thousand

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Speaker 1: three by a researcher named Alan S. Brown, was published

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Speaker 1: in Psychological Bulletin, and we cited it last time, talking

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Speaker 1: about a lot of the common findings about deja vu,

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Speaker 1: including the fact that it appears to be very strongly

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Speaker 1: associated with stress and fatigue. The more tired and stressed

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Speaker 1: out you are, the more likely you are to have

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Speaker 1: a deja vu experience. The studies that show it associated

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Speaker 1: with travel, people who travel are more likely to experience

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Speaker 1: deja vu. Um, the studies that show that that certain

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Speaker 1: drugs can apparently cause lots of deja vu. And then

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Speaker 1: especially the fact that deja vu appears to decrease with age,

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Speaker 1: that as you get older in life, you you on

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Speaker 1: average have fewer deja vu experiences, which I'm still finding

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Speaker 1: interesting and I'm coming back to that one a lot.

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Speaker 1: But yeah, So now we want to dive into, uh,

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Speaker 1: the major theories and explanations, and my main guide on

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Speaker 1: this is Brown's paper from two thousand three where he

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Speaker 1: he reviews most of the existing research. There's been a

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Speaker 1: few develop elements since then, and we'll talk about those

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Speaker 1: later on, but they're they're basically several. They're like four

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Speaker 1: main categories that Brown outlines about what the explanations for

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Speaker 1: deja vu could be. And the categories are going to

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Speaker 1: be the following. So first, you've got some kind of

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Speaker 1: dual processing. Second, you've got neurological dysfunction, Third, you have

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Speaker 1: memory issues, and then fourth you have attentional catch up. Um. Now,

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Speaker 1: one of the first things I think we should mention

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Speaker 1: is that it can be kind of difficult to understand

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Speaker 1: the causes of deja vu because deja vu is inherently

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Speaker 1: a little bit difficult to study. It's not super easy

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Speaker 1: to trigger episodes of deja vu in a laboratory or

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Speaker 1: brain imaging context. There's some techniques we can mention, but

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Speaker 1: you can't just like start up an f M R

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Speaker 1: I and then run it and hope somebody has an

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Speaker 1: experience of deja vu while it's running. Remember, like, deja

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Speaker 1: vu is relatively rare. Most people experience it at some

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Speaker 1: point in their life. But I think you know, an

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Speaker 1: average figure figure is that a lot of people say

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Speaker 1: they have a deja vu experience something like once a year.

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Speaker 1: So you couldn't expect for it to just happen while

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Speaker 1: you're looking for it. Yeah, deja vu is not really

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Speaker 1: the sort of thing you can just have on command.

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Speaker 1: Nobody can say, all right, have some deja vu. And likewise,

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Speaker 1: it's not that I haven't seen I don't think I've

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Speaker 1: seen any evidence or any claims of anybody who could

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Speaker 1: produce a feeling of deja vu. Just by willing it

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Speaker 1: that we will get into some unique cases a little later, right. Uh.

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Speaker 1: That would be an interesting uh skill if one had it. Now.

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Speaker 1: There are some cases where it appears that deja vu

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Speaker 1: can be triggered by certain clinical interventions. We mentioned a

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Speaker 1: couple of cases of it being associated with certain combinations

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Speaker 1: of drugs in the last episode, like a couple of

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Speaker 1: drugs used to treat the flu um. But also by

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Speaker 1: no big surprise here, electrical stimulation of the brain. Uh.

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Speaker 1: In his big review, Brown described abs findings about deja

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Speaker 1: vu and brain stimulation and patients with temporal lobe epilepsy. Again,

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Speaker 1: remember um from last time that deja vu is one

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Speaker 1: of the symptoms that has been described as part of

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Speaker 1: the aura preceding and epileptic seizure in people with temporal

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Speaker 1: lobe epilepsy. But another thing about temporal lobe epilepsy is

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Speaker 1: that in some cases in history, electrical stimulation of the

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Speaker 1: brain has been used in the treatment and diagnosis of

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Speaker 1: temporal lobe epilepsy. UM. And so I want to read

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Speaker 1: a section from Brown here writing about this. Brown writes,

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Speaker 1: quote with surface stimulation of the cortex, and that's electrical

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Speaker 1: stimulation Mullen and Penfield elicited deja vu experiences in ten

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Speaker 1: out of two hundred and seventeen people with temporal lobe epilepsy.

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Speaker 1: Recent procedures involving deep electrode brain implantation have shown that

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Speaker 1: deja vu, similar to one that occurs in the aura,

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Speaker 1: can be elicited with stimulation of the amygdala and hippocampus,

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Speaker 1: Although these experiences were not reported in detail. The deja

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Speaker 1: vu generally consisted of a sudden feeling of unfamiliarity in

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Speaker 1: the hospital environment and was often accompanied by epigastric phenomena

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Speaker 1: and fear and uh. Epigastric phenomena refers to strange feelings

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Speaker 1: in the abdomen, especially I think the upper part of

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Speaker 1: the abdomen. I've read it described as um getting a

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Speaker 1: feeling sort of above the stomach and right below the chest,

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Speaker 1: like this weird feeling, kind of like when you're on

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Speaker 1: a roller coaster and you're you're plummeting down on the

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Speaker 1: other side, you know that rising in the gut. Yeah, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I believe we discussed that a little bit in the

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Speaker 1: last episode. Brown writes quote. The elicitation of deja vou

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Speaker 1: through electrical stimulation may not be reliable hal grin at all.

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Speaker 1: In nineteen seventy eight, stimulated several dozen brain locations in

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Speaker 1: a group of people with temporal lobe epilepsy on two

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Speaker 1: different occasions, two weeks apart, and found that a number

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Speaker 1: of sites that elicited a deja vu on one session

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Speaker 1: did not do so on the other. Deja vu experiences

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Speaker 1: also resulted from stimulating the non diseased hemisphere, suggesting that

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Speaker 1: the experience is not necessarily specific to the tissue where

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Speaker 1: the seizure originates. So that's interesting. You've got deja vu

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Speaker 1: associated in some cases with people with temporal lobe epilepsy,

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Speaker 1: but that it appears like if you you stimulate one

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Speaker 1: part of the brain one week and it gives you

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Speaker 1: deja vu, but a different part of the brain the

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Speaker 1: next week that might give you deja vu, and maybe

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Speaker 1: the original place that gave you deja vu last week

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Speaker 1: doesn't give it to you anymore. So, uh yeah, there's

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Speaker 1: some kind of discontinuity here about how exactly stimulating different

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Speaker 1: parts of the brain contribute to the deja vu experience subjectively.

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Speaker 1: But there have been some other interesting things that I

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Speaker 1: know we'll get too later in the episode of trying

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Speaker 1: to trigger deja vu and otherwise neurologically typical people, for example,

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Speaker 1: using using certain types of virtual reality stimulation. That, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I think we're we'll get to that maybe in the

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Speaker 1: third part of today's episode, But I guess we got

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Speaker 1: to get directly to these four main theories explaining what

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Speaker 1: could be going on in the brain when you're having

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Speaker 1: deja vu. Um, assuming it's not like a supernatural phenomenon,

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Speaker 1: which we don't think it is, that there's a good

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Speaker 1: amount of evidence that it is a function of the brain.

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Speaker 1: So the ghost hypothesis is really not not not highly

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Speaker 1: valued scientific circles here. Yeah, so we won't be picking

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Speaker 1: up on that one today. But so again, these are

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Speaker 1: the four main branches that brown outlines are dual processing,

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Speaker 1: neurological dysfunction, memory error, and attentional catch up. And I'll

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Speaker 1: go ahead and say that I think the main two

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Speaker 1: branches that have explanatory power going for them today, at

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Speaker 1: least as far as I can tell, are the last

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Speaker 1: two I mentioned, like the memory ones and the attentional ones.

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Speaker 1: But since the other two have been very important in

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Speaker 1: the history of studying deja view, we should at least

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Speaker 1: talk about them for a bit. Um. So the first

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Speaker 1: one is this idea of dual processing. There are these

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Speaker 1: multiple hypotheses that fall into this category, but they all

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Speaker 1: basically amount to the same thing. They say, you know,

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Speaker 1: there are two different processes in the brain that usually

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Speaker 1: occur simultaneously. They happen at the same time, but occasionally

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Speaker 1: they become a synchronous, they get detached in time and

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Speaker 1: suddenly there's a lag between them. And these types of

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Speaker 1: explanations tend to be the oldest and least scientifically justified,

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Speaker 1: but they are kind of interesting to think about. So,

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Speaker 1: for example, one that Brown sites is the idea of

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Speaker 1: this old theory of dual consciousness. Uh. The idea is

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Speaker 1: that there there are two separate types of consciousness in

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Speaker 1: the brain. There's one normal type of consciousness, and what

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Speaker 1: that does is monitor everything that happens in the outside world. It's,

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Speaker 1: you know, your regular brain that's looking out through your

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Speaker 1: eyes and sees what's going on. And then the other

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Speaker 1: version is the parasitic consciousness, which we might refer to

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Speaker 1: as metacognition. It monitors the internal state of the brain itself.

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Speaker 1: And under this old hypothesis, deja VU is created when

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Speaker 1: normal consciousness is impaired by something like fatigue or stress,

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Speaker 1: and it's left up to the parasitic consciousness to evaluate

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Speaker 1: incoming information. And because the parasitic consciousness is not well

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Speaker 1: adapted to evaluating incoming information, it gets confused, and it

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Speaker 1: confuses what it's looking at now for a memory of

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Speaker 1: the past. Uh. While I like this idea, this one

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Speaker 1: appears to be entirely speculative. It's mostly based on like

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Speaker 1: nineteenth century conceptions of the mind and brain. So I

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Speaker 1: don't think this one is very likely a good explanation today.

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Speaker 1: Now another one, uh in this branch is would be

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Speaker 1: like encoding and retrieval. Brown says, this was proposed by

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Speaker 1: Denayer in nineteen seventy nine, and basically it takes the

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Speaker 1: form of a metaphor of the brain is a combination

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Speaker 1: tape recorder and player. Uh did you did you have

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Speaker 1: one of those when you're a kid? Robert? Oh? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: of course, but yeah, okay, So the metaphor here by

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Speaker 1: Dena Air is that your brain has a combination tape

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Speaker 1: recorder and player. And and Brown explains this well, so

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Speaker 1: I'm going to quote from him quote under normal conditions

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Speaker 1: memory encoding and retrieval operate in a manner similar to

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Speaker 1: the record and play heads respectively. On a tape recorder.

