WEBVTT - Déjà vu, Anxiety and Dreams 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.360 Welcome to stot to Blow Your Mind production of My 0:00:05.480 --> 0:00:14.640 Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. 0:00:14.720 --> 0:00:17.400 My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and 0:00:17.400 --> 0:00:20.800 we're back with another closet edition. Uh So this week 0:00:21.280 --> 0:00:24.079 we got kind of hijacked off on the side trail 0:00:24.120 --> 0:00:26.000 that we didn't quite expect at the beginning of this 0:00:26.079 --> 0:00:29.480 week because of a personal experience you had, right, Robert, Yeah, 0:00:29.520 --> 0:00:33.279 this this would have happened Wednesday, and it's got me 0:00:33.600 --> 0:00:36.360 researching some other topics and looking into it, and I 0:00:36.400 --> 0:00:38.479 mentioned it to you and the next thing we know, 0:00:38.520 --> 0:00:40.640 we were putting notes together for a couple of episodes. 0:00:40.680 --> 0:00:43.320 But it's great because this is also a topic. It 0:00:43.360 --> 0:00:46.000 gets into some topics that have been requested by listeners 0:00:46.200 --> 0:00:49.440 as well. So Lenny said, a little background for for 0:00:49.479 --> 0:00:52.920 what I'm about to describe. So give us your origin story. Yeah, 0:00:53.000 --> 0:00:55.920 my origin story, such as it as it is. When 0:00:55.960 --> 0:00:58.440 I was a kid, maybe seven or eight years old, 0:00:58.560 --> 0:01:00.760 which is which is uh the age of my own 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:05.520 son today, I had a very vivid and unsettling mental experience. 0:01:06.360 --> 0:01:09.520 It wasn't really a nightmare, but much like a nightmare, 0:01:09.760 --> 0:01:12.399 there was this ineffable quality to it. You know, like 0:01:12.520 --> 0:01:15.240 even as I try to explain it, uh, my words 0:01:15.400 --> 0:01:18.200 can't really relate how it made me feel and how 0:01:18.240 --> 0:01:20.280 it still makes me feel. Like when I when I 0:01:20.319 --> 0:01:22.440 remember it, when I think back on it, I can 0:01:22.480 --> 0:01:27.240 still feel a bit of the terror that I felt then. Uh, 0:01:27.400 --> 0:01:30.600 even though just a flat description of it sounds kind 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:33.120 of dumb. Yeah, that's often how nightmares are. It's like 0:01:33.319 --> 0:01:35.400 the thing that was really scary in your dream wouldn't 0:01:35.440 --> 0:01:37.720 necessarily make a good horror movie because it's hard to 0:01:37.760 --> 0:01:41.160 communicate why it was scary. Yeah, exactly, Like I once 0:01:41.200 --> 0:01:44.080 had a nightmare about a polar bear that was peeking 0:01:44.080 --> 0:01:46.080 into a house with a periscope, and somehow that was 0:01:46.160 --> 0:01:48.880 terrifying in the dream, but outside of the dream, it's 0:01:48.920 --> 0:01:53.480 just ridiculous and comical. So uh, but this particular situation, 0:01:53.520 --> 0:01:56.480 it was, it was not a nightmare. Um, I was 0:01:56.520 --> 0:01:59.960 in my bed and I have always slept with white noise, 0:02:00.560 --> 0:02:03.280 so even then I had this like oversized box fan 0:02:03.400 --> 0:02:06.920 in my my childhood room. And I should also explain 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:09.440 that I watched a lot of TV in those days, 0:02:09.480 --> 0:02:11.680 and the you know, my family would watch TV together 0:02:11.880 --> 0:02:14.360 and there were various shows on TBS that we would 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:17.120 regularly check out, and one of them was the sitcom 0:02:17.240 --> 0:02:19.960 Sanford and Son. You remember Sanford and Son, right, Oh yeah, 0:02:20.000 --> 0:02:24.000 totally yeah, Red Fox uh uh so uh. You know, 0:02:24.040 --> 0:02:26.799 I don't want to use the verb here or heard here, 0:02:26.840 --> 0:02:30.000 because it's it's not like I actually heard sound. It's 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:33.639 not like I experienced an auditory hallucination. It's more that 0:02:33.760 --> 0:02:36.480 I suddenly remembered it as I lay there in bed. 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:40.280 It was like a jagged memory that was suddenly embedded 0:02:40.360 --> 0:02:43.680 in my my psyche. And it was the sound of 0:02:43.720 --> 0:02:47.760 the Sanford and Son character Fred Sanford speaking in slow 0:02:47.840 --> 0:02:50.840 motion through the back of a box fan, addressing the 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:57.600 character Grady in this drawn out, oscillating voice. So that's 0:02:57.639 --> 0:03:00.480 great because that that has that perfect quality of something 0:03:00.520 --> 0:03:04.239 that would be terrifying in like a dream like memory, 0:03:04.360 --> 0:03:07.200 but you just can't see it from the outside. It's 0:03:07.200 --> 0:03:09.760 like I had a horrifying dream about Bob Sagett from 0:03:09.919 --> 0:03:13.640 Full House. Yeah, it's I mean, it's just so ridiculously dumb, 0:03:13.680 --> 0:03:16.000 Like if I were to to fictionalize it even a 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:18.560 little bit, I feel like I'd want to change it completely, 0:03:18.600 --> 0:03:22.720 you know. Um, but but but the thing is like, 0:03:22.760 --> 0:03:25.320 it definitely filled me with terror, and I can I 0:03:25.320 --> 0:03:28.080 can remember that terror, and I can. I can really 0:03:28.120 --> 0:03:30.520 compare it only to the stark sort of terror that 0:03:30.600 --> 0:03:33.320 one feels in a nightmare, you know, especially with the 0:03:33.360 --> 0:03:37.240 nonsensical elements to it. And uh and indeed it also 0:03:37.280 --> 0:03:40.320 it did not feel like I was remembering something specifically 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:44.040 from watching TV. And it didn't feel like I was dreaming. 0:03:44.360 --> 0:03:47.200 I it was, I guess, in some ways, like I 0:03:47.240 --> 0:03:50.280 was remembering a dream that I had never had. But 0:03:50.360 --> 0:03:53.480 in the sensation passed, the anxiety of it passed, although 0:03:53.480 --> 0:03:55.320 I I've always been able to feel like a tinge 0:03:55.360 --> 0:03:58.560 of it when I think back on the experience. So 0:03:58.680 --> 0:04:01.280 I've never I was never really sure what it was exactly. 0:04:01.600 --> 0:04:04.360 I kind of always just sort of thought, well, okay, 0:04:04.360 --> 0:04:06.680 it was, you know, something like a dream or a nightmare. 0:04:06.720 --> 0:04:09.920 I don't know. Um. And and looking back, I think 0:04:10.280 --> 0:04:12.080 there perhaps times in my life where I had like 0:04:12.120 --> 0:04:15.960 similar experiences in the years after that, but but pretty 0:04:16.040 --> 0:04:18.760 you know, far flung from each other, far less intense. 0:04:19.279 --> 0:04:23.119 And because of these factors, I've never really connected those 0:04:23.160 --> 0:04:26.160 experiences with this childhood experience. You know, when I think 0:04:26.200 --> 0:04:29.400 about experiences like that, especially involving lying in bed as 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:31.720 a child. I think one thing that's often going on 0:04:31.800 --> 0:04:34.120 there is that in our memories we are having a 0:04:34.120 --> 0:04:39.480 hard time sorting the demarcation line between wakefulness and sleep. Um. 0:04:39.520 --> 0:04:43.000 And this is definitely characteristic of memories I have as 0:04:43.040 --> 0:04:45.800 a child, Like there are things that I feel like 0:04:45.839 --> 0:04:49.080 I remember as happening while I was lying in bed 0:04:49.200 --> 0:04:52.560 awake as a kid, But in fact I think they 0:04:52.600 --> 0:04:55.839 probably were some sort of like you know, edge of 0:04:55.880 --> 0:05:01.400 sleep hallucination, hypnogogic or hypnopompic hallucination, uh, dreams bleeding over 0:05:01.440 --> 0:05:04.760 into wakefulness. But that it's it's hard to sort out 0:05:04.800 --> 0:05:07.720 what's what at that age. Yeah, And I would say, 0:05:07.760 --> 0:05:10.080 prior to this week, if you really put me to 0:05:10.160 --> 0:05:12.800 task on on what that experience was I had as 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:15.080 a kid, I would have probably leaned on on the 0:05:15.279 --> 0:05:18.880 you know, hypnogogic explanation of for what was happening. You know, 0:05:18.920 --> 0:05:21.840 like I was somewhere between wakefulness and sleep, and therefore 0:05:22.040 --> 0:05:27.120 my mind was susceptible to this kind of semi paranormal experience. 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:30.599 And these kind of experiences are super common, by the way. 0:05:30.640 --> 0:05:34.720 That's nothing especially like pathological about them, right, Yeah, So 0:05:34.760 --> 0:05:36.160 you know, I also don't want to make it sound 0:05:36.160 --> 0:05:38.560 like this like shaped me as an experience, you know. 0:05:39.960 --> 0:05:43.920 S Yeah, like I continue to watch Sanford the Sun 0:05:44.000 --> 0:05:46.800 after it. Clearly it didn't. It didn't affect me in 0:05:46.839 --> 0:05:50.720 that capacity. No night terror can make Red Fox unfunny. 