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Speaker 1: Either the record in code or the play retrieve head

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Speaker 1: can be on, but not both at once. On rare occasions,

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Speaker 1: the tape machine and a person's memory has both record

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Speaker 1: and play heads active simultaneously during a new experience, creating

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Speaker 1: a false sense of familiarity for the newly encoded experience.

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Speaker 1: So basically, the idea is that you are experiencing the

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Speaker 1: memory as it is happening, um, which sounds paradoxical, but

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Speaker 1: but the idea of encoding and retrieving happening at the

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Speaker 1: same time. Yeah, and so this never Brown says, this

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Speaker 1: hypothesis never really got developed beyond just this metaphorical stage.

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Speaker 1: Like he never you know, got into the nitty gritty

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Speaker 1: of like what parts of the brain this would exactly

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Speaker 1: be involving and how it would work. Um. But I

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Speaker 1: would say, while it is still at this metaphorical stage,

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Speaker 1: this is kind of close to some later, later explanations

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Speaker 1: that are backed up by more empirical research. I think

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Speaker 1: it's not quite on the money, but it's it's getting

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Speaker 1: part of the way there, especially I think, especially with

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Speaker 1: with some of the ones that we'll talk about with

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Speaker 1: with attention later on. Yeah, and also like how it

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Speaker 1: kind of helps to further breakdown the nature of of

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Speaker 1: something that is novel and something that is familiar and

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Speaker 1: how it basically works, you know, in our experience of

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Speaker 1: cognitive data. Yeah. Well, and it makes me think about how, um,

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Speaker 1: in a way, there's almost no real objective thing that

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Speaker 1: is novelty. You know that, Like every time you're looking

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Speaker 1: at anything in the world, in a way, it's sort

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Speaker 1: of novel because like your heads in a different position,

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Speaker 1: and you'll even if you're looking at something you've looked

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Speaker 1: at a thousand times before, the lights kind of different,

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Speaker 1: you're looking at it from a slightly different angle. The

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Speaker 1: brain just does a does a very good job taking

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Speaker 1: things that are you know, different data sets coming in

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Speaker 1: through the eyes or the ears or whatever it is,

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Speaker 1: and saying like, Okay, you know what that is. That's

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Speaker 1: the same coffee cup you've looked at a thousand times,

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Speaker 1: even though it's not a photo exact copy of how

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Speaker 1: it looked the last time you looked at it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean, as since data goes the details of the

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Speaker 1: coffee cup are not that important, And the brain does

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Speaker 1: a pretty good job in in UM working with the

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Speaker 1: senses of letting that kind of fade into the background.

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Speaker 1: But then you know, any day you're able to pick

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Speaker 1: up that coffee cup and really focus on it and

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Speaker 1: kind of see it for the first time. And that's

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Speaker 1: one of the the crazy things about the the close

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Speaker 1: relationship between the novel and the familiar. Yeah, and that

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Speaker 1: emphasizes that like the novel and familiar, they're not objective

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Speaker 1: features of the world. They're like subjective simulation sans yeah.

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Speaker 1: This is this is almost an example of this, but

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Speaker 1: not quite. Um. I I don't I've had an Xbox

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Speaker 1: one controller for so long and I just discovered you

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Speaker 1: can plug headphones into the controller itself to get sound. Totally.

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Speaker 1: It's changed my life here in um. You know, self isolation. Oh,

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Speaker 1: now late in the night, your house is not filled

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Speaker 1: with tiny screams that right, right? Yeah, I want to Yeah,

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Speaker 1: if I want to play Doom Eternal at a at

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Speaker 1: a weird hour, I can. I can be the only

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Speaker 1: one to hear it. Likewise, my son is trying out

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Speaker 1: Minecraft for the first time, and we can plug him

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Speaker 1: into the the controller and then if he jerks the

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Speaker 1: controller around, he's not pulling things off of the you know,

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Speaker 1: the TV tray or something. So uh so yeah, but

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Speaker 1: but you know, there's an example. I don't know how

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Speaker 1: many times I've looked at this device, but I've never

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Speaker 1: seen this detail. And uh uh. You know a lot

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Speaker 1: of things in life are like that. You know, when

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Speaker 1: you really really stop to look at at it, you

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Speaker 1: can you can uncover the novel wrinkles and the thing.

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Speaker 1: I might want to come back to this example later

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Speaker 1: in the episode. Uh and maybe when we talk about

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Speaker 1: the memory and intentional branches. Okay, two more examples of

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Speaker 1: dual processing hypotheses. So another one Brown sites is. The

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Speaker 1: idea of perception and memory seems kind of similar to

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Speaker 1: the last one. It was proposed by a researcher named Bergson. Basically,

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Speaker 1: it supposes that perception and memory formation happened at the

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Speaker 1: same time. Like, you know, I I look at Gritty,

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Speaker 1: the Philadelphia Flyers mascot for the first time, my brain

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Speaker 1: sees him creates the memory of having seen him simultaneously.

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Speaker 1: Bergson suggests that sometimes stress or fatigue can cause the

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Speaker 1: newly formed memory to bump into perception, so that I

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Speaker 1: get the feeling that I have seen Gritty before. Again,

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Speaker 1: this one is kind of fuzzy and speculative as far

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Speaker 1: as hypotheses go. Well, you know, we all feel that

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Speaker 1: we've seen Gritty before because Gritty was with us in

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Speaker 1: the womb. Gritty is primordial. Yeah, Gritty was there before

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Speaker 1: we were born. You know that's going to happen one day,

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Speaker 1: like they they a big block of shale shares away

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Speaker 1: from a Cambrian formation and then just just the outline

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Speaker 1: of Gritty there among the trial bites. He was waiting

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Speaker 1: the whole time. Okay, But then the fourth one of

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Speaker 1: these dual processing hypotheses potheses. Sorry, this is the only

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Speaker 1: one of the four that really seemed all that plausible

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Speaker 1: to me. So this one is called familiarity and retrieval.

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Speaker 1: And this was proposed by a researcher named Glure in

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Speaker 1: nineteen nine. And Glore suggested that when we encounter an

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Speaker 1: image or an object or scenario or whatever it is

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Speaker 1: that we've seen before, there are two separate things that happen.

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Speaker 1: One is the retrieval of the past memories about that thing.

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Speaker 1: So I see Gritty, I have seen him before, and

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Speaker 1: I remember the other times I saw Gritty and had

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Speaker 1: thoughts about him. But the other thing is the emotion

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Speaker 1: of familiarity that accompanies the recall. So I see Gritty,

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Speaker 1: I have memories, but also I have a feeling. It's

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Speaker 1: this emotional feeling that, oh, I know who that is.

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Speaker 1: Uh that you know that is Gritty. I feel familiar

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Speaker 1: with what's going on right now. And from what I

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Speaker 1: can tell, there's not really any direct evidence for this hypothesis,

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Speaker 1: but this one does seem kind of plausible to me

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Speaker 1: because we've talked about other cases of mismatch between recognition

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Speaker 1: and familiarity. For example, in talking about cap Graw delusion,

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Speaker 1: I think we mentioned in Part one, which is this

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Speaker 1: delusion often caused by brain injury, in which a person

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Speaker 1: believes that their loved ones have been replaced by lookalikes

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Speaker 1: or doppelgangers. And it's believed that cap Graw delusion stems

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Speaker 1: from a malfunction in the brain where recognition is triggered.

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Speaker 1: So you see a person and you know who you're

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Speaker 1: looking at, like, yes, you know that that is Jeff,

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Speaker 1: but the normally accompanying feeling of familiarity is not there.

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Speaker 1: It doesn't get triggered. So you see somebody recognize as Jeff,

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Speaker 1: but he does not feel familiar. It doesn't feel like

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Speaker 1: your old friend, so you say, oh, he's and replaced

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Speaker 1: by a look alike. What's normally a case of dual

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Speaker 1: processing here has been severed. So if a dual processing

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Speaker 1: failure like this we're actually an explanation for deja vu,

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Speaker 1: I think it would have to go the opposite way, right,

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Speaker 1: It would have to go the opposite of cap Graw delusion,

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Speaker 1: where a feeling of familiarity is triggered while actual retrieval

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Speaker 1: of associated memories is not. And along these lines of

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Speaker 1: cap Graw delusion would would actually be more analogous to

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Speaker 1: the inverse of deja vu that we mentioned last time,

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Speaker 1: jama vu, in which a familiar object suddenly feels unfamiliar.

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Speaker 1: But again, from what I can tell, this kind of explanation,

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Speaker 1: I think it's perfectly possible, but I can't find direct

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Speaker 1: experimental evidence for it, so I think it might just

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Speaker 1: remain right now in the realm of like, yeah, maybe

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Speaker 1: something like this could explain some cases of deja vu,

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Speaker 1: but we we don't have strong evidence that these explanations

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Speaker 1: are the right ones yet. Alright, Well, on that note,

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Speaker 1: let's take a quick break, but when we come back,

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Speaker 1: we will continue to explore some of the explanations for

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Speaker 1: what may be going on with deja vus. Thank thank alright,

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Speaker 1: we're back, all right. So we just talked about the

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Speaker 1: first branch of possible explanations for deja vu. Uh, probably

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Speaker 1: the oldest branch of explanations, which was the idea of

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Speaker 1: dual processing that when you experienced deja vu, it's because

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Speaker 1: two different things that normally happened in the at the

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Speaker 1: same time in the brain get severed and one happens

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Speaker 1: after the other one, or they get you know, one

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Speaker 1: happens without the other one, and this causes this this

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Speaker 1: disconnect um. The next branch of explanations that Alan S.

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Speaker 1: Brown offers in his two thousand three paper are neurological explanations. Now,

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Speaker 1: the first one is seizures. We know that deja vu

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Speaker 1: is a you're not not super common, but a recognized

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Speaker 1: experience in the aura of people who have temporal lobe epilepsy.

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Speaker 1: So what if normal deja vu do you that happens

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Speaker 1: in you know, sixty percent of people at some point

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Speaker 1: it's actually just a kind of mild seizure. A lot

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Speaker 1: of people have proposed this over the years, but Brown

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Speaker 1: says that the evidence for this does not appear to

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Speaker 1: be very good. Though deja vu is a feature of

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Speaker 1: seizures for people with t l E, people with epilepsy

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Speaker 1: in general are not more prone to every day deja

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Speaker 1: vu than people without epilepsy, and people who experience more

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Speaker 1: episodes of deja vu than average are not any more

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Speaker 1: prone to seizures than anybody else. So again, we can't

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Speaker 1: actually look at deja vu as it's happening and compare

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Speaker 1: it to say, what's happening in the brain during a seizure,

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Speaker 1: but we can look at frequency, uh, between these two

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Speaker 1: sets of of individuals. Yeah, and so it just doesn't

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Speaker 1: look like seizures are going to be a good explanation

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Speaker 1: for deja vu. Generally, it looks more like there might

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Speaker 1: you know, deja vu just happens to be one of

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Speaker 1: the things that sometimes happens in the brain of somebody

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Speaker 1: about to have a seizure, but it's not overall a

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Speaker 1: generalized seizure phenomenon um. Now, the other major near a

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Speaker 1: logical explanation that Brown sites is neural transmission delay, and

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Speaker 1: this refers to a set of explanations where information traveling

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Speaker 1: from the perceptual organs such as the eye. Uh, it's

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Speaker 1: traveling to different parts of the brain, and it gets

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Speaker 1: delayed along one of those pathways by neuronal misfiring or

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Speaker 1: some of their malfunction. And one example that's given is

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Speaker 1: the two different hemispheres of the brain usually receive information

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Speaker 1: at the same time. But what if one hemisphere realizes

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Speaker 1: that you're looking at gritty slightly after the other one does,

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Speaker 1: And under this hypothesis, the delay causes a freshly perceived

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Speaker 1: stimulus to be interpreted as old information because one part

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Speaker 1: of the brain has already experienced it by by the

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Speaker 1: time it gets to the other part. Well, this seems

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Speaker 1: like a good place to move on to some of

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Speaker 1: the additional explanations, because we're talking about old information. What

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Speaker 1: he's old information but a memory. Yeah, exactly. So now

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Speaker 1: we're getting into those were the two older branches. Now

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Speaker 1: we're getting into the branches that I think are more

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Speaker 1: were favored among researchers today, the memory based explanations, especially

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Speaker 1: implicit memories and attentional explanations. Uh. Now, Robert, if we

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Speaker 1: if we go to memory based I think you're going

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Speaker 1: to get into this branch of explanations a little bit

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Speaker 1: more when you talk about the research by and M

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Speaker 1: cleary and Alexander B. Claxton. Later on, I saw you

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Speaker 1: had something about that, So maybe we can talk more

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Speaker 1: in depth about the memory based explanations then, but just

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Speaker 1: do a short version now. The gist here is that

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Speaker 1: desha vou is perhaps uh maybe it has something to

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Speaker 1: do with the way that memories are encoded and retrieved.

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Speaker 1: So imagine you're in one of these deja vu scenarios.

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Speaker 1: Maybe you're you're going down a staircase into a basement

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Speaker 1: in a house, and you suddenly get this flash like, oh,

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Speaker 1: I've been here before, but you haven't been here before.

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Speaker 1: What if when you're experiencing deja vu on that staircase,

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Speaker 1: you are remembering something you've seen before. It's just not

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Speaker 1: this house. It's not the same thing you're looking at now.

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Speaker 1: You're feeling familiarity because of some vague features of similarity

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Speaker 1: that overlap with your current experience and some other memory

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Speaker 1: that you are not directly accessing in full. Maybe when

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Speaker 1: I experienced the deja vu of like running into a

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Speaker 1: tree branch while playing in the yard. The feeling of

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Speaker 1: familiarity with the scene comes from the fact that there

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Speaker 1: was some other time I was playing in maybe a

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Speaker 1: similar looking place or a place with similar spatial arrangements

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Speaker 1: of objects, and my friends were standing around me in

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Speaker 1: a similar kind of orientation, and maybe I was injured

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Speaker 1: or or fell down in some other way. Except I

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Speaker 1: don't explicitly recall that whole episode. I don't remember where

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Speaker 1: it was, or who was there or what happened. I

404
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Speaker 1: just recall enough to recognize some basic congruities. And this

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Speaker 1: leads to that strange feeling of familiarity with no obvious

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Speaker 1: point of reference. So almost as if the the emotional

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Speaker 1: pattern of something that occurred stuck with you, but details

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Speaker 1: of it did not, um and and that's what gets recalled, right,

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Speaker 1: or details might have stuck with me in a way

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Speaker 1: that doesn't allow me to access the full scene as

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Speaker 1: a memory, right. So, like, I think a common thing

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Speaker 1: that's brought up in this kind of memory research is

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Speaker 1: like like spatial arrangements of things. You know, like if

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Speaker 1: you feel deja vous in a room, maybe you're not

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Speaker 1: in that room before, but we're in a room where

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Speaker 1: like the furniture was arranged in a very similar way,

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Speaker 1: and you don't explicitly recall that old memory, but something

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Speaker 1: gets triggered in like the navigation parts of your brain,

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Speaker 1: like what what's going on? I know this place? Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I mean it. We had to have to remind ourselves

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Speaker 1: that as far as novelty goes in life, oh, there's

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Speaker 1: only so much novelty that is really possible to a

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Speaker 1: certain extent, you know what I mean. Even if you

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Speaker 1: live a you know, a wild and varied life full

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Speaker 1: of of of travel and exploring new things, you're going

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Speaker 1: to encounter lots of situations that fit into more or

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Speaker 1: less the same uh pattern. You know, you're going to

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Speaker 1: go to a bathroom that looks a lot like other bathrooms.

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Speaker 1: You're going to do things more or less the same

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Speaker 1: way that you've done it before. I mean, we're we're

431
00:24:11,960 --> 00:24:14,359
Speaker 1: creatures of habit, we are creatures of pattern, and for

432
00:24:14,400 --> 00:24:18,280
Speaker 1: many things in life, they're they're only so many approaches

433
00:24:18,320 --> 00:24:22,000
Speaker 1: to how we might react to something or carry something out.

434
00:24:23,200 --> 00:24:27,040
Speaker 1: Uh yeah, yeah. No, novelty is total illusion, eternal recurrence.

435
00:24:27,119 --> 00:24:29,280
Speaker 1: You we've all been through this before. In fact, I

436
00:24:29,320 --> 00:24:34,040
Speaker 1: think you've said that before. No, I haven't. I don't

437
00:24:34,040 --> 00:24:36,680
Speaker 1: really mean that, um, you know. And so I was

438
00:24:36,720 --> 00:24:38,719
Speaker 1: thinking about this. I was thinking about, Wow, this might

439
00:24:38,760 --> 00:24:40,760
Speaker 1: sound like a weird way for the brain to work,

440
00:24:41,119 --> 00:24:43,639
Speaker 1: that you could have this feeling of familiarity about a

441
00:24:43,640 --> 00:24:47,119
Speaker 1: memory that you cannot explicitly recall. But I think there

442
00:24:47,160 --> 00:24:49,760
Speaker 1: are there are analogies to this and things that we've

443
00:24:49,800 --> 00:24:53,399
Speaker 1: discussed before. I was brought back to the idea of

444
00:24:53,440 --> 00:24:55,840
Speaker 1: tip of the tongue phenomenon. We did a whole episode

445
00:24:55,880 --> 00:24:58,919
Speaker 1: of stuff to blow your mind about this. Um you know,

446
00:24:59,000 --> 00:25:01,680
Speaker 1: this is where Hey, what's the name of the actor

447
00:25:01,680 --> 00:25:10,760
Speaker 1: who played riff Raff in Rocky Horror Picture Show. Well,

448
00:25:10,840 --> 00:25:14,320
Speaker 1: the correct answer is Richard O'Brien. But there were some

449
00:25:14,359 --> 00:25:17,919
Speaker 1: people listening right there who were like, oh, oh, I

450
00:25:18,000 --> 00:25:20,199
Speaker 1: know that, I know that, but you couldn't quite come

451
00:25:20,280 --> 00:25:22,800
Speaker 1: up with it, right. Why is it that you can

452
00:25:23,040 --> 00:25:26,320
Speaker 1: feel like you know a word or feel like you

453
00:25:26,359 --> 00:25:29,359
Speaker 1: know a name even though you can't conjure the word

454
00:25:29,440 --> 00:25:32,360
Speaker 1: or the name up right now. Perhaps a similar thing

455
00:25:32,640 --> 00:25:36,040
Speaker 1: happens with images or situations, kind of like a tip

456
00:25:36,040 --> 00:25:38,760
Speaker 1: of the tongue effect for things other than words, for

457
00:25:38,880 --> 00:25:41,800
Speaker 1: situations or for you know, images, you look at with

458
00:25:41,840 --> 00:25:45,119
Speaker 1: your eyes. You feel like you recognize this scene, but

459
00:25:45,200 --> 00:25:48,120
Speaker 1: you can't actually call up the memory that is causing

460
00:25:48,160 --> 00:25:51,520
Speaker 1: that feeling of familiarity, so I think, and there is

461
00:25:51,560 --> 00:25:56,440
Speaker 1: actually some research to back up certain memory based explanations

462
00:25:56,560 --> 00:25:59,840
Speaker 1: for for some day javou experiences. So at least as

463
00:25:59,840 --> 00:26:01,639
Speaker 1: far as I can tell, I think the memory based

464
00:26:01,640 --> 00:26:04,960
Speaker 1: explanations might not explain all deja vu, but are a

465
00:26:04,960 --> 00:26:08,560
Speaker 1: pretty strong candidate for explaining some cases of it. All right, well,

466
00:26:08,640 --> 00:26:12,120
Speaker 1: let's move on to attentional explanations, which which I think

467
00:26:12,160 --> 00:26:15,399
Speaker 1: is an exciting area because I think a lot of

468
00:26:15,440 --> 00:26:18,520
Speaker 1: the mysteries of human consciousness make more sense to me

469
00:26:19,000 --> 00:26:21,439
Speaker 1: when I had when I hear them explained in terms

470
00:26:21,480 --> 00:26:24,200
Speaker 1: of attention. Yeah, me too, And I think this branch

471
00:26:24,200 --> 00:26:26,119
Speaker 1: has a lot going for it. This is the fourth

472
00:26:26,160 --> 00:26:29,119
Speaker 1: of four, uh, and so these explanations are some of

473
00:26:29,119 --> 00:26:31,760
Speaker 1: the most simple, actually, but they make a lot of

474
00:26:31,760 --> 00:26:34,240
Speaker 1: sense to explain some cases of deja vu, and there

475
00:26:34,320 --> 00:26:37,199
Speaker 1: is actually some experimental evidence in support of them. So

476
00:26:37,240 --> 00:26:41,119
Speaker 1: imagine you're driving a car, right, and maybe while you

477
00:26:41,160 --> 00:26:45,399
Speaker 1: are driving, you're having a tense emotional conversation with the

478
00:26:45,400 --> 00:26:48,240
Speaker 1: passenger of the car. Maybe it's you know your spouse

479
00:26:48,359 --> 00:26:51,040
Speaker 1: or partner, or you know your your child or parent

480
00:26:51,200 --> 00:26:53,960
Speaker 1: or relative. You're having an argument or something, so your

481
00:26:53,960 --> 00:26:57,560
Speaker 1: attention is kind of divided, maybe like you're not paying

482
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:00,399
Speaker 1: as full attention to the road and of you as

483
00:27:00,440 --> 00:27:03,919
Speaker 1: you should be. Then suddenly you see a man in

484
00:27:03,960 --> 00:27:06,719
Speaker 1: a cowboy hat pushing a grocery cart full of Monster

485
00:27:06,840 --> 00:27:11,360
Speaker 1: Energy drinks down the sidewalk, and you think, whoa deja vu?