0:05:52.080 --> 0:05:54.640 Uh So so that was that was, you know, my 0:05:54.720 --> 0:06:00.440 life up until this week, uh, Wednesday, March. I then 0:06:00.520 --> 0:06:04.240 experienced what we're basically four of these in a single day. 0:06:04.800 --> 0:06:07.920 So I can I can kind of explain two of them, 0:06:07.920 --> 0:06:11.159 I guess. Um. So I've been I've been obsessed with 0:06:11.200 --> 0:06:15.400 Peter Lori this week, you know, the famed actor. Um. 0:06:15.440 --> 0:06:17.440 And I've been feeding that obsession, you know, to try 0:06:17.480 --> 0:06:19.919 and get my mind off of more stressful matters. And 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.440 I was in the in the process of actually responding 0:06:22.480 --> 0:06:25.760 to an email to you, Joe about we had a 0:06:25.920 --> 0:06:28.840 slight sort back and forth about the ninety six movie 0:06:28.920 --> 0:06:31.560 Mad Love, which I have not seen, but I've been 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:33.680 meaning to see for years because it has one of 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:36.400 the best trailers of all time, Like the the two 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:39.560 minute long trailer for this movie is more entertaining than 0:06:39.640 --> 0:06:43.880 most entire movies. It's got Peter Lorie sitting on the 0:06:43.920 --> 0:06:47.000 couch at his house and he's got this giant dog 0:06:47.120 --> 0:06:49.520 next to him, this bigger than he is. And then 0:06:49.520 --> 0:06:52.279 he gets a phone call from beautiful actress to like 0:06:52.320 --> 0:06:54.800 tell him what a wonderful actor he is. And then 0:06:54.800 --> 0:06:57.960 he starts explaining the new movie he's in, and it's 0:06:58.040 --> 0:07:00.159 Mad Love the movie that this is a trailer or 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.800 fo yeah, and it's it's a wild movie. Um, I 0:07:03.800 --> 0:07:05.960 feel like it doesn't. It doesn't. It's not remembered as 0:07:06.000 --> 0:07:07.960 well as it should be. It has so many bizarre 0:07:08.040 --> 0:07:12.960 elements in it. There's there's knife throwing, there's their hand transplants, 0:07:12.960 --> 0:07:16.520 there's tragic mad scientists love stories. We gotta come back 0:07:16.520 --> 0:07:19.160 and do this as a as a full movie episode sometime. 0:07:19.440 --> 0:07:22.200 It's got the line in the trailer, a poor peasant 0:07:22.280 --> 0:07:26.800 have conquered science. Why can't I conquer love? Yes, it's 0:07:26.840 --> 0:07:29.880 such a great moment. But but in our email, you 0:07:30.000 --> 0:07:35.160 specifically mentioned a face that Peter Lare makes when uh, 0:07:35.200 --> 0:07:39.000 when when a previous film is mentioned to him, And 0:07:39.000 --> 0:07:41.040 and it was weird. When I was about to respond 0:07:41.080 --> 0:07:43.440 to that, I was like gonna type, and then suddenly 0:07:43.480 --> 0:07:45.320 I had like this kind of like mash up in 0:07:45.360 --> 0:07:49.880 my head, like a memory of his face in that trailer, 0:07:50.160 --> 0:07:53.120 and then kind of this this the fact that Laura 0:07:53.400 --> 0:07:55.360 is deceased, I don't know, just kind of like as 0:07:55.360 --> 0:07:57.320 if they were kind of floating in my head. And 0:07:57.360 --> 0:08:02.080 I suddenly had this just this czar deja vou like 0:08:02.200 --> 0:08:04.880 experience that was like really overwhelming, and I had to 0:08:04.960 --> 0:08:06.520 I had to get up, and I had to go 0:08:06.520 --> 0:08:10.560 go lay down. And then uh, there was a just 0:08:10.640 --> 0:08:13.200 a little later in the day, I I had another 0:08:13.240 --> 0:08:15.480 experience like that. Again. I was at a computer. I 0:08:15.520 --> 0:08:18.120 was looking over some of the telescool activities that my 0:08:18.160 --> 0:08:20.480 son had done in Google classroom, and I was making 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:23.080 sure that everything was checked off, and it was like 0:08:23.160 --> 0:08:25.960 checked off in two different places, and you know, this 0:08:26.080 --> 0:08:29.360 juggling act of like eight different learning apps. And then 0:08:29.400 --> 0:08:32.680 suddenly I have this jagged chunk of deja vu like 0:08:32.800 --> 0:08:37.240 mental energy that, um, though quite vague this time, felt 0:08:37.320 --> 0:08:40.679 like a fragment from some old TV show, maybe Carol 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:42.600 Burnett or something. If I had to guess, but I 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:45.400 but I really that would be just guessing and like 0:08:45.480 --> 0:08:48.760 reshaping the memory. But again it hit me so hard 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:49.960 that I had to get up. I had to go 0:08:50.000 --> 0:08:52.480 into another room. I like, I could feel my um, 0:08:53.480 --> 0:08:56.000 it felt like a like an anxiety attack, and I 0:08:56.040 --> 0:08:58.040 had to I had to, I had to lay down 0:08:58.120 --> 0:08:59.560 for a little bit. And then in both of those 0:08:59.600 --> 0:09:01.600 cases when I when I laid down, there was kind 0:09:01.600 --> 0:09:04.640 of an echo of the initial experience where I had 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.720 like kind of another one and um and and then 0:09:07.760 --> 0:09:11.280 I was fine. But it was really weird to to 0:09:11.280 --> 0:09:14.880 to experience that, especially having not really experienced anything like 0:09:15.040 --> 0:09:17.400 that since I was a kid. All right, So I'm 0:09:17.400 --> 0:09:19.720 trying to sort out the elements of what it is 0:09:19.760 --> 0:09:23.199 you're describing here. So you're saying that there was there 0:09:23.240 --> 0:09:27.360 was an element of like sudden onset overwhelming anxiety, but 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:31.559 also uh, sort of some mental imagery and a feeling 0:09:31.640 --> 0:09:35.520 of deja vu, like familiarity with whatever thoughts were currently 0:09:35.679 --> 0:09:38.680 entering your mind. Is that it right? Yeah? And And 0:09:39.720 --> 0:09:41.880 while the first one, the one with Peter LORI did 0:09:41.880 --> 0:09:43.959 have I guess there was some sort of contemplation of 0:09:44.320 --> 0:09:45.920 death in there, I guess, And and so that one 0:09:45.960 --> 0:09:48.120 was a little loaded, but but the other one had 0:09:48.200 --> 0:09:51.079 no like nightmare imagery. It was just kind of like 0:09:51.120 --> 0:09:54.480 a bit of TV shrapnel. And actually I had I 0:09:54.520 --> 0:09:57.280 had one more last night where I was just making 0:09:57.280 --> 0:09:59.679 I was making a drink. I was like, like making 0:09:59.800 --> 0:10:02.320 us some sort of tiki cocktail, uh, standing in the 0:10:02.360 --> 0:10:04.200 same place they normally do, and then there was just 0:10:04.240 --> 0:10:08.360 some sort of nondescript image, uh that that that gave 0:10:08.400 --> 0:10:11.360 me a similar sensation, and that passed. So you've had 0:10:11.800 --> 0:10:15.800 So these are like multiple instances of deja vu like 0:10:15.960 --> 0:10:19.200 experience in the course of a couple of days. How 0:10:19.280 --> 0:10:21.800 common is that for you? Normally? Would you say that 0:10:22.400 --> 0:10:24.520 you have a feeling of deja vu? Maybe once a 0:10:24.640 --> 0:10:28.880 year more or less. It's an interesting question because it's 0:10:28.880 --> 0:10:30.600 a question that definitely comes up in some of the 0:10:30.600 --> 0:10:32.920 studies that we're gonna look at where they ask people 0:10:32.960 --> 0:10:35.760 how how many deja experiences do you have? Is it, 0:10:36.160 --> 0:10:38.000 you know, once a week, a couple of times a month. 0:10:38.520 --> 0:10:42.480 I'd be really hard pressed to say, because normally when 0:10:42.520 --> 0:10:46.960 I have deja vu, it is so mild and uninteresting. 0:10:47.040 --> 0:10:48.760 It's just kind of like, huh, that's a bit of 0:10:48.840 --> 0:10:51.440 deja vu, and then I move on, you know, like 0:10:51.520 --> 0:10:55.480 it's never like this. So I would if I would 0:10:55.480 --> 0:10:58.280 to to to take just a wild guess, I'd say 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:03.480 maybe maybe, like once every couple of months. That that 0:11:03.520 --> 0:11:05.880 sounds about right for me. Maybe a little bit less 0:11:05.880 --> 0:11:08.520 frequently now for me. I one thing I've noticed, and 0:11:08.559 --> 0:11:10.760 this is going to line up absolutely with some of 0:11:10.800 --> 0:11:14.240 the research we look at later. I definitely feel like 0:11:14.280 --> 0:11:18.480 I got deja vu like experiences much more often when 0:11:18.520 --> 0:11:21.880 I was a young child. UM, when I was younger. 0:11:22.040 --> 0:11:24.280 I I think I may have actually mentioned this on 0:11:24.320 --> 0:11:28.440 the show before. I have one very specific instance of 0:11:28.640 --> 0:11:31.760 deja vu like feelings that stand out in my memory, UM, 0:11:31.800 --> 0:11:34.800 and it was when I was a kid. I don't 0:11:34.840 --> 0:11:37.400 remember what age, but you know, I was young enough 0:11:37.400 --> 0:11:39.240 to be playing out in the front yard with friends. 0:11:39.320 --> 0:11:41.360 I think we were like running around, chasing each other 0:11:41.400 --> 0:11:44.000 with sticks and stuff. And there was a low hanging 0:11:44.040 --> 0:11:46.880 branch that was coming off of a tree hanging over 0:11:46.920 --> 0:11:49.560 our front yard, and I guess I was distracted. I 0:11:49.640 --> 0:11:51.520 was looking back at a friend of mine or something, 0:11:51.520 --> 0:11:53.720 and I turned around and I ran into this low 0:11:53.760 --> 0:11:56.679 hanging branch and hit my face. I think I ended 0:11:56.760 --> 0:11:59.640 up getting a black eye from running into the branch. 0:12:00.320 --> 0:12:05.040 And right then I had this powerful sensation like this 0:12:05.160 --> 0:12:08.040 is all happened before. He was standing right there where 0:12:08.040 --> 0:12:10.160 he was and I was here and I ran into 0:12:10.200 --> 0:12:12.320 the branch, and it was this time of day, this 0:12:12.400 --> 0:12:15.400 time of year. And I never knew how to make 0:12:15.400 --> 0:12:16.960 sense of that when I was a kid, because like, 0:12:17.400 --> 0:12:20.520 I think I pretty quickly understood that, like, no, this 0:12:20.559 --> 0:12:24.440 has not actually happened before. I even as a child, 0:12:24.520 --> 0:12:27.080 I don't think I attached any kind of magical significance 0:12:27.120 --> 0:12:29.680 to it, Like I didn't think that I was clairvoyant 0:12:29.840 --> 0:12:32.280 or something. It was just very odd. I was like, 0:12:32.360 --> 0:12:34.640 why do I feel like this exact thing happened before 0:12:34.679 --> 0:12:37.480 when I know it didn't. Yeah, the the stat about 0:12:37.760 --> 0:12:40.520 it occurring more when you're younger definitely comes up, which, 0:12:40.880 --> 0:12:44.079 of course it doesn't really help me out explaining this 0:12:44.520 --> 0:12:48.200 because I'm what forty one now, and it seems like 0:12:48.240 --> 0:12:51.360 I should have had the bulk of this earlier on um. 0:12:51.600 --> 0:12:53.520 But but I mean that's just on average. I mean, 0:12:53.559 --> 0:12:55.960 everybody's different. Some people have it much more frequently than 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.920 other people do. I'd say it's pretty rare for me now. 0:12:58.960 --> 0:13:01.559 I think I probably it at least a few times 0:13:01.600 --> 0:13:04.959 a year. Well after after I had these experiences, I 0:13:05.120 --> 0:13:07.280 I you know, I initially asked, well, what's a different right, 0:13:07.280 --> 0:13:11.040 That's what you you can always uh, you know, use 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:15.040 trying to deduct right things that are that are different 0:13:15.080 --> 0:13:18.360 this week. Yeah, yeah, I mean, first of all, it's 0:13:18.400 --> 0:13:20.960 I thought, well, maybe there's this panicky aspect to it. 0:13:20.960 --> 0:13:23.000 Maybe I had two innch of coffee, but no, it's 0:13:23.040 --> 0:13:26.120 a usual amount of coffee for the day. I thought, maybe, 0:13:26.240 --> 0:13:29.360 you know, had something to do with steering at screens 0:13:29.400 --> 0:13:31.720 too much because I was working, you know, at my 0:13:31.760 --> 0:13:33.959 own laptop and then having to go in and help 0:13:34.000 --> 0:13:37.559 my son with his laptop. But I dismissed that pretty 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:39.400 quickly as well, because it seems like the connection to 0:13:39.800 --> 0:13:42.840 some sort of anxiety was unavoidable. Because, you know, while 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:45.320 while my family and I are objectively you know, lucky 0:13:45.360 --> 0:13:47.680 and fortunate compared to plenty of other people going through 0:13:47.720 --> 0:13:52.200 COVID nineteen, social distancing, shelter and place mandates or actual 0:13:52.320 --> 0:13:54.600 you know illness, there there are a lot of things 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:56.679 to be anxious about right now. I mean, there's the 0:13:56.720 --> 0:14:01.240 pandemic itself, local individual, national response is to it, household 0:14:01.240 --> 0:14:05.520 protocols to stay safe, my son's tell us schooling, my 0:14:05.559 --> 0:14:09.079 own attempts to make my work function remotely, trying to 0:14:09.120 --> 0:14:12.520 follow the World Health Organization recommendations to only check the 0:14:12.559 --> 0:14:15.120 news once or twice a day, that sort of thing. Yeah, 0:14:15.160 --> 0:14:17.840 how's that going? I think I'm I'm still exceeding the 0:14:17.880 --> 0:14:21.240 recommended dosage of news per day, but it is helping 0:14:21.280 --> 0:14:24.240 me cut down a bit. Uh. And and like some 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.240 of the times when I'll reach for my phone to 0:14:26.680 --> 0:14:29.000 look at the news, I will put it down instead. 0:14:29.120 --> 0:14:33.040 So I think that's it's some advice to take to heart. Yeah, 0:14:33.240 --> 0:14:35.440 I feel like looking up that stats, it's like looking 0:14:35.520 --> 0:14:37.560 up you know, like how many alcoholic drinks are you 0:14:37.600 --> 0:14:40.880 supposed to have a day. It's like yeah, uh, it's 0:14:40.920 --> 0:14:43.760 like maybe if you find yourself googling that, it's it's 0:14:43.800 --> 0:14:48.720 worth considering that you should consume less. Yeah, exactly. Um. 0:14:49.000 --> 0:14:52.920 Another another bit of of infoll throw out on the anxiety. 0:14:53.080 --> 0:14:55.360 Uh part of it is that I know on Wednesday 0:14:56.040 --> 0:14:59.080 I did go on a walk, but otherwise I didn't 0:14:59.080 --> 0:15:01.960 really leave my front porch or my house, and I 0:15:02.040 --> 0:15:04.160 ended up not doing yoga or any other kind of 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:08.240 mindfulness exercise that day. Um, so that could have also 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.600 been a factor. It's like, well, I did less to 0:15:11.120 --> 0:15:13.400 sort of get out of the default mode network and 0:15:13.440 --> 0:15:16.600 to escape panic that day. Uh. So maybe I was 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:20.000 more susceptible to it. Yesterday I did do yoga um 0:15:20.400 --> 0:15:25.440 and only had one of these episodes. So uh, you know, again, 0:15:25.480 --> 0:15:27.360 I think that supports the idea that, well, there's something 0:15:27.400 --> 0:15:30.480 going on here with anxiety, right, And and to be sure, 0:15:30.520 --> 0:15:33.680 I can be an anxious person in the best of circumstances, 0:15:33.760 --> 0:15:36.160 and I've gone through, you know, some stressful times in 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:39.560 my life without having any episodes like this before. But 0:15:39.600 --> 0:15:41.920 I thought, well, maybe this is kind of the accumulation 0:15:41.920 --> 0:15:44.520 of things, right, death by a thousand cuts. Right, There's 0:15:44.560 --> 0:15:47.440 just all these little things and some extra things to 0:15:47.480 --> 0:15:49.880 be anxious about, and it kind of builds up. Yeah, 0:15:50.080 --> 0:15:53.560 that kind of doesn't make sense for having anomalous I 0:15:53.600 --> 0:15:56.800 don't know types of mental phenomena. But then again, one 0:15:56.840 --> 0:15:59.120 thing that strikes me is interesting about this is that 0:15:59.360 --> 0:16:06.560 I don't formally associate deja vu like sensations with anxiety. Yeah. 0:16:06.960 --> 0:16:08.960 I had not really either, because again I didn't I 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:11.320 had never really thought of of that experience for my 0:16:11.400 --> 0:16:14.520 childhood as being really connected to deja vu. But but 0:16:14.600 --> 0:16:17.240 after these, uh, these experiences on Wednesday, I started doing 0:16:17.280 --> 0:16:20.480 a few searches looking around, and indeed a quick glance 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:24.360 around the internet for deja vu panic attacks indeed turned 0:16:24.440 --> 0:16:27.000 up some hits like there was someone on an epilepsy 0:16:27.040 --> 0:16:31.120 website with a post titled deja Vu slash panic attacks 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:35.320 very tired of being undiagnosed. Another health board nightmarish deja 0:16:35.400 --> 0:16:38.960 vu and anxiety attacks. What's going on? Um? And in 0:16:39.000 --> 0:16:41.040 both of these posts people responding with like, yeah, I 0:16:41.040 --> 0:16:43.120 get this too. Uh, I hate it when this happens, 0:16:43.160 --> 0:16:45.880 that sort of thing. And granted, we're talking about message 0:16:45.880 --> 0:16:49.000 boards where people are, you know, engaging in varying degrees 0:16:49.040 --> 0:16:52.800 of self self diagnosis, et cetera. But it was enough 0:16:52.800 --> 0:16:54.720 to make me think, well, maybe there is more to this. 0:16:55.000 --> 0:16:58.000 And and uh, you know, I I've never really researched 0:16:58.120 --> 0:17:01.160 deja vu itself all that much, so I should look 0:17:01.160 --> 0:17:04.359 a little deeper. So in these episodes, that's what we 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:06.480 thought we'd do. We take a little time to explore 0:17:06.880 --> 0:17:10.720 deja vu