486
00:27:12,200 --> 00:27:14,320
Speaker 1: Why do I feel like I've seen this guy before?

487
00:27:14,880 --> 00:27:18,360
Speaker 1: Under the attentional model, the answer could be that you

488
00:27:18,440 --> 00:27:21,760
Speaker 1: did see him before a couple of seconds ago, but

489
00:27:21,920 --> 00:27:25,960
Speaker 1: your attention was divided, and because you had your attention

490
00:27:26,040 --> 00:27:29,560
Speaker 1: wrapped up in this intense conversation and you weren't paying

491
00:27:29,600 --> 00:27:31,840
Speaker 1: as much attention as you should have been to the road,

492
00:27:32,320 --> 00:27:36,000
Speaker 1: you didn't consciously register seeing this guy a couple of

493
00:27:36,040 --> 00:27:39,800
Speaker 1: seconds before, but you did see him with some diminished

494
00:27:39,840 --> 00:27:42,960
Speaker 1: portion of your attention, And when you finally focus full

495
00:27:43,000 --> 00:27:46,159
Speaker 1: attention on him, he feels familiar, even though you're just

496
00:27:46,240 --> 00:27:49,280
Speaker 1: now consciously registering him. You know in a in a way,

497
00:27:49,359 --> 00:27:52,680
Speaker 1: this reminds me of a like a non dejavou experience

498
00:27:52,720 --> 00:27:55,520
Speaker 1: that I have sometimes where I'll I'll run across a

499
00:27:55,600 --> 00:28:00,720
Speaker 1: study or a paper that I maybe just glanced at

500
00:28:00,800 --> 00:28:03,199
Speaker 1: in the past, or maybe I only read the headline.

501
00:28:03,840 --> 00:28:06,000
Speaker 1: But now I've come back around to it, and I'm

502
00:28:06,000 --> 00:28:08,639
Speaker 1: reading it, you know, more closely, you know, and I'm

503
00:28:08,640 --> 00:28:11,360
Speaker 1: actually taking it in. And then I realized, Oh, I think,

504
00:28:11,600 --> 00:28:14,480
Speaker 1: I think I do vaguely remember this study from when

505
00:28:14,480 --> 00:28:16,920
Speaker 1: it originally popped up. Yeah, I mean, I mean in

506
00:28:16,920 --> 00:28:19,359
Speaker 1: that case, there's more of a time gap, right, So

507
00:28:19,400 --> 00:28:22,199
Speaker 1: your memory, I think, would be more accurate. Actually, And

508
00:28:22,240 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 1: I know exactly what you're talking about. I have that

509
00:28:24,119 --> 00:28:29,560
Speaker 1: feeling too, where like I I sort of graze over something, um,

510
00:28:29,640 --> 00:28:31,919
Speaker 1: you know, text content, and then I come back to

511
00:28:31,960 --> 00:28:34,600
Speaker 1: it later and it feels vaguely familiar, like out of

512
00:28:34,600 --> 00:28:36,919
Speaker 1: a dream, because I didn't read it really closely the

513
00:28:36,920 --> 00:28:39,200
Speaker 1: first time. But this time, instead of it being like

514
00:28:39,240 --> 00:28:41,600
Speaker 1: a gap of five years, it's a gap of say

515
00:28:41,760 --> 00:28:46,360
Speaker 1: like five seconds exactly. In Brown's words quote, a brief

516
00:28:46,400 --> 00:28:50,520
Speaker 1: initial perception of a scene under diminished attention is followed

517
00:28:50,560 --> 00:28:54,560
Speaker 1: immediately by a second perception under full attention. The second

518
00:28:54,600 --> 00:28:59,760
Speaker 1: impression matches that experienced moments earlier under degraded attention, and

519
00:28:59,800 --> 00:29:03,760
Speaker 1: the individual does not consciously identify the prior experience as

520
00:29:03,880 --> 00:29:08,480
Speaker 1: moments old, but rather attributes it to a more distant past. Uh.

521
00:29:08,520 --> 00:29:10,640
Speaker 1: And I think that there's a lot of potential in

522
00:29:10,640 --> 00:29:13,239
Speaker 1: this explanation. This could be what's going on in some

523
00:29:13,280 --> 00:29:17,080
Speaker 1: of these cases. Yeah, I feel like this one feels

524
00:29:17,120 --> 00:29:20,560
Speaker 1: like it fits really well with a lot of deja

525
00:29:20,640 --> 00:29:23,520
Speaker 1: vu experiences that that I can relate to. I'm not

526
00:29:23,640 --> 00:29:27,640
Speaker 1: sure that it fits as easily or or I think it.

527
00:29:27,640 --> 00:29:29,800
Speaker 1: It may still fit, but perhaps a little more sort

528
00:29:29,840 --> 00:29:33,480
Speaker 1: of cognitive work to figure out how it fits with

529
00:29:33,560 --> 00:29:36,520
Speaker 1: some of the other examples of the deja vu experience

530
00:29:36,600 --> 00:29:39,480
Speaker 1: that we've either discussed or will discuss. Yeah, I think

531
00:29:39,480 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: you're right, And I would be strongly inclined to suspect

532
00:29:42,560 --> 00:29:46,040
Speaker 1: that there are different explanations for different cases of deja vu,

533
00:29:46,120 --> 00:29:49,240
Speaker 1: that there's not just like one trigger that creates all

534
00:29:49,440 --> 00:29:53,080
Speaker 1: deja vu experiences, that it's, you know, just different kind

535
00:29:53,120 --> 00:29:55,400
Speaker 1: of things going on. My gut feeling here is that

536
00:29:55,520 --> 00:29:58,920
Speaker 1: probably some cases are best explained by h by the

537
00:29:58,960 --> 00:30:01,760
Speaker 1: implicit memory thing that we were talking about a minute ago,

538
00:30:01,800 --> 00:30:05,160
Speaker 1: and then other ones are better explained by the attentional

539
00:30:05,240 --> 00:30:07,840
Speaker 1: divide thing and then of course there are a few

540
00:30:07,880 --> 00:30:10,719
Speaker 1: that are probably just direct neurological issues, like you know,

541
00:30:10,760 --> 00:30:14,120
Speaker 1: when the brain is being stimulated or when there's a seizure. Now,

542
00:30:14,240 --> 00:30:17,480
Speaker 1: I'd like to come back to the link between anxiety

543
00:30:17,640 --> 00:30:20,640
Speaker 1: and deja vu, because I found a very interesting study

544
00:30:20,680 --> 00:30:24,360
Speaker 1: on this. Um. Apparently there is somewhat limited literature on

545
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:27,960
Speaker 1: the connection between anxiety and deja vu. But one one

546
00:30:28,000 --> 00:30:32,040
Speaker 1: paper on the topic I came across was titled Persistent

547
00:30:32,320 --> 00:30:36,880
Speaker 1: Psychogenic Deja Vu a Case Report, And this was by Wells, H.

548
00:30:36,960 --> 00:30:39,600
Speaker 1: Moulin and Eth Ridge, and it was published in the

549
00:30:39,680 --> 00:30:42,800
Speaker 1: Journal of Medical Cases Case Reports. Uh, and this was

550
00:30:42,840 --> 00:30:47,360
Speaker 1: from So the researchers present the case of a twenty

551
00:30:47,400 --> 00:30:50,720
Speaker 1: three year old British man with a form of persistent

552
00:30:50,880 --> 00:30:55,240
Speaker 1: deja vu and this is observed in two he was

553
00:30:55,400 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 1: three years into his symptoms at that point. So, UM,

554
00:30:59,560 --> 00:31:02,480
Speaker 1: and if you're you're wondering, well, what is persistent deja vus,

555
00:31:02,480 --> 00:31:04,720
Speaker 1: it's basically what it sounds like. But I think more

556
00:31:04,760 --> 00:31:06,719
Speaker 1: of this will come come across as I as I

557
00:31:06,920 --> 00:31:09,800
Speaker 1: roll through his briefly through his case history. So the

558
00:31:09,800 --> 00:31:14,520
Speaker 1: subject here had a history of anxiety and de personalization

559
00:31:15,040 --> 00:31:19,760
Speaker 1: depersonalization UH if anyone doesn't remember as a state in

560
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,320
Speaker 1: which one's thoughts and feelings seem unreal or not to

561
00:31:23,400 --> 00:31:26,040
Speaker 1: belong to one's self, and it may also entail a

562
00:31:26,120 --> 00:31:28,520
Speaker 1: loss of all sense of identity. He also had a

563
00:31:28,560 --> 00:31:32,320
Speaker 1: family history of obsessive compulsive disorder, so they when they

564
00:31:32,360 --> 00:31:35,280
Speaker 1: when doctors looked at him, they didn't detect any neurological

565
00:31:35,440 --> 00:31:39,040
Speaker 1: abnormalities and they assessed his recognition memory with tasks that

566
00:31:39,080 --> 00:31:41,960
Speaker 1: were frequently used with dementia patients, and they found no

567
00:31:42,120 --> 00:31:46,960
Speaker 1: memory defects. They found that he consistently understood the false

568
00:31:47,080 --> 00:31:49,840
Speaker 1: nature of the deja vus he was experiencing as well,

569
00:31:50,000 --> 00:31:53,280
Speaker 1: coming back to a key aspect of deja vu that

570
00:31:53,360 --> 00:31:56,920
Speaker 1: we were discussed in the first episode. So his reality

571
00:31:57,000 --> 00:32:00,640
Speaker 1: testing was basically intact as far as the hotel when

572
00:32:01,800 --> 00:32:04,880
Speaker 1: he didn't actually think that he was really having memories

573
00:32:04,880 --> 00:32:09,040
Speaker 1: of the present. Right. So, the patient's history of anxiety

574
00:32:09,480 --> 00:32:13,200
Speaker 1: was tied with fears of contamination, which led to excessive

575
00:32:13,280 --> 00:32:16,320
Speaker 1: hand washing and showers two to three times a day,

576
00:32:16,720 --> 00:32:19,920
Speaker 1: and then college anxiety made things worse, so he took

577
00:32:19,920 --> 00:32:22,480
Speaker 1: a break from it and he began to experience episodes

578
00:32:22,640 --> 00:32:25,000
Speaker 1: of anxiety in deja vu that would last for minutes

579
00:32:25,080 --> 00:32:28,000
Speaker 1: or even longer. They point out that he went on

580
00:32:28,080 --> 00:32:30,840
Speaker 1: holiday at one point during this period to a city

581
00:32:30,840 --> 00:32:33,000
Speaker 1: that he had visited before, so he did have prior,

582
00:32:33,080 --> 00:32:35,880
Speaker 1: you know, memories of having been there. But he felt

583
00:32:35,920 --> 00:32:38,280
Speaker 1: as if he had become quote trapped in a time

584
00:32:38,360 --> 00:32:42,040
Speaker 1: loop the whole time, and the experience was apparently somewhat terrifying.