and to explore the connection between deja vu 0:17:10.880 --> 0:17:14.880 and anxiety and deja vu and dreams. All right, well, 0:17:14.920 --> 0:17:16.920 then maybe we should take a quick break and then 0:17:16.920 --> 0:17:19.359 when we come back, we can dive into the memory fog. 0:17:21.000 --> 0:17:26.720 Thank thank alright, we're back deja vu. Uh, a term 0:17:26.720 --> 0:17:29.440 that I guess most people are familiar with, but you 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:32.359 might not. You might not necessarily be able to define 0:17:32.400 --> 0:17:34.960 it off the top of your head. Um, you should 0:17:34.960 --> 0:17:37.600 probably just talk about what it means, right, So deja 0:17:37.680 --> 0:17:41.760 vu comes from the French. It literally means already seen. Uh. Now, 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.879 there are actually a number of different terms for similar, 0:17:46.080 --> 0:17:49.919 overlapping experiences that often kind of get blended together and 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:53.639 blurred together. For example, there's another term that's sometimes used. 0:17:53.840 --> 0:17:57.720 It's deja vit coup, which means already lived. And so 0:17:58.200 --> 0:18:00.200 there's like a lot of things that we call old 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:04.200 deja vu meaning already seen or probably you know, probably 0:18:04.240 --> 0:18:07.359 could be categorized as deja viku, meaning like I've already 0:18:07.359 --> 0:18:10.600 been through this situation or I've already lived at this moment. Yeah, 0:18:10.600 --> 0:18:13.800 they're they're about like twenty different variations of this and 0:18:13.960 --> 0:18:16.000 uh and I'll get to some more of them in 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:20.120 the second episode of this series. Yes, But basically, whatever 0:18:20.200 --> 0:18:24.520 it is, deja vu, deja viku, uh, it means that 0:18:24.560 --> 0:18:28.240 you are having some kind of experience of a stimulus. 0:18:28.240 --> 0:18:31.240 You're looking at something, you're hearing something, you're feeling something, 0:18:31.280 --> 0:18:34.399 you're going through a situation, and you suddenly get the 0:18:34.480 --> 0:18:37.879 feeling that this has already happened. I've already seen that, 0:18:38.000 --> 0:18:40.919 or I've already been here, this has happened sometime in 0:18:40.920 --> 0:18:44.760 my past, despite evidence to the contrary that like, you're 0:18:44.800 --> 0:18:47.920 not seeing something you've already seen, you're not living through 0:18:47.960 --> 0:18:51.960 a moment that has already happened. I feel very confident that, 0:18:52.000 --> 0:18:54.000 you know, in my in my experience as a child, 0:18:54.040 --> 0:18:56.600 that I had not already been playing with those same 0:18:56.600 --> 0:18:58.960 friends and run into a branch and gotten a black 0:18:58.960 --> 0:19:01.439 eye and all that. For some reason I felt like 0:19:01.520 --> 0:19:07.000 I had. Yeah. Likewise, my childhood experience was it was 0:19:07.040 --> 0:19:09.520 again not that the feeling that there was an actual 0:19:09.640 --> 0:19:12.200 voice in the room with me. It wasn't It wasn't 0:19:12.320 --> 0:19:15.600 like that. It was just this feeling that, you know, 0:19:15.680 --> 0:19:18.720 the terror was associated with the fact that I didn't 0:19:18.760 --> 0:19:21.679 understand like what the sensation came from, not that it 0:19:21.760 --> 0:19:25.200 was real. I guess with your original sensation as a child. 0:19:25.280 --> 0:19:28.640 There's another level of complexity though, and that'll get into 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.080 stuff we'll talk about more in the second episode, with 0:19:31.160 --> 0:19:34.479 ideas like de jaureev which do you like that? How 0:19:34.520 --> 0:19:36.679 I said that French word? Oh yeah, you hit the 0:19:36.680 --> 0:19:42.280 fresh nicely on that, which means already dreamed. So like 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:45.120 there are some cases where you're not even experiencing real 0:19:45.320 --> 0:19:48.400 external stimuli. You know, it would be like I already 0:19:48.440 --> 0:19:51.040 had this experience as a dream. But then maybe the 0:19:51.080 --> 0:19:55.480 current experience isn't is just an imaginative moment. So it 0:19:55.520 --> 0:19:58.199 can get very complicated in meta um. But I mean, 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:02.960 especially since just the the vast differences that are possible 0:20:03.080 --> 0:20:06.360 from from brain to brain, from mind to mind. Um, 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:07.879 That's kind of the sense I get from a lot 0:20:07.920 --> 0:20:10.280 of this research is that when you're dealing with the 0:20:10.640 --> 0:20:14.800 basic broad deja vu experience, uh, you know, one size 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:16.760 is not gonna fit all. Like, it seems like it's 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.320 going to be a slightly different experience, slightly different frequency, 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:24.880 depending on the individual and the current state of the individual. Right, 0:20:24.920 --> 0:20:28.119 I would maybe categorize all of this stuff under an 0:20:28.200 --> 0:20:32.040 umbrella that we could just call anomalous familiarity, a sense 0:20:32.080 --> 0:20:35.199 of familiarity with something that you have no reason to 0:20:35.240 --> 0:20:38.600 be familiar with. So credit for the term deja vu 0:20:38.720 --> 0:20:42.400 is usually given to a French philosopher, writer, and parapsychologist 0:20:42.560 --> 0:20:46.240 named Amil warrock Uh. He used the term in a 0:20:46.320 --> 0:20:48.760 letter to the editor of an academic journal in eighteen 0:20:48.800 --> 0:20:51.480 seventy six. Though I do not think Barak made a 0:20:51.520 --> 0:20:54.840 distinction from what I can tell, between deja vu is 0:20:54.880 --> 0:20:59.720 like a normal psychological phenomenon versus the supposed psychic power 0:20:59.800 --> 0:21:03.119 of clairvoyants. And this is something that comes up a 0:21:03.119 --> 0:21:06.520 bit throughout the history of research on deja vu. Um. 0:21:06.760 --> 0:21:11.000 I think it's more recently that deja vu has been 0:21:11.880 --> 0:21:14.560 has gotten a lot of attention as a like just 0:21:14.920 --> 0:21:19.280 serious subjective phenomenon, as opposed to people looking at it 0:21:19.320 --> 0:21:23.280 trying to find evidence that it's like literal precognition. It's weird, 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:26.720 isn't that. This this kind of idea about deja vu 0:21:26.840 --> 0:21:30.240 is really reflected in the Matrix movies, remember where uh, 0:21:30.560 --> 0:21:32.720 if you see a black cat twice or whatever, it's 0:21:32.760 --> 0:21:35.000 just a glitch in the matrix and it's not really treated. 0:21:35.080 --> 0:21:37.040 It's not really a major plot point. It's just kind 0:21:37.040 --> 0:21:41.640 of like, huh, isn't that interesting? Uh? Nothing, you should 0:21:41.840 --> 0:21:45.640 waste your time with neo just to keep keep on course. Well, 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:47.280 you could look at that two different ways. You could 0:21:47.320 --> 0:21:49.560 look at that as like, oh, it's just a little thing, 0:21:49.920 --> 0:21:52.600 or you could also look at it as at least 0:21:52.600 --> 0:21:55.920 in the Matrix movies, it is giving you real information 0:21:55.960 --> 0:21:59.280 about the external world. And oh, and one thing that 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:01.800 we will come back too is there are some theories 0:22:01.800 --> 0:22:04.520 of deja vu in which the experience of deja vu 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:07.959 is giving you some real information about the external world. 0:22:08.240 --> 0:22:11.199 But it's not clairvoyant or precognitive. You're not having the 0:22:11.200 --> 0:22:14.159 sensation because you actually saw the future from the past. 0:22:14.760 --> 0:22:17.200 It's more likely having to do with the brains straining 0:22:17.240 --> 0:22:20.560 to connect memories that that may not be exactly how 0:22:20.600 --> 0:22:23.919 they feel. Yeah, but one thing that I found was 0:22:23.960 --> 0:22:26.359 interesting is that before it was fully described and named 0:22:26.359 --> 0:22:30.080 in the clinical or scientific context, deja vu was observed 0:22:30.080 --> 0:22:33.399 by a number of authors and poets throughout history. Yeah. 