585
00:32:42,080 --> 00:32:44,400
Speaker 1: So even though he knew, Okay, I'm not actually in

586
00:32:44,440 --> 00:32:47,040
Speaker 1: a time loop, it feels like I'm in a time loop.

587
00:32:47,320 --> 00:32:49,880
Speaker 1: I know I'm not, but it's really still terrifying to

588
00:32:49,960 --> 00:32:54,320
Speaker 1: experience totally, all right. And then he returned to college

589
00:32:54,400 --> 00:32:58,040
Speaker 1: in two thousand seven, and during this time tried the

590
00:32:58,120 --> 00:33:02,600
Speaker 1: psychedelic compound LSD, and they write, quote from then on,

591
00:33:02,960 --> 00:33:08,000
Speaker 1: the deja vu was fairly continuous. So quick note for everyone.

592
00:33:08,000 --> 00:33:11,920
Speaker 1: As you'll remember from our what five part series on psychedelics, UH,

593
00:33:11,960 --> 00:33:13,600
Speaker 1: this would this would seem to fall in line with

594
00:33:13,600 --> 00:33:17,600
Speaker 1: the observation that the psychedelic experience can for individuals with

595
00:33:17,680 --> 00:33:23,480
Speaker 1: a pre disposition exasperate a psychological condition. UH. Typically one

596
00:33:23,560 --> 00:33:26,479
Speaker 1: hears about this in regards to schizophrenia. So at this

597
00:33:26,520 --> 00:33:30,760
Speaker 1: point our subject is is experiencing near constant deja vus,

598
00:33:30,760 --> 00:33:32,880
Speaker 1: so he goes to see a specialist. They found that

599
00:33:32,880 --> 00:33:35,160
Speaker 1: he was experiencing anxiety in low mood, but for the

600
00:33:35,200 --> 00:33:38,000
Speaker 1: most part, uh Like, everything was normal. I think his

601
00:33:38,280 --> 00:33:42,920
Speaker 1: disassociative events scale score was slightly abnormal. Uh but but

602
00:33:42,920 --> 00:33:46,120
Speaker 1: but otherwise it was it was just this deja vu effect.

603
00:33:46,480 --> 00:33:49,760
Speaker 1: Um and And interestingly enough, they write that he took

604
00:33:49,800 --> 00:33:53,800
Speaker 1: to avoiding music and TV because he would invariably feel

605
00:33:53,880 --> 00:33:56,800
Speaker 1: that he had seen or heard the material before, and

606
00:33:56,840 --> 00:33:59,840
Speaker 1: then this would play into his deja vu experience or

607
00:34:00,040 --> 00:34:02,600
Speaker 1: make it more pronounced. Uh. And I found this to

608
00:34:02,600 --> 00:34:05,120
Speaker 1: be interesting. You know this idea because this gets back

609
00:34:05,120 --> 00:34:07,200
Speaker 1: to the idea of the novel and the familiar, Because

610
00:34:07,200 --> 00:34:10,440
Speaker 1: if deja vu is largely the experience all of the

611
00:34:10,480 --> 00:34:14,040
Speaker 1: novel as familiar, then would extreme cases like this require

612
00:34:14,080 --> 00:34:16,920
Speaker 1: one to just try to avoid novel things as much

613
00:34:16,920 --> 00:34:20,800
Speaker 1: as possible. M Yeah, just surround yourself with what's actually

614
00:34:20,840 --> 00:34:24,000
Speaker 1: familiar so that when it feels familiar, it doesn't feel unusual.

615
00:34:24,120 --> 00:34:27,800
Speaker 1: I mean, this is this case sounds really disturbing because

616
00:34:28,560 --> 00:34:31,120
Speaker 1: I don't normally think of deja vu as something that

617
00:34:31,239 --> 00:34:35,120
Speaker 1: is inherently unpleasant when I feel it. It is strange,

618
00:34:35,719 --> 00:34:38,920
Speaker 1: but it's not. It doesn't hurt, you know it, It's

619
00:34:39,000 --> 00:34:43,560
Speaker 1: not in itself, uh, you know, worrying or or upsetting.

620
00:34:43,840 --> 00:34:46,560
Speaker 1: But I can absolutely see how if it persisted over

621
00:34:46,600 --> 00:34:49,680
Speaker 1: time it could take on that character. Yeah, I mean,

622
00:34:50,239 --> 00:34:52,640
Speaker 1: a sneeze isn't that bad, But we wouldn't want to

623
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,680
Speaker 1: sneeze constantly. Uh. And I would say that like a

624
00:34:55,719 --> 00:34:58,719
Speaker 1: typical deja vu experience for me, and I think for

625
00:34:58,760 --> 00:35:03,200
Speaker 1: most people, is far less distracting than a sneeze. Um. Uh.

626
00:35:03,239 --> 00:35:05,719
Speaker 1: And And however, I will say that those experiences that

627
00:35:05,800 --> 00:35:08,799
Speaker 1: I related in the first episode that I had recently, um,

628
00:35:09,200 --> 00:35:13,680
Speaker 1: those were those were more potent, Those were those were

629
00:35:13,719 --> 00:35:15,719
Speaker 1: certainly more powerful. And I would not I certainly would

630
00:35:15,760 --> 00:35:18,759
Speaker 1: not want to feel that all the time either. So

631
00:35:19,000 --> 00:35:21,799
Speaker 1: the researchers in this case, though, they proposed that the

632
00:35:21,840 --> 00:35:25,280
Speaker 1: form of deja vous described here it might more accurately

633
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:29,400
Speaker 1: be described as deja viku. Uh. This particularly strong sensation

634
00:35:29,440 --> 00:35:32,960
Speaker 1: of reliving the present moment quote. He complained that it

635
00:35:33,040 --> 00:35:36,880
Speaker 1: felt like he was actually retrieving previous experiences from memory,

636
00:35:37,200 --> 00:35:40,440
Speaker 1: not just finding them familiar. They concluded, quote, it is

637
00:35:40,480 --> 00:35:44,279
Speaker 1: plausible on neurobiological grounds that anxiety might lead to the

638
00:35:44,320 --> 00:35:48,560
Speaker 1: generation of deja vous. The hippocampal formation, a structure of

639
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:52,520
Speaker 1: central importance and declarative memory, and the ability to engage

640
00:35:52,520 --> 00:35:56,520
Speaker 1: in recollection, is also implicated in anxiety as part of

641
00:35:56,520 --> 00:36:00,680
Speaker 1: the septo hippocampal system. Although this report does not prove

642
00:36:00,719 --> 00:36:04,080
Speaker 1: a link between anxiety and deja vu, it does further

643
00:36:04,120 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 1: support the suggestion that this area is worthy of further investigation.

644
00:36:08,400 --> 00:36:10,920
Speaker 1: That's very interesting, um, I mean, it makes me think

645
00:36:10,960 --> 00:36:16,759
Speaker 1: about the link between deja vu and stress or fatigue. Now,

646
00:36:17,239 --> 00:36:20,880
Speaker 1: I'm not sure exactly how to separate out stress and anxiety.

647
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:23,680
Speaker 1: I think there's a good deal of overlap between stress

648
00:36:23,680 --> 00:36:27,439
Speaker 1: and anxiety, but they're not exactly the same thing, right, Yeah,

649
00:36:27,480 --> 00:36:33,000
Speaker 1: they is often the case with human emotions and experience.

650
00:36:33,040 --> 00:36:36,319
Speaker 1: There's kind of a delicate web where all these things,

651
00:36:36,320 --> 00:36:39,920
Speaker 1: sometimes conflicting things are, it seemed to be in rather

652
00:36:40,000 --> 00:36:43,000
Speaker 1: close proximity to each other. Yeah. All right, On that note,

653
00:36:43,040 --> 00:36:45,000
Speaker 1: let's take one more break, but when we come back,

654
00:36:45,160 --> 00:36:51,920
Speaker 1: we'll discuss deja vu and dreams. Than all right, we're

655
00:36:51,920 --> 00:36:55,120
Speaker 1: back now, Robert. I remember a little while ago, we

656
00:36:55,160 --> 00:36:57,520
Speaker 1: got an email from a listener who wanted us to

657
00:36:57,640 --> 00:37:02,319
Speaker 1: look into the issue of deja of right, Yeah, yeah,

658
00:37:02,480 --> 00:37:04,200
Speaker 1: I believe that this was a listening by the name

659
00:37:04,239 --> 00:37:08,160
Speaker 1: of an uh and uh, yeah, she brought up well,

660
00:37:08,160 --> 00:37:10,440
Speaker 1: i'll just read apart from the email here quote. Several

661
00:37:10,480 --> 00:37:13,280
Speaker 1: months ago, I was introduced to the term de genrev.

662
00:37:14,040 --> 00:37:17,840
Speaker 1: I first thought it was the speaker's mispronunciation of deja vous. However,

663
00:37:18,200 --> 00:37:22,719
Speaker 1: it's an independent concept. Deja rev literally translates to already dreamed.