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:35.520 I was reading a little bit about this from the 0:22:35.600 --> 0:22:39.199 deja vu researcher Art Funk. Howser will come back to 0:22:39.240 --> 0:22:41.320 some of his some of some work that he was 0:22:41.359 --> 0:22:44.320 involved with the paper that he was a co author on. Yeah, 0:22:44.600 --> 0:22:47.040 a little bit later. Uh, but but he pointed out 0:22:47.040 --> 0:22:50.440 a few different early examples. Uh. One of the earliest, 0:22:50.480 --> 0:22:53.840 I think the earliest that he identified, Well, he's pointing 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:57.000 to the writings of St. Augustine, but to understand what 0:22:57.080 --> 0:22:59.720 Augustine's critiquing. You have to go back to the Roman 0:22:59.720 --> 0:23:03.840 poem uh Avid, who lived forty three b C. Through 0:23:03.880 --> 0:23:08.040 seventeen C. So Avid had written about the human soul 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:12.120 is a thing quote deathless and ever quote when they 0:23:12.160 --> 0:23:15.080 have left their former seat, do they live in new 0:23:15.119 --> 0:23:18.640 abodes and dwell in the bodies that have received them? 0:23:19.040 --> 0:23:22.119 So all of it is getting into ideas of precognition 0:23:22.280 --> 0:23:25.600 and more specifically the survival of the human soul. So a. 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:29.280 It is not talking about deja vu here, but what 0:23:29.560 --> 0:23:32.879 he's talking about like basically the idea of reincarnation, about 0:23:32.880 --> 0:23:36.199 the soul passing from one life to the next. Uh So, 0:23:36.320 --> 0:23:40.480 three hundred years later, St. Augustine is critiquing of its 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:44.560 words and he writes the following quote for we must 0:23:44.640 --> 0:23:49.520 not acquiesce in their story. Who assert that as Samian 0:23:49.640 --> 0:23:53.840 Pythagoras recollected some things which he experienced when he was 0:23:53.880 --> 0:23:57.399 previously here in another body, and others that they experienced 0:23:57.400 --> 0:24:00.199 something of the same sort in their minds. But it 0:24:00.240 --> 0:24:04.760 may be conjectured that these were untrue recollections, such as 0:24:04.760 --> 0:24:08.640 we commonly experience in sleep when we fancy we remember, 0:24:08.920 --> 0:24:11.280 as though we had done it or seen it what 0:24:11.400 --> 0:24:14.720 we never did or saw at all, And that the 0:24:14.800 --> 0:24:18.040 minds of these persons, even though awake, were affected in 0:24:18.080 --> 0:24:21.480 this way at the suggestion of malignant and deep deceitful 0:24:21.520 --> 0:24:25.080 spirits whose care it is to confirm or to sow 0:24:25.160 --> 0:24:29.600 some false belief concerning the changes of souls in order 0:24:29.640 --> 0:24:34.160 to deceive men. And that is from Augustine's on the Trinity. 0:24:34.280 --> 0:24:38.879 Uh so, so basically he's he's saying, okay, of it is, uh, 0:24:39.000 --> 0:24:40.600 you know, don't listen of it because he might just 0:24:40.640 --> 0:24:43.080 be talking about this thing that we have all have 0:24:43.160 --> 0:24:47.760 some experience with. And funk howser saying that that Augustine 0:24:47.880 --> 0:24:51.560 is is probably talking about deja vu. Here. Yeah, I 0:24:51.600 --> 0:24:55.000 found another great example by the British poet Alfred Lord Tennyson, 0:24:55.119 --> 0:24:58.199 who wrote a poem around eighteen thirty three or eighteen 0:24:58.280 --> 0:25:02.679 thirty four called The Two Voices. Uh. This poem was 0:25:02.720 --> 0:25:06.200 written during a period of just deep misery and despair 0:25:06.280 --> 0:25:09.560 for Tennyson. The basic form it takes is of an 0:25:09.600 --> 0:25:14.119 internal argument between two parts of himself about whether or 0:25:14.160 --> 0:25:18.080 not to commit suicide, which he describes saying, quote, pain 0:25:18.240 --> 0:25:22.119 rises up old pleasures Paul, there is one remedy for 0:25:22.200 --> 0:25:25.080 it all. It's actually very similar in many ways to 0:25:25.160 --> 0:25:27.439 the famous to be or Not to be soliloquy from 0:25:27.480 --> 0:25:31.720 hamlet Um. It's certainly one of Tennyson's darkest works, but 0:25:31.920 --> 0:25:35.200 there's a lot of strange beauty and insight in this 0:25:35.280 --> 0:25:38.800 passage where he discusses the sensation of false memory, which 0:25:38.840 --> 0:25:41.760 did not yet have the name deja vu h. So 0:25:41.880 --> 0:25:46.000 Tennyson writes much more, if first I floated free as 0:25:46.119 --> 0:25:50.600 naked essence, must I be incompetent of memory for memory 0:25:50.720 --> 0:25:54.240 dealing but with time and he with matter? Could she 0:25:54.400 --> 0:25:59.359 climb beyond her own material prime? Moreover, something is or 0:25:59.440 --> 0:26:03.760 seems that touches me with mystic gleams, like glimpses of 0:26:03.800 --> 0:26:08.800 forgotten dreams, of something felt like something here, of something 0:26:08.880 --> 0:26:12.400 done I know not where such has no language. May 0:26:12.400 --> 0:26:15.600 declare that's nice. I also I am. I don't know 0:26:15.640 --> 0:26:17.160 if I'm alone here, but I feel like you could 0:26:17.200 --> 0:26:20.399 probably drop a beat behind Tennyson and it would have 0:26:20.520 --> 0:26:23.720 some serious flow to it. There's another one from British 0:26:23.720 --> 0:26:26.560 poetry that I found. It's kind of on a happier occasion, 0:26:26.640 --> 0:26:29.520 though it's by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and he manages to 0:26:29.560 --> 0:26:32.400 take the happy occasion of a poem and and go 0:26:32.480 --> 0:26:35.240 in very dark places with it. But anyway, this is 0:26:35.520 --> 0:26:39.000 from a sonnet by Cole Ridge called composed on a 0:26:39.080 --> 0:26:42.359 journey homeward, the author having received intelligence of the birth 0:26:42.400 --> 0:26:47.840 of a son. He begins by about it exactly, I 0:26:47.880 --> 0:26:51.399 love it, But he writes, um off to or my 0:26:51.520 --> 0:26:55.159 brain does that strange fancy roll which makes the present 0:26:55.320 --> 0:26:58.639 while the flash doth last seem a mere semblance of 0:26:58.680 --> 0:27:03.480 some unknown past. And then one more. Charles Dickens writes 0:27:03.480 --> 0:27:07.520 about it in pretty straightforwardly in in his novel David Copperfield, 0:27:07.760 --> 0:27:10.600 he writes, we have all some experience of a feeling 0:27:10.600 --> 0:27:13.800 which comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying 0:27:13.840 --> 0:27:16.600 and doing having been said or done before in a 0:27:16.680 --> 0:27:21.320 remote time, of our having been surrounded dim ages ago 0:27:21.760 --> 0:27:25.879 by the same faces, objects and circumstances, of our knowing 0:27:26.000 --> 0:27:28.960 perfectly what will be said next, as if we suddenly 0:27:29.000 --> 0:27:32.600 remembered it. I like the part about dim ages ago 0:27:32.640 --> 0:27:35.320 because I think that is also a very consistent and 0:27:35.480 --> 0:27:39.640 interesting feature of deja vu experiences, at least in my life, 0:27:39.680 --> 0:27:41.800 and as I've often read about them is so you 0:27:41.920 --> 0:27:46.800 have the incorrect sensation of remembering present events or present 0:27:46.880 --> 0:27:50.520 stimuli from the past, but you can't place it. So 0:27:50.600 --> 0:27:53.800 you don't think like I had an experience like this 0:27:54.000 --> 0:27:57.080 four months ago, or you know, I had an experience 0:27:57.119 --> 0:27:59.919 like this two years ago. It's more like it had 0:28:00.040 --> 0:28:04.240 been in this inaccessible, kind of vague other time, which 0:28:04.280 --> 0:28:06.120 I think maybe the reason that a lot of people 0:28:06.200 --> 0:28:10.199 chalk this up to memory of past lives. Yeah, you 0:28:10.240 --> 0:28:12.960 can definitely see where if you wanted to believe in 0:28:13.040 --> 0:28:15.960 past lives, this is the sort of the sort of 0:28:16.000 --> 0:28:18.240 stuff you could turn to and sort of you know, 0:28:18.320 --> 0:28:22.920 warp into evidence. Um now, Yeah, And indeed, most examples 0:28:22.960 --> 0:28:25.600 that that I mean I've experienced. I think all the 0:28:25.600 --> 0:28:27.960 examples I've experienced have that vagueness to them, and you 0:28:27.960 --> 0:28:30.920 do see that in most of the reporting. However, when 0:28:30.960 --> 0:28:34.960 we eventually turned to the link between deja vu and dreams, 0:28:35.200 --> 0:28:38.400 there are some specific cases where people have a strong 0:28:38.480 --> 0:28:41.840 connection between like the deja vu experience they're having now 0:28:42.200 --> 0:28:46.200 in a specific dream that they remember. Um. So, I 0:28:46.240 --> 0:28:49.600 guess just a reminder that, yeah, with with deja vu experiences, 0:28:49.600 --> 0:28:53.600 with this broad category of DejaVu experiences. There's there's a 0:28:53.640 --> 0:28:56.400 lot of variety and so there even though that the 0:28:56.440 --> 0:29:02.040 trend seems to be towards just you know, the things, 0:29:02.200 --> 0:29:06.280 the damn ages, there are occasions where it doesn't seem 0:29:06.320 --> 0:29:09.360 so dim to the person experiencing it, which is very interesting. 0:29:09.360 --> 0:29:12.160 It makes you wonder what's different about those cases. And 0:29:12.160 --> 0:29:15.000 we'll get into some of that probably in the second episode. Well, 0:29:15.040 --> 0:29:17.320 are you ready to jump into some basic facts and 0:29:17.360 --> 0:29:20.760 findings about deja vu from scientific research? Yeah, let's do it. 0:29:20.880 --> 0:29:23.920 Let's let's just start talking about what we know and 0:29:23.960 --> 0:29:26.680 what some of the theories are regarding the true nature 0:29:26.720 --> 0:29:29.000 of deja vu. All right, let us jump on this 0:29:29.080 --> 0:29:33.240 ghost train. Uh So, first thing is, occasional cases of 0:29:33.280 --> 0:29:37.280 deja vu are very common for neurologically typical people. Deja 0:29:37.360 --> 0:29:39.920 vu as I think we alluded to this earlier, but 0:29:40.040 --> 0:29:42.719 it does not typically a sign of any kind of 0:29:42.760 --> 0:29:47.160 known pathology. It's just pretty common for people to experience it. 0:29:47.200 --> 0:29:52.080 Approximately sixty percent of people report having experience to deja 0:29:52.160 --> 0:29:55.080 vu at some point. Yeah, we're we're of course going 0:29:55.120 --> 0:29:58.400 to hear a lot from listeners about their particular experience 0:29:58.400 --> 0:30:00.400 with deja vu. And I just want to mind you 0:30:00.680 --> 0:30:03.240 if you have not if you were one of these, uh, 0:30:03.280 --> 0:30:05.680 these people that have not experienced deja vu at some 0:30:05.720 --> 0:30:07.800 point in your life, I want to know about that. 0:30:07.960 --> 0:30:10.280 I want to hear what that's like, and then how 0:30:10.320 --> 0:30:15.600 and how you process other people's reportings of of deja Yeah, 0:30:15.640 --> 0:30:19.200 that's interesting. I wonder if I guess it's fairly straightforward 0:30:19.200 --> 0:30:21.320 to explain, so you could know what it was, but 0:30:22.040 --> 0:30:24.520 you might not be able to understand how it feels 0:30:24.640 --> 0:30:27.120 if you've never felt it, even though you could. I mean, 0:30:27.160 --> 0:30:32.120 somebody can explain to you, like what the frequency of 0:30:32.280 --> 0:30:34.200 light of the color red is, but you might not 0:30:34.320 --> 0:30:36.360 really be able to understand it if you've never been 0:30:36.400 --> 0:30:40.959 able to see red. Yeah, because uh, deja vu in particular, 0:30:42.440 --> 0:30:44.760 My take on it is that it it feels at 0:30:44.840 --> 0:30:48.880 least casually weird. You know, every time it happens, it 0:30:48.960 --> 0:30:51.560 is at least notable for a second where like huh, 0:30:51.600 --> 0:30:54.760 well that's that's odd, and then then you move on. Well, No, 0:30:54.920 --> 0:30:57.560 I do think that's interesting because to me, deja vu 0:30:57.680 --> 0:31:03.080 feels inherently weird. It's just weird because you realize that 0:31:03.160 --> 0:31:06.160 it couldn't be correct, Like, it's not just weird because 0:31:06.400 --> 0:31:11.400 you logically recognize the misperception. For me, deja vu feels 0:31:11.520 --> 0:31:15.000 weird the moment you experience it, before you even realize 0:31:15.000 --> 0:31:19.520 anything's wrong. It is accompanied by a strange sensation. See 0:31:19.520 --> 0:31:22.080 that that's interesting because it makes me think of But 0:31:22.200 --> 0:31:26.000 between the two of us, like your, your typical deja 0:31:26.080 --> 0:31:31.440 vu experience might be maybe more intense or at least, uh, 0:31:31.880 --> 0:31:34.280 you end up contemplating it more I don't know than 0:31:34.360 --> 0:31:38.040 than I do. Uh. And then of course the episodes 0:31:38.080 --> 0:31:40.520 like I've had this week are certainly more pronounced than 0:31:40.840 --> 0:31:43.560 than either of these cases. So I don't know. But 0:31:43.680 --> 0:31:46.719 when when I experience like just typical deja vu, it is, 0:31:46.960 --> 0:31:50.440 it is generally just so casual that I might mention 0:31:50.480 --> 0:31:53.120 it if I am, you know, if i'm you know, 0:31:53.120 --> 0:31:55.880 around somebody that I'm close to, But otherwise it's just 0:31:56.080 --> 0:32:00.479 it's like seeing a bird flyover that's fun, like, oh, well, 0:32:00.520 --> 0:32:02.000 there's another bird. I'm not going to point it out 0:32:02.000 --> 0:32:05.320 because it's not a special bird, it's just another bird. Well, 0:32:05.360 --> 0:32:07.680 maybe this is another thing for listeners to tell us about. 0:32:07.920 --> 0:32:10.120 Oh yeah, I would love to hear from them, so 0:32:10.280 --> 0:32:12.800 we know it happens every now and then at least 0:32:12.840 --> 0:32:17.000 pretty frequently to even typical otherwise healthy people. But is 0:32:17.000 --> 0:32:22.520 there any psychological or neurological condition consistently associated with deja vu? 0:32:22.720 --> 0:32:25.520 I would say the answer to this is um. The 0:32:25.600 --> 0:32:28.480 actual evidence for the link might be a little more 0:32:28.560 --> 0:32:32.720 tenuous than has sometimes been suggested, But in the history 0:32:32.760 --> 0:32:35.240 of research on deja vu, there appears to be one 0:32:35.440 --> 0:32:39.560 major answer here, and that is temporal lobe epilepsy or 0:32:39.720 --> 0:32:43.360 t l E. So, temporal lobe epilepsy is characterized by 0:32:43.400 --> 0:32:47.480 focal seizures that begin in the temporal lobe of the brain. 0:32:48.120 --> 0:32:51.440 And the temporal lobe is very important. It's a crucial 0:32:51.480 --> 0:32:53.880 part of the brain that's been associated with major brain 0:32:53.920 --> 0:32:59.040 functions like emotional association, visual and short term memory. Does 0:32:59.040 --> 0:33:03.480 a lot of stuff with memory, like understanding and processing language. 0:33:03.920 --> 0:33:06.640 There's a lot that goes on there. So where does 0:33:06.680 --> 0:33:09.520 the deja Vu come in? Are people with temporal lobe 0:33:09.560 --> 0:33:13.960 epilepsy just more likely to have deja vu experiences? The 0:33:13.960 --> 0:33:17.320 answer there is no. Instead, there is a specific case 0:33:17.560 --> 0:33:21.840 where people with temporal lobe epilepsy tend to report deja vu, 0:33:22.400 --> 0:33:25.520 and that is in what's known as the aura before 0:33:25.560 --> 0:33:28.640 the onset of a seizure, so people with recurrent seizures 0:33:28.680 --> 0:33:33.560 often get this weird combination of feelings right before seizure happens. 0:33:33.600 --> 0:33:36.200 It's it's sometimes described as a kind of like series 0:33:36.240 --> 0:33:41.880 of warning signs. So these might include sudden, unexpected emotions 0:33:41.920 --> 0:33:45.840 like you have elation or fear with no cause. Another 0:33:45.840 --> 0:33:49.320 one might be numbness in parts of the body, weird 0:33:49.480 --> 0:33:53.280 smells or tastes from out of nowhere, like I smell oranges. 0:33:54.040 --> 0:33:57.320 Another one is known as epigastric phenomena. This refers to 0:33:57.400 --> 0:33:59.920 a weird feeling in the abdomen. I've read it some 0:34:00.000 --> 0:34:03.080 times described as a rising feeling, like when you're plummeting 0:34:03.080 --> 0:34:07.560 on a roller coaster. Um epigastric specifically, I think, refers 0:34:07.600 --> 0:34:11.279 to higher up on the abdomen, so very often it's 0:34:11.320 --> 0:34:14.160 like right below the chest, above the stomach, you know, 0:34:14.280 --> 0:34:17.200 right sort of where your solo plexus is. But then finally, 0:34:17.200 --> 0:34:22.000 another recognized symptom of of the aura for temporal lobe 0:34:22.000 --> 0:34:26.920 epilepsy is deja vu, which is interesting, right, yeah, because 0:34:26.920 --> 0:34:30.160 this this makes us look to causes in the brain, 0:34:30.400 --> 0:34:33.239 like like more specifically, it's it's it seems like there 0:34:33.280 --> 0:34:38.319 must be some sort of uh in neurophysical origin for 0:34:38.400 --> 0:34:41.520 what is occurring. Yes, But on the other hand, I 0:34:41.600 --> 0:34:45.000 think we should also acknowledge that deja vu is, as 0:34:45.000 --> 0:34:48.279 we've said, pretty common in people with no otherwise identified 0:34:48.320 --> 0:34:52.280 medical or neurological conditions. Um. And I want to quote 0:34:52.280 --> 0:34:53.920 now from somebody I'm going to be referring to a 0:34:53.960 --> 0:34:57.840 lot throughout this couple of episodes. This is Alan S. Brown, 0:34:58.440 --> 0:35:02.920 who published a big review of of deja vous research 0:35:02.960 --> 0:35:06.560 in two thousand three in the journal Psychological Bulletin. And 0:35:06.600 --> 0:35:08.440 this is an older paper and we will have to 0:35:08.480 --> 0:35:11.440 refer to some more recent ones to supplement it, but 0:35:11.760 --> 0:35:14.680 up to that point, it's a really fantastic review of 0:35:14.719 --> 0:35:18.520 all the research leading up to the early two thousands. Uh. 0:35:18.560 --> 0:35:22.080 And So Brown writes about the association between temporal lobe 0:35:22.120 --> 0:35:26.880 epilepsy and deja vu that despite the fact that it 0:35:27.120 --> 0:35:30.440 is a recognized symptom of a t L a seizure 0:35:30.520 --> 0:35:34.040 on set, deja vu doesn't appear to be more common 0:35:34.200 --> 0:35:37.560 in general in people with epilepsy. Quote. The weight of 0:35:37.600 --> 0:35:40.680 evidence argues against deja vu being more common in people 0:35:40.719 --> 0:35:45.040 with epilepsy or being diagnostic of seizure pathology. So there's 0:35:45.040 --> 0:35:46.719 a couple of things to weigh. They're on one hand, 0:35:46.760 --> 0:35:50.320 it is a recognized feature that a lot of people 0:35:50.400 --> 0:35:54.840 report when they're about to have a temporal lobe epileptic seizure. 