664
00:37:23,280 --> 00:37:25,839
Speaker 1: It's the sensation that one has experienced a real time

665
00:37:25,840 --> 00:37:28,239
Speaker 1: event in a previous dream. It can be considered a

666
00:37:28,280 --> 00:37:31,480
Speaker 1: form of precognition. I would love to learn a scientific

667
00:37:31,520 --> 00:37:35,520
Speaker 1: perspective and explanation for this phenomena. So that sounds like

668
00:37:35,520 --> 00:37:38,560
Speaker 1: a great idea, and let's let's look into it. Okay, Well,

669
00:37:38,600 --> 00:37:42,040
Speaker 1: you know, I would say, just uh from a personal perspective,

670
00:37:42,960 --> 00:37:47,160
Speaker 1: when I experienced deja vu, I don't know if my

671
00:37:47,239 --> 00:37:50,920
Speaker 1: brain makes a distinction between deja vu and deja vacu

672
00:37:51,120 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 1: and deja rev. Like it seems like when I get

673
00:37:54,920 --> 00:37:58,640
Speaker 1: that feeling of familiarity in the situation, I couldn't tell

674
00:37:58,680 --> 00:38:02,600
Speaker 1: the difference between whether I'm feeling like I already have

675
00:38:02,760 --> 00:38:05,719
Speaker 1: been here or feeling like I've already been here in

676
00:38:05,719 --> 00:38:09,400
Speaker 1: a dream. Does that make any sense? Yeah? Yeah, I

677
00:38:09,400 --> 00:38:13,120
Speaker 1: feel I hear what you're saying there. I I feel

678
00:38:13,120 --> 00:38:16,520
Speaker 1: like with my experience, I do sort of see two

679
00:38:16,840 --> 00:38:18,880
Speaker 1: Like there's there's the feeling of it. There's kind of

680
00:38:18,880 --> 00:38:23,320
Speaker 1: like that deja vous energy that you know, intensity factors

681
00:38:23,320 --> 00:38:26,279
Speaker 1: aside may essentially be the same. But then in some

682
00:38:26,360 --> 00:38:29,880
Speaker 1: cases I am instantly aware that it is somehow tied

683
00:38:30,040 --> 00:38:34,080
Speaker 1: to external sense data. And in other cases, particularly these

684
00:38:34,120 --> 00:38:37,719
Speaker 1: these stronger feelings that I've had, they seem to be

685
00:38:37,800 --> 00:38:43,600
Speaker 1: tied to internal feelings or thoughts, if that makes sense. Yeah, yeah, yeah, Um,

686
00:38:44,200 --> 00:38:45,800
Speaker 1: I don't know. I mean, I guess the feeling of

687
00:38:45,880 --> 00:38:48,759
Speaker 1: deja vu for me is inherently kind of dream like.

688
00:38:49,600 --> 00:38:54,479
Speaker 1: Um it suddenly in waking life creates a little bit

689
00:38:54,520 --> 00:38:58,560
Speaker 1: of of an aura of the feeling one has in dreams.

690
00:38:58,840 --> 00:39:02,719
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, And so it naturally to me kind of

691
00:39:02,760 --> 00:39:07,120
Speaker 1: suggests like when I have that feeling of anomalous familiarity,

692
00:39:07,239 --> 00:39:10,200
Speaker 1: I'm like, did I dream this before? But I accept

693
00:39:10,200 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 1: that maybe another people there there is this clearer distinction,

694
00:39:13,400 --> 00:39:15,840
Speaker 1: like that there's one type of feeling like I've already

695
00:39:15,880 --> 00:39:18,680
Speaker 1: been here in waking life, and the other one is like,

696
00:39:18,760 --> 00:39:21,200
Speaker 1: I already experienced this in a dream. It's just for me.

697
00:39:21,280 --> 00:39:26,200
Speaker 1: They've they've never felt all that distinct from each other. Okay, well, um,

698
00:39:26,280 --> 00:39:28,480
Speaker 1: let's look at a paper here. I'm gonna refer to

699
00:39:28,680 --> 00:39:32,680
Speaker 1: frequency of deja rev effects of age, gender, dream recall,

700
00:39:32,760 --> 00:39:37,640
Speaker 1: and personality. By this is a threadle gorrets and funk Howser.

701
00:39:37,680 --> 00:39:40,960
Speaker 1: We mentioned funk Howser in the the the last episode

702
00:39:41,160 --> 00:39:45,600
Speaker 1: published in the Journal of Consciousness Studies in ten. Now,

703
00:39:45,640 --> 00:39:48,520
Speaker 1: as we've discussed already, you can broadly say, all right,

704
00:39:48,560 --> 00:39:50,680
Speaker 1: there's deja u. But then you when you really get

705
00:39:50,680 --> 00:39:54,000
Speaker 1: down into it, there are there's sort of different subsections

706
00:39:54,200 --> 00:39:56,759
Speaker 1: to deja vu, and you have things like deja rev

707
00:39:57,000 --> 00:40:00,800
Speaker 1: that come up well. According to uh to Dr Vernon

708
00:40:01,040 --> 00:40:05,080
Speaker 1: Nip in his book The Psychology of Deja Vu and

709
00:40:05,160 --> 00:40:08,279
Speaker 1: subsequent Publications, where in which he wrote about deja vu,

710
00:40:08,920 --> 00:40:13,960
Speaker 1: there are perhaps twenty different forms of the deja experience,

711
00:40:14,520 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 1: and uh man, I'm not going to read them all,

712
00:40:16,719 --> 00:40:19,480
Speaker 1: but there there's some really good ones. There's like um,

713
00:40:20,040 --> 00:40:26,080
Speaker 1: uh dejas sue already known intellectually. There's uh deja ditt

714
00:40:26,320 --> 00:40:29,160
Speaker 1: already said or spoken, so you know, referring to a

715
00:40:29,200 --> 00:40:32,840
Speaker 1: content of speech. Um. Basically they get into all the

716
00:40:32,880 --> 00:40:36,960
Speaker 1: different nuances of how you might interact with the world

717
00:40:37,160 --> 00:40:39,719
Speaker 1: or worth your own brain. Like there's a one for

718
00:40:39,800 --> 00:40:46,840
Speaker 1: already hallucinated, one for uh, already eaten de Genmans. That

719
00:40:46,840 --> 00:40:48,880
Speaker 1: would be a great one. They just shout out in

720
00:40:48,880 --> 00:40:53,240
Speaker 1: a restaurant as you are, um, enjoying a meal. Uh.

721
00:40:53,360 --> 00:40:57,279
Speaker 1: But then in one of the uh no, I'm thinking

722
00:40:57,520 --> 00:41:00,759
Speaker 1: I'm thinking of the sopranos were like Tony is like,

723
00:41:01,080 --> 00:41:04,400
Speaker 1: humange uncle June, but then Uncle June is like, whoa

724
00:41:04,480 --> 00:41:08,640
Speaker 1: de jamange? I mean there's a there's deja music already

725
00:41:08,680 --> 00:41:11,879
Speaker 1: heard or played specific music. Uh. And then there's oh,

726
00:41:11,960 --> 00:41:14,279
Speaker 1: this one's really fat. I haven't looked into this one

727
00:41:14,600 --> 00:41:21,320
Speaker 1: in Greater Death, but deja paradox a paradoxy basically already paradoxical,

728
00:41:21,480 --> 00:41:24,200
Speaker 1: which that just sounds kind of mind rendering to encounter

729
00:41:24,239 --> 00:41:27,360
Speaker 1: a paradox and then have a deja vu about that paradox.

730
00:41:28,600 --> 00:41:30,680
Speaker 1: I can't even think of an example with them. I

731
00:41:30,960 --> 00:41:32,200
Speaker 1: don't like I said, I we have to come back

732
00:41:32,239 --> 00:41:34,720
Speaker 1: to that one. Maybe you, the listener, have an example

733
00:41:34,840 --> 00:41:38,239
Speaker 1: of of of a deja paradox experience that you can

734
00:41:38,760 --> 00:41:41,440
Speaker 1: you can share with us. But anyway, the main focus

735
00:41:41,440 --> 00:41:44,200
Speaker 1: of this paper was the de gen rev experience and

736
00:41:44,440 --> 00:41:46,680
Speaker 1: the idea of of a feeling as if you have

737
00:41:46,760 --> 00:41:50,000
Speaker 1: dreamt something before. And I think some of us can

738
00:41:50,040 --> 00:41:52,640
Speaker 1: probably relate to that with our deja vu. You know,

739
00:41:53,000 --> 00:41:54,880
Speaker 1: you might think weird, I feel like I have dreamt

740
00:41:54,920 --> 00:41:56,680
Speaker 1: this before, and perhaps some of us feel that more

741
00:41:56,719 --> 00:42:00,759
Speaker 1: strongly than others. Incidentally, funk, how was there? One of

742
00:42:00,800 --> 00:42:04,440
Speaker 1: the authors here points out on his website, Deja Experience

743
00:42:04,560 --> 00:42:09,120
Speaker 1: research dot org. That's it's with hyphens in there Deja

744
00:42:09,440 --> 00:42:12,600
Speaker 1: hyphen experienced hyphen research dot org. He points out that

745
00:42:12,640 --> 00:42:16,640
Speaker 1: Percy Shelley wrote of the connection between deja vu and dreams,

746
00:42:16,960 --> 00:42:19,720
Speaker 1: though his thoughts were not published till after his death.

747
00:42:20,640 --> 00:42:24,040
Speaker 1: So here's the quote. The scene was a common scene.

748
00:42:24,360 --> 00:42:27,000
Speaker 1: The effect that it produced on me was not such

749
00:42:27,040 --> 00:42:30,319
Speaker 1: as could have been expected. I suddenly remembered to have

750
00:42:30,440 --> 00:42:34,759
Speaker 1: seen that exact scene in some dream of long here

751
00:42:34,800 --> 00:42:39,000
Speaker 1: I was obliged to leave off, overcome by thrilling horror. Wow.

752
00:42:39,440 --> 00:42:42,040
Speaker 1: But back to this study in particular, they point out

753
00:42:42,080 --> 00:42:45,960
Speaker 1: that as a blanket explanation for deja vou. This one,

754
00:42:46,160 --> 00:42:48,960
Speaker 1: you know, dates dates back quite a long ways. Um.