0:35:55.000 --> 0:35:57.680 But on the other hand, it doesn't appear that people 0:35:57.680 --> 0:36:02.239 with temporal lobe epilepsy have deja vu more often than 0:36:02.280 --> 0:36:04.960 people in general. And uh yeah, And for for that 0:36:05.000 --> 0:36:06.319 to make sense, I have to do is just think 0:36:06.360 --> 0:36:09.400 back to some of these other symptoms uh we were listing, 0:36:09.680 --> 0:36:12.360 uh that are part of the TLA. Like, none of 0:36:12.360 --> 0:36:16.520 these other symptoms are things that are exclusive to people 0:36:16.680 --> 0:36:20.960 that are experiencing uh, epileptic seizures or anything. Uh So 0:36:21.239 --> 0:36:24.400 it's just deja vu is thrown in the mix, but 0:36:24.520 --> 0:36:28.319 it's not exclusive to people with this condition, right uh now, 0:36:28.400 --> 0:36:30.919 deja vu appears to be that this is one that 0:36:30.920 --> 0:36:33.719 that does look pretty solid in in the research. It 0:36:33.800 --> 0:36:38.560 is associated with stress and fatigue. You are more likely 0:36:38.600 --> 0:36:41.399 to have an episode of deja vu when you are 0:36:41.520 --> 0:36:44.719 tired and when you are agitated and you've got your 0:36:44.719 --> 0:36:48.960 stress hormones you're pumping your no adrenaline and cortisol. And 0:36:49.000 --> 0:36:51.719 this is interesting because I wonder how I mean it's 0:36:51.719 --> 0:36:54.160 not exactly the same thing as Robert. You're talking about 0:36:54.200 --> 0:36:59.399 your experience with UH sudden anxiety producing episodes of deja vu. 0:36:59.520 --> 0:37:02.000 But it makes me wonder if there's some kind of 0:37:02.040 --> 0:37:04.840 connection here. Yeah, I mean, when I ran across the 0:37:04.880 --> 0:37:08.040 same information, I I lined it up with what I 0:37:08.160 --> 0:37:11.839 had experienced, and Okay, you know, obviously there's the stress level, 0:37:11.880 --> 0:37:15.120 which I've already touched on, but also, um, all the 0:37:15.160 --> 0:37:19.320 experiences I had were in the afternoon or the early evening. 0:37:19.640 --> 0:37:21.879 They were not in the morning. You know, I did 0:37:21.880 --> 0:37:24.520 not experience them like when I in the first few 0:37:24.560 --> 0:37:27.120 hours after waking up or anything like that. So it's 0:37:27.120 --> 0:37:30.000 possible that, yeah, I'm throughout the day, I'm getting getting 0:37:30.000 --> 0:37:32.720 more tired, I'm having you know, I have less energy 0:37:32.760 --> 0:37:35.640 to handle sort of the ambient stress that is around 0:37:35.680 --> 0:37:39.480 me and UH, and that could potentially have some connection 0:37:39.520 --> 0:37:44.560 to the deja vu H like experiences that I had. Yeah, totally. Now, 0:37:44.600 --> 0:37:46.879 the next thing that I thought was interesting is that 0:37:47.440 --> 0:37:51.759 Brown reports that some studies have found that people who 0:37:51.920 --> 0:37:57.680 travel experience deja vu more than people who don't. For example, 0:37:57.760 --> 0:38:00.560 I was looking at the paper by Richardson and Winnaker 0:38:00.800 --> 0:38:04.840 from nineteen sixty seven. It was summarizing an earlier study 0:38:04.840 --> 0:38:08.279 by Chapman and Mench from nineteen fifty two. But this 0:38:08.360 --> 0:38:11.920 study had defined travel as going more than fifty miles 0:38:11.960 --> 0:38:15.759 away from home, and it reported findings that quote, non 0:38:15.880 --> 0:38:20.040 travelers experienced deja vu in only eleven per cent of 0:38:20.080 --> 0:38:24.520 their number, and in those who traveled twenty five percent 0:38:24.640 --> 0:38:28.040 of their number. There was no relationship with the frequency 0:38:28.080 --> 0:38:31.320 of travel. And so that part about no relationship with 0:38:31.360 --> 0:38:34.400 the frequency of travel makes me wonder, like, why would 0:38:34.400 --> 0:38:38.319 it be that people who like if this effect is real, 0:38:38.320 --> 0:38:41.319 why would it be that people who travel some have 0:38:41.480 --> 0:38:43.920 more deja vu than people who don't travel at all. 0:38:44.400 --> 0:38:47.160 But if you travel a lot, you don't appear to 0:38:47.200 --> 0:38:50.920 have it much more than people who travel a little. Well, well, 0:38:50.960 --> 0:38:53.719 the I guess the main potential answer that comes to 0:38:53.800 --> 0:38:58.200 my mind is that if we're thinking about deja vu 0:38:58.440 --> 0:39:03.320 as this experience by the novel seems familiar, if something 0:39:03.400 --> 0:39:08.719 new seems like something old, then perhaps there would be 0:39:09.040 --> 0:39:11.960 more potential to experience it if you live the sort 0:39:12.000 --> 0:39:16.640 of life in general, uh, either via travel or you know, 0:39:16.719 --> 0:39:19.839 via other acts that line up with this personality type. Uh. 0:39:20.120 --> 0:39:22.399 You know, the more novelty in your life, the more 0:39:22.440 --> 0:39:25.560 potential there is to then have that turn around and 0:39:25.640 --> 0:39:29.439 be made a seemingly mundane through deja vu. Oh yeah, 0:39:30.160 --> 0:39:33.640 well no, I've actually seen that hypothesized by a researcher 0:39:33.640 --> 0:39:35.399 who who I think we're going to talk about more 0:39:35.480 --> 0:39:39.919 later and Cleary who's done work on on deja vu. 0:39:40.040 --> 0:39:42.319 But I think I also saw her mention at some 0:39:42.400 --> 0:39:46.120 point that there's some research indicating that people who watch 0:39:46.200 --> 0:39:49.880 more movies are also more likely to experience higher deja 0:39:49.920 --> 0:39:54.640 vu frequency. Interesting now, now one I have to catch 0:39:54.680 --> 0:39:56.680 myself though at the same time, because when I think 0:39:56.719 --> 0:39:59.840 back about deja vu experiences I've had in the past, 0:40:00.520 --> 0:40:02.600 a lot of them have not They have not occurred 0:40:02.600 --> 0:40:06.120 while I'm traveling. They occurred like if I'm if they're 0:40:06.160 --> 0:40:11.360 occurring during novel experiences, they're only mildly novel, you know, like, oh, 0:40:11.400 --> 0:40:14.320 like I've never maybe I've never stood in my backyard 0:40:14.360 --> 0:40:17.640 with a coffee mug, you know, at this particular spot before. 0:40:17.960 --> 0:40:20.120 But that's hardly on par with say, traveling you know, 0:40:20.320 --> 0:40:23.520 around the world to to Bangkok or something. I was 0:40:23.560 --> 0:40:27.400 sailing to Byzantium. Yeah, um it was. So there's an 0:40:27.400 --> 0:40:31.080 interesting thing that Alan Brown notes in his review, combining 0:40:31.160 --> 0:40:33.600 the last couple of facts, the idea that deja vu 0:40:33.719 --> 0:40:37.319 appears to be strongly associated with stress and fatigue and 0:40:37.480 --> 0:40:41.719 the association with with travel um He he notes that 0:40:41.760 --> 0:40:44.200 there it was at least one clinician in the nineteen 0:40:44.239 --> 0:40:48.120 fifties who observed that reports of deja vu were especially 0:40:48.160 --> 0:40:53.879 common among soldiers heading into battle. Weird, but it would 0:40:53.880 --> 0:40:57.680 combine those things, right, Heading into battle tends to combine stress, fatigue, 0:40:57.760 --> 0:41:02.480 and travel into new locations. Yeah, yeah, you're really piling 0:41:02.520 --> 0:41:05.000 those up. Yeah. Now there's another one, which is that 0:41:05.120 --> 0:41:09.239 frequency of deja vu experience also shows a positive relationship 0:41:09.640 --> 0:41:14.840 with socioeconomic status and level of education. On average, people 0:41:14.880 --> 0:41:18.080 who are wealthier and people who have attained higher levels 0:41:18.120 --> 0:41:21.880 of education experience more frequency of deja vu, or at 0:41:21.920 --> 0:41:26.600 least report more frequency of deja vu on average, And 0:41:26.600 --> 0:41:28.960 that does complicate some other findings by the way, Like 0:41:29.080 --> 0:41:32.960 for I think Brown actually mentions, I wonder if like 0:41:33.120 --> 0:41:36.719 this is acting on the travel variable, right, that, like, 0:41:36.800 --> 0:41:39.600 people who have more money or probably more likely to 0:41:39.760 --> 0:41:43.680 travel more frequently, So something could be going on there. Yeah, 0:41:43.760 --> 0:41:46.840 And of course it also makes me wonder about the 0:41:46.920 --> 0:41:50.759 populations that are polled for these kind of studies. You know, um, 0:41:51.360 --> 0:41:52.960 I know that there's going to be at least one 0:41:53.000 --> 0:41:57.440 study later on that that the researchers point out that, well, 0:41:57.480 --> 0:42:00.440 we we looked at like four people, but they were 0:42:00.440 --> 0:42:06.720 mostly psychology students, you know, so common with psychology research. 