755
00:42:49,320 --> 00:42:52,239
Speaker 1: One of the earliest explanations for the deja experience, I

756
00:42:52,280 --> 00:42:55,799
Speaker 1: think we mentioned the first one was when St. Augustine

757
00:42:56,239 --> 00:42:58,400
Speaker 1: wrote of it in the year four or sixteen, and

758
00:42:58,440 --> 00:43:01,160
Speaker 1: then Sir Walter Scott much later writes about it in

759
00:43:01,360 --> 00:43:05,400
Speaker 1: the eighteen fifteen. But the authors of this paper, they

760
00:43:05,400 --> 00:43:08,920
Speaker 1: set out to perform a survey of the experience. Now,

761
00:43:08,960 --> 00:43:11,279
Speaker 1: this was a survey of four hundred and forty four

762
00:43:11,320 --> 00:43:15,680
Speaker 1: people asking them about their experiences of deja vous, specifically

763
00:43:15,719 --> 00:43:18,440
Speaker 1: de gen rev the association between this feeling of deja

764
00:43:18,520 --> 00:43:22,040
Speaker 1: vu and their dreams, and so out of the four

765
00:43:22,480 --> 00:43:27,080
Speaker 1: forty four individuals that responded, um, it's interesting. So the

766
00:43:27,239 --> 00:43:30,319
Speaker 1: first of all, there was the frequency. Now in the

767
00:43:30,360 --> 00:43:32,439
Speaker 1: study they break they break it down a little more,

768
00:43:32,760 --> 00:43:37,319
Speaker 1: a little more detail. But basically they found that of

769
00:43:37,360 --> 00:43:41,400
Speaker 1: the people sampled uh said that yes, they did experience

770
00:43:41,480 --> 00:43:45,680
Speaker 1: deja rev. Uh. Now how often they experienced it varied

771
00:43:45,840 --> 00:43:49,920
Speaker 1: uh quite a bit. Um. For instance, twenty one or

772
00:43:50,040 --> 00:43:53,759
Speaker 1: four point eight percent UM said that they just never

773
00:43:53,840 --> 00:43:57,680
Speaker 1: experienced it. But in terms of those that did, like

774
00:43:57,840 --> 00:43:59,879
Speaker 1: you know, you had like forty one said that they

775
00:44:00,320 --> 00:44:02,920
Speaker 1: experienced it less than once a year, But then there

776
00:44:02,920 --> 00:44:06,000
Speaker 1: were eight individuals, which is only one percent of the

777
00:44:06,120 --> 00:44:09,239
Speaker 1: of of the the individual's polled here they experienced it

778
00:44:09,320 --> 00:44:13,279
Speaker 1: several times a week. Wow. Um, well, I'm curious how

779
00:44:13,320 --> 00:44:16,680
Speaker 1: this squares with previous research finding that you know, up

780
00:44:16,719 --> 00:44:19,840
Speaker 1: to something like a third of people or maybe up

781
00:44:19,880 --> 00:44:23,320
Speaker 1: tot of people, and some of these older surveys report

782
00:44:23,400 --> 00:44:27,080
Speaker 1: having never had any experience of deja vu. I wonder

783
00:44:27,120 --> 00:44:29,960
Speaker 1: what's going on because you talk to people nowadays, that

784
00:44:30,040 --> 00:44:34,080
Speaker 1: figure seems kind of high. I would figure that you know,

785
00:44:34,360 --> 00:44:37,520
Speaker 1: close to you know, nearly everybody has had like at

786
00:44:37,600 --> 00:44:40,840
Speaker 1: least some kind of deja vu experience at some point.

787
00:44:41,560 --> 00:44:44,160
Speaker 1: But these older surveys, you know, have it, have it

788
00:44:44,239 --> 00:44:46,799
Speaker 1: still very common but lower? I wonder if there used

789
00:44:46,840 --> 00:44:50,000
Speaker 1: to be more of a stigma or kind of weird

790
00:44:50,160 --> 00:44:54,440
Speaker 1: paranormal association with saying that you've had deja vu? Does

791
00:44:54,440 --> 00:44:57,040
Speaker 1: that make sense? Like maybe if people didn't think that

792
00:44:57,640 --> 00:45:00,320
Speaker 1: there could be any kind of like normal explo nation

793
00:45:00,440 --> 00:45:02,960
Speaker 1: for it, they'd be less likely to want to admit

794
00:45:03,080 --> 00:45:05,560
Speaker 1: it and talk about it like their gender norms about it,

795
00:45:05,600 --> 00:45:08,080
Speaker 1: Perhaps like a real man doesn't have deja vu or

796
00:45:08,280 --> 00:45:11,800
Speaker 1: a proper lady never experiences deja vu. It is simply

797
00:45:12,120 --> 00:45:17,839
Speaker 1: uh not done, uh, something to that effect. I don't know. Yeah,

798
00:45:17,920 --> 00:45:20,759
Speaker 1: that's true. You know, you can't be a cowboy if

799
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:25,200
Speaker 1: you've got deja vu. It's true. I've never Uh, I don't.

800
00:45:25,200 --> 00:45:28,600
Speaker 1: I don't think even Corman McCarthy considered deja vu and

801
00:45:28,680 --> 00:45:32,040
Speaker 1: the American cowboy. Well, no, I'm just curious, and maybe

802
00:45:32,080 --> 00:45:33,920
Speaker 1: there's something I'm missing here. It just seems like in

803
00:45:33,920 --> 00:45:37,680
Speaker 1: these older surveys, fewer people admitted to having deja vu.

804
00:45:38,840 --> 00:45:41,600
Speaker 1: Now with this particular study, I should note that the

805
00:45:41,640 --> 00:45:45,239
Speaker 1: authors admit quote the high incidents of deja rev again

806
00:45:45,239 --> 00:45:48,839
Speaker 1: about in this sample might be explained by the fact

807
00:45:48,880 --> 00:45:52,960
Speaker 1: that the sample consists mainly of psychology students who phenomena

808
00:45:53,160 --> 00:45:57,480
Speaker 1: it is interesting and related to their chosen profession. That is, okay,

809
00:45:57,520 --> 00:45:59,919
Speaker 1: that makes a lot of sense that in these serve

810
00:46:00,000 --> 00:46:03,799
Speaker 1: as we may be getting a a less randomized, more

811
00:46:03,960 --> 00:46:07,319
Speaker 1: rarefied sample of like the kind of people who are

812
00:46:07,320 --> 00:46:09,680
Speaker 1: more likely to remember these experiences and want to talk

813
00:46:09,680 --> 00:46:12,880
Speaker 1: about them. Yeah, just more likely to be introspective about

814
00:46:13,040 --> 00:46:17,200
Speaker 1: your your own in reality. Um. They also point out

815
00:46:17,320 --> 00:46:20,880
Speaker 1: that the previously noted in other studies. Association between deja

816
00:46:21,000 --> 00:46:25,360
Speaker 1: rev and dream recall frequency seems, on one hand plausible. Okay,

817
00:46:25,440 --> 00:46:28,640
Speaker 1: so if we're making the connection between this deja experience

818
00:46:28,680 --> 00:46:31,839
Speaker 1: and dreams, a person with high dream recall might be

819
00:46:31,920 --> 00:46:36,600
Speaker 1: more likely to attribute deja vu experiences to prior dreams. However,

820
00:46:36,719 --> 00:46:41,120
Speaker 1: quote the impression of having dreamed, the actually occurring events

821
00:46:41,160 --> 00:46:44,799
Speaker 1: arises within that moment and usually cannot be attributed to

822
00:46:44,840 --> 00:46:47,800
Speaker 1: a particular dream in the past, even if the person's

823
00:46:47,880 --> 00:46:51,560
Speaker 1: kept dream diaries in order to document the dreams prior

824
00:46:51,640 --> 00:46:54,920
Speaker 1: to the de genrev experience. I think that squares with

825
00:46:55,000 --> 00:46:59,480
Speaker 1: the overall anomalous familiarity phenomenon, like when you have deja vu.

826
00:46:59,680 --> 00:47:02,680
Speaker 1: The whole point is that you can't relate it to

827
00:47:02,760 --> 00:47:06,719
Speaker 1: a specific experience in your memory. It's just the general

828
00:47:06,880 --> 00:47:10,840
Speaker 1: feeling that I've seen this before, uh and yeah, and

829
00:47:10,880 --> 00:47:13,560
Speaker 1: that seems to go go along with the dream phenomenon

830
00:47:13,600 --> 00:47:17,120
Speaker 1: as well. I also came across a twenty paper that

831
00:47:17,320 --> 00:47:21,080
Speaker 1: UH basically found that de gen rev experiences are common

832
00:47:21,120 --> 00:47:25,920
Speaker 1: after electric brain stimulation standard and treatment for epileptic symptoms. Now.

833
00:47:26,000 --> 00:47:29,520
Speaker 1: They looked at three different subsets of de gen rev episodic,

834
00:47:29,719 --> 00:47:31,799
Speaker 1: so you know, with a direct connection made to a

835
00:47:31,800 --> 00:47:36,480
Speaker 1: specific dream, half remembered scenes that echoed their current circumstances,

836
00:47:36,719 --> 00:47:39,319
Speaker 1: and an even dreamy or like state in which the

837
00:47:39,360 --> 00:47:43,239
Speaker 1: experience itself is dream or nightmare like. So I felt

838
00:47:43,280 --> 00:47:46,280
Speaker 1: that guest a little more perspective on on what maybe

839
00:47:46,320 --> 00:47:49,640
Speaker 1: going on here. So let's again remind everyone deja vu

840
00:47:49,719 --> 00:47:54,759
Speaker 1: the experience that something novel was actually familiar. So imagine this.

841
00:47:54,960 --> 00:47:58,000
Speaker 1: Imagine feeling this as you walk down a new hallway

842
00:47:58,440 --> 00:48:00,480
Speaker 1: and you're about to open a door or to an

843
00:48:00,520 --> 00:48:04,600
Speaker 1: office you've never visited before. You feel, at least for

844
00:48:04,719 --> 00:48:06,720
Speaker 1: you know, for a second there, for this fleeing moment,

845
00:48:07,040 --> 00:48:10,759
Speaker 1: that you know what will be on the other side. Now,

846
00:48:10,800 --> 00:48:13,840
Speaker 1: this is just a feeling, but it feels real to

847
00:48:13,920 --> 00:48:16,759
Speaker 1: the people who experience it. It feels like in this

848
00:48:16,840 --> 00:48:21,160
Speaker 1: moment of deja vous, you are able to see the future. Yeah,

849
00:48:21,200 --> 00:48:23,520
Speaker 1: and in fact, some people I think this is one

850
00:48:23,560 --> 00:48:27,120
Speaker 1: of the reasons that a lot of people have been

851
00:48:27,200 --> 00:48:29,960
Speaker 1: kind of insistent on viewing deja vu is some kind

852
00:48:29,960 --> 00:48:34,120
Speaker 1: of actual paranormal phenomenon and not just like a strange

853
00:48:34,160 --> 00:48:37,680
Speaker 1: feature of the brain um that sometimes people feel like

854
00:48:37,760 --> 00:48:41,680
Speaker 1: they are actually getting information about the future from it,

855
00:48:41,719 --> 00:48:45,040
Speaker 1: you know that like, I know what's going to happen next,

856
00:48:45,560 --> 00:48:47,239
Speaker 1: and really, this does I think feel like this kind

857
00:48:47,280 --> 00:48:50,640
Speaker 1: of thing adds another wrinkle to our understanding of people

858
00:48:50,640 --> 00:48:54,960
Speaker 1: who claim to have precognitive abilities or experiences in their life,

859
00:48:55,440 --> 00:48:57,640
Speaker 1: you know, because if you're if you're taking just like

860
00:48:57,640 --> 00:49:00,600
Speaker 1: the hard skeptical approach to that, then it's like, Okay,

861
00:49:00,640 --> 00:49:05,279
Speaker 1: some people are crazy, some people are scammers, maybe some

862
00:49:05,320 --> 00:49:08,960
Speaker 1: people are both of those. But but this by by

863
00:49:08,960 --> 00:49:12,920
Speaker 1: thinking about the link between deja vu and pre precognition,

864
00:49:13,160 --> 00:49:15,520
Speaker 1: you could well have a situation where someone maybe they're

865
00:49:15,520 --> 00:49:20,640
Speaker 1: more inclined to engage in uh supernatural ideas or some

866
00:49:20,719 --> 00:49:24,840
Speaker 1: sort of religious model that incorporates precognition. But if you

867
00:49:24,880 --> 00:49:27,439
Speaker 1: had just at least a few flashes of this sort

868
00:49:27,440 --> 00:49:30,279
Speaker 1: of experience, like a moment where you're like, yeah, I knew,

869
00:49:30,320 --> 00:49:31,600
Speaker 1: I know what's going to be on the other side

870
00:49:31,640 --> 00:49:33,719
Speaker 1: of that door, and even if it's it ends up

871
00:49:33,800 --> 00:49:35,480
Speaker 1: to not be the case, you know, you still have

872
00:49:35,600 --> 00:49:39,400
Speaker 1: that feeling that felt so real. Well, this seems like

873
00:49:39,440 --> 00:49:41,080
Speaker 1: the kind of thing that you could actually put to

874
00:49:41,120 --> 00:49:43,600
Speaker 1: the test, if only you could create scenarios and we

875
00:49:43,640 --> 00:49:47,520
Speaker 1: talked earlier about the difficulty of creating deja vu on command.

876
00:49:47,560 --> 00:49:50,040
Speaker 1: It's obviously not easy to do. But if you could

877
00:49:50,120 --> 00:49:52,560
Speaker 1: put together a test where you could sort of where

878
00:49:52,600 --> 00:49:55,279
Speaker 1: you could sort of try to stimulate deja vou like

879
00:49:55,440 --> 00:49:59,239
Speaker 1: experiences in people, you could actually put this to the test, right,

880
00:49:59,280 --> 00:50:01,399
Speaker 1: you could find out a weight, do people have any

881
00:50:01,440 --> 00:50:04,680
Speaker 1: additional predictive power? All right, well, let's let's jump into

882
00:50:04,760 --> 00:50:07,439
Speaker 1: this particular study that I have lined up here. So

883
00:50:07,719 --> 00:50:10,360
Speaker 1: this is a two thousand eighteen study that was published

884
00:50:10,360 --> 00:50:14,239
Speaker 1: in Psychological Science, and it was titled Deja vous An

885
00:50:14,239 --> 00:50:18,040
Speaker 1: Illusion of of Prediction, And this was by an Im

886
00:50:18,200 --> 00:50:23,200
Speaker 1: Cleary who we mentioned earlier, and Alexander B. Claxton so

887
00:50:23,600 --> 00:50:25,760
Speaker 1: clearly has put a great deal of research into deja

888
00:50:25,840 --> 00:50:28,280
Speaker 1: vu as well as tip of the Tongue over the years,

889
00:50:28,600 --> 00:50:32,399
Speaker 1: and her working hypothesis is that it's a quote particular

890
00:50:32,480 --> 00:50:38,160
Speaker 1: manifestation of familiarity. Something feels familiar when you paradoxically feel

891
00:50:38,239 --> 00:50:41,800
Speaker 1: that it shouldn't. In her last ten years plus of research,

892
00:50:41,840 --> 00:50:44,200
Speaker 1: she started hearing a lot about people's claims to the

893
00:50:44,280 --> 00:50:48,680
Speaker 1: precognition feeling, you know, again, not the reality of of

894
00:50:48,920 --> 00:50:52,279
Speaker 1: predicting the future, but the feeling the confidence that you, uh,

895
00:50:52,280 --> 00:50:54,600
Speaker 1: you know what is going to occur, and she wanted

896
00:50:54,640 --> 00:50:57,279
Speaker 1: to see if, as she suspected, the feeling was a

897
00:50:57,320 --> 00:51:00,560
Speaker 1: memory phenomenon as well. And of course the ad uh

898
00:51:00,680 --> 00:51:03,920
Speaker 1: complication here for for her is that you know, memory

899
00:51:04,080 --> 00:51:07,320
Speaker 1: does aid us in our ability to predict future of events.

900
00:51:07,520 --> 00:51:10,600
Speaker 1: So it's far from a trivial question. Memory isn't just

901
00:51:10,680 --> 00:51:13,400
Speaker 1: there to make you feel good or bad about the past.

902
00:51:13,640 --> 00:51:17,400
Speaker 1: It's about survival moving forward. So what did they do?

903
00:51:17,440 --> 00:51:20,000
Speaker 1: Always to discuss some of the issues with trying to

904
00:51:20,080 --> 00:51:23,279
Speaker 1: recreate deja vu in the lab, So their approach here

905
00:51:23,800 --> 00:51:26,279
Speaker 1: was to UH was was to basically pull it off

906
00:51:26,719 --> 00:51:30,120
Speaker 1: via virtual reality, based on past studies that found out

907
00:51:30,160 --> 00:51:33,640
Speaker 1: that subjects were more likely to report deja vu among

908
00:51:33,800 --> 00:51:39,200
Speaker 1: scenes that spatially mapped onto earlier witness scenes. UH. Subjects

909
00:51:39,200 --> 00:51:42,160
Speaker 1: were put through familiar virtual hallways and then ask if

910
00:51:42,160 --> 00:51:46,319
Speaker 1: they felt deja vu or premonition at key turns. So,

911
00:51:46,520 --> 00:51:47,799
Speaker 1: you know, this is a situation where you can just

912
00:51:47,840 --> 00:51:50,759
Speaker 1: imagine you know, Doom and Wolfenstein kind of hallways, you know,

913
00:51:50,840 --> 00:51:54,400
Speaker 1: virtual hallways, UH and some of the same mapping, but

914
00:51:54,840 --> 00:51:57,960
Speaker 1: but a different feel a different look. And then the

915
00:51:58,040 --> 00:52:00,919
Speaker 1: researchers would jump in at key points and see if

916
00:52:01,280 --> 00:52:04,000
Speaker 1: if there was a sense of deja vu or premonition

917
00:52:04,000 --> 00:52:06,480
Speaker 1: on the part of the subject. And these were their findings.

918
00:52:06,600 --> 00:52:12,360
Speaker 1: About half the respondents felt a strong premonition during deja vu. However,

919
00:52:12,400 --> 00:52:17,000
Speaker 1: they were no more likely to actually recall the correct answer,

920
00:52:17,400 --> 00:52:20,600
Speaker 1: uh than mere chance would explain. So that's not to

921
00:52:20,640 --> 00:52:22,839
Speaker 1: say that the take home here is that deja vu

922
00:52:22,920 --> 00:52:25,439
Speaker 1: experiences are not pre cogs. We know that we knew

923
00:52:25,440 --> 00:52:28,719
Speaker 1: that going in, but rather that it creates an illusion

924
00:52:28,840 --> 00:52:33,000
Speaker 1: of certainty, confidence in the choice that might be linked

925
00:52:33,120 --> 00:52:36,319
Speaker 1: to stuff like hindsight bias. Now, her work on all

926
00:52:36,320 --> 00:52:40,560
Speaker 1: this continues, Uh is you know, great deal more that

927
00:52:40,640 --> 00:52:43,960
Speaker 1: could be learned about the deja experience. But I think

928
00:52:43,960 --> 00:52:46,399
Speaker 1: this is really interesting because again you can see how

929
00:52:46,440 --> 00:52:51,520
Speaker 1: this might form the bedrock, uh for greater beliefs in

930
00:52:51,600 --> 00:52:55,080
Speaker 1: precognition and uh predictions of the future. You know, you

931
00:52:55,080 --> 00:52:58,279
Speaker 1: you build upon this with some sort of existing religious,

932
00:52:58,320 --> 00:53:03,720
Speaker 1: supernatural magical script about individuals who can sense the future,

933
00:53:04,120 --> 00:53:06,480
Speaker 1: and uh, yeah, it seems like they would one would

934
00:53:06,520 --> 00:53:10,239
Speaker 1: support the other rather well. Sure, all right, so there

935
00:53:10,280 --> 00:53:12,040
Speaker 1: you have it. We're gonna go and call it here.

936
00:53:12,640 --> 00:53:15,319
Speaker 1: We hope you enjoyed our two episode look at the

937
00:53:15,360 --> 00:53:20,400
Speaker 1: Deja Voo experience, all that it seems to incorporate, and

938
00:53:20,520 --> 00:53:23,080
Speaker 1: some of our best attempts to understand it. Though those

939
00:53:23,280 --> 00:53:26,800
Speaker 1: those attempts are still very much in process. The work

940
00:53:27,000 --> 00:53:29,640
Speaker 1: continues in the meantime. If you want to check out

941
00:53:29,680 --> 00:53:31,879
Speaker 1: other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, you can

942
00:53:31,880 --> 00:53:34,920
Speaker 1: find us wherever you get your podcasts wherever that happens

943
00:53:34,960 --> 00:53:39,239
Speaker 1: to be. Make sure you rate, review, and subscribe. Huge

944
00:53:39,280 --> 00:53:42,880
Speaker 1: thanks as always to our awesome audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson.

945
00:53:43,080 --> 00:53:44,480
Speaker 1: If you would like to get in touch with us

946
00:53:44,520 --> 00:53:46,800
Speaker 1: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

947
00:53:46,920 --> 00:53:49,200
Speaker 1: topic for the future, or just to say hi, you

948
00:53:49,200 --> 00:53:52,080
Speaker 1: can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your

949
00:53:52,080 --> 00:54:02,320
Speaker 1: Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production

950
00:54:02,400 --> 00:54:05,120
Speaker 1: of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my Heart Radio,

951
00:54:05,320 --> 00:54:07,680
Speaker 1: this is the i Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or

952
00:54:07,680 --> 00:54:22,000
Speaker 1: wherever you listen to your favorite shows.