0:42:08.000 --> 0:42:10.880 So yeah, not to because I don't know the particulars 0:42:10.880 --> 0:42:13.279 of the data that they're referring to here. You know, 0:42:13.320 --> 0:42:16.879 perhaps the polling data is uh is the survey data 0:42:16.920 --> 0:42:19.000 is more robust than I'm giving it credit to. But 0:42:19.040 --> 0:42:21.960 I mean, obviously that's always a potential problem when you're 0:42:22.000 --> 0:42:26.799 when you're considering information like this. Absolutely another thing I 0:42:26.800 --> 0:42:29.360 thought this was interesting. Men and women seem to experience 0:42:29.400 --> 0:42:31.480 deja vu at about the same rate. There have been 0:42:31.480 --> 0:42:34.600 a few studies here and there that found gender differences, 0:42:34.640 --> 0:42:38.000 but they were not directionally consistent, and combining all the 0:42:38.040 --> 0:42:41.719 results together did not find any differences for gender. Now, 0:42:41.760 --> 0:42:44.919 we've talked about overlap with neurological conditions, but here's one 0:42:45.000 --> 0:42:48.080 that should be very interesting. What about drugs. Do do 0:42:48.160 --> 0:42:52.080 any drugs cause increased uh chances of deja vou? Well, 0:42:52.160 --> 0:42:55.920 there are some isolated reports of certain drugs yes and 0:42:56.280 --> 0:43:01.000 causing very frequent episodes of dejav For example, I was 0:43:01.000 --> 0:43:04.640 looking at a paper from the Journal of Clinical Neuroscience 0:43:04.640 --> 0:43:08.320 in two thousand one where authors A. Tarot timon In 0:43:08.560 --> 0:43:16.000 and Satu K. Jones Yaskalainen. I think UH report the 0:43:16.040 --> 0:43:19.760 case of quote a thirty nine year old Caucasian, healthy 0:43:19.880 --> 0:43:25.600 male physician who developed intense recurrent deja vu experiences within 0:43:25.680 --> 0:43:29.600 twenty four hours of initiating concommitant UH. And this is 0:43:29.640 --> 0:43:32.760 a couple of drugs. I'll try the names here, amantadine 0:43:33.480 --> 0:43:38.800 and UH phenal propanelamine UH. Those are treatments against influenza. 0:43:38.960 --> 0:43:41.440 So the day he was started taking these two drugs 0:43:41.480 --> 0:43:46.919 at the same time, amantadine and phenal propanelamine and UH, 0:43:46.960 --> 0:43:49.839 and then the deja vu experiences stopped as soon as 0:43:49.880 --> 0:43:53.600 he stopped taking the medication. Now, amantadine is a drug 0:43:53.640 --> 0:43:57.000 that has multiple effects. It's used to promote dopamine in 0:43:57.040 --> 0:44:00.520 patients with some neurological conditions I think, like Parkinson's disease, 0:44:01.000 --> 0:44:04.040 but it's also used as an anti viral against influenza 0:44:04.080 --> 0:44:08.480 type A. Meanwhile, phenal propanelamine is a decongestion that is 0:44:08.520 --> 0:44:11.880 sometimes used as a cough and cold medicine. Um and 0:44:12.000 --> 0:44:14.040 I should note I also found at least one other 0:44:14.080 --> 0:44:17.719 case report from the nineties of psychosis in an otherwise 0:44:17.719 --> 0:44:20.920 healthy patient brought on by this exact same drug combination. 0:44:21.520 --> 0:44:24.520 So this appears to be related to the ability of 0:44:24.560 --> 0:44:28.360 these drugs to mess around with your dopamine levels. But 0:44:28.440 --> 0:44:30.719 we don't know for sure. And I must say that 0:44:30.719 --> 0:44:34.239 that would be such a strange symptom to report to 0:44:34.239 --> 0:44:36.080 your doctor. You know, they say take two and call 0:44:36.120 --> 0:44:38.759 me in the morning, and you call her back and say, Doc, 0:44:38.800 --> 0:44:42.399 I am I am experiencing deja vu every five minutes. Yeah, 0:44:42.440 --> 0:44:44.840 I mean, that would that would be something. But again, 0:44:44.960 --> 0:44:47.920 I mean there are other medications that have, you know, 0:44:48.000 --> 0:44:51.080 weird side effects like this. There's a there's a particular 0:44:51.320 --> 0:44:55.560 malaria treatment. I remember. I remember being on vacation and 0:44:55.880 --> 0:44:57.719 chatting with another couple that was on vacation, but I 0:44:57.719 --> 0:44:59.919 believe this was in Costa Rica years and years ago, 0:45:00.440 --> 0:45:03.600 and the older couple we were talking to they were 0:45:03.640 --> 0:45:08.319 both on this, uh, this anti malarial medication. Uh, you know, 0:45:08.360 --> 0:45:10.840 it's just just in case. But they were talking about 0:45:10.840 --> 0:45:14.439 the vivid dreams they would have every night because of it. Yeah, 0:45:14.480 --> 0:45:16.000 it was. It was quite interesting. It makes me want 0:45:16.000 --> 0:45:18.800 to come back and do an episode on malaria drugs 0:45:18.880 --> 0:45:22.319 because there are some there's some interesting stories about UH 0:45:22.400 --> 0:45:25.759 side effects and complications that have occurred with some of them. Well, 0:45:25.760 --> 0:45:27.399 maybe we should take another quick break and the when 0:45:27.440 --> 0:45:29.520 we come back, we can discuss maybe the single most 0:45:29.560 --> 0:45:36.080 consistent finding in the literature on deja vu. Thank alright, 0:45:36.120 --> 0:45:39.360 we're back all right now. I think Brown actually notes 0:45:39.440 --> 0:45:42.759 this in his review that that probably the single most 0:45:42.800 --> 0:45:46.200 consistent finding in the literature on deja vu is that 0:45:46.360 --> 0:45:51.719 frequency of deja vu decreases with age. Isn't that strange? 0:45:52.080 --> 0:45:54.799 Like there there's a graph that's included in UH in 0:45:54.920 --> 0:45:58.480 Brown's paper here that shows UH like it takes average 0:45:58.560 --> 0:46:01.840 yearly experiences like the san of number number of yearly 0:46:01.880 --> 0:46:06.040 experiences people report. And I imagine that there must be 0:46:06.080 --> 0:46:07.920 a lot of guessing because if you're like us, we 0:46:07.960 --> 0:46:11.120 don't exactly remember, but you know people people are estimating, 0:46:11.800 --> 0:46:14.040 and you know, you look at it and people in there, 0:46:14.080 --> 0:46:17.360 like early twenties, there's this spike and that they're reporting 0:46:17.440 --> 0:46:21.000 somewhere between like two and a half and three UH 0:46:21.040 --> 0:46:25.120 experiences on average every year of deja vu. But it's 0:46:25.200 --> 0:46:28.319 it's sharply curves down. You're down to like one or 0:46:28.360 --> 0:46:30.719 a half by the time you're in your late thirties, 0:46:30.760 --> 0:46:34.680 and then people in their like sixties are reporting extremely 0:46:34.760 --> 0:46:36.560 little with the internet. You know, it's a good thing 0:46:36.560 --> 0:46:38.680 we did the episode. If we if we kept going, 0:46:38.760 --> 0:46:40.160 you and I are just going to get older and 0:46:40.239 --> 0:46:42.960 older and we'll have fewer fresh memories of deja vu 0:46:43.040 --> 0:46:44.480 to talk about. Oh, we just got to keep our 0:46:44.520 --> 0:46:46.840 stress and fatigue up and then we can buck the trend. 0:46:46.960 --> 0:46:51.080 You know. Now here's another big trend about deja vu 0:46:51.200 --> 0:46:54.680 experiences that we see reflected in you know all a 0:46:54.680 --> 0:46:57.319 lot of these different variations of it, including it's what 0:46:57.440 --> 0:47:00.759 is often held up is its opposite Jimmy's oh yeah, 0:47:00.760 --> 0:47:03.719 and that means uh, something like never seen. It's the 0:47:03.760 --> 0:47:06.719 inverse it would be, uh, you know, deja vu is 0:47:06.760 --> 0:47:09.520 you see something new and you think I've seen this before. 0:47:10.040 --> 0:47:13.680 Jama vu is you see something you should be familiar 0:47:13.680 --> 0:47:15.640 with and you think it's brand new, You've never seen 0:47:15.640 --> 0:47:19.000 it before. Well, well, one of the an attribute that 0:47:19.040 --> 0:47:21.960 one tends to encounter in all of these experiences is 0:47:21.960 --> 0:47:26.000 that people with intact reality testing do not have a 0:47:26.040 --> 0:47:30.319 problem identifying the deja vu as inherently unreal. And this 0:47:30.400 --> 0:47:32.200 comes back to something we were talking about with our 0:47:32.239 --> 0:47:36.040 own experiences, you know, like even these really pronounced experiences 0:47:36.040 --> 0:47:37.759 I had yesterday, even the experience I had as a 0:47:37.760 --> 0:47:40.479 as a kid, like my my brain kind of fact 0:47:40.520 --> 0:47:43.000 checked them and said, is this real? Is there really? 0:47:43.360 --> 0:47:46.040 Is Fred Stanford really in my bedroom speaking through a fan? 0:47:46.480 --> 0:47:49.839 Uh No, he's not. This is something else, you know, yes, 0:47:49.920 --> 0:47:53.000 and that it's not. That's not a function of you 0:47:53.080 --> 0:47:57.000 being like a hyper skeptical person or something that that's like, 0:47:57.120 --> 0:48:01.080 that's normal for human brains. Yeah. So I was looking 0:48:01.040 --> 0:48:03.560 at reading around a little bit about reality testing, and 0:48:04.080 --> 0:48:09.480 according to the University of Adelaide philosophy professor Philip Grands, 0:48:10.120 --> 0:48:13.840 it's basically the system by which the brain monitors the 0:48:13.920 --> 0:48:18.400 brain's own storytelling system, the very narrative of our lives. 0:48:18.800 --> 0:48:23.719 So it ends up testing and rejecting ideas about reality. Now, 0:48:24.120 --> 0:48:27.120 I was running across uh, um, this is actually a 0:48:27.200 --> 0:48:30.480 two thousand and fourteen press release and or an interview 0:48:30.520 --> 0:48:34.560 that was published on Eureka Alerts and uh. In this, 0:48:34.800 --> 0:48:39.040 Grands used the example of wondering if a common headache 0:48:39.200 --> 0:48:41.160 is a brain tumor. Like you get a headache and 0:48:41.160 --> 0:48:43.200 you're like, oh boy, I've got a headache right now. 0:48:43.280 --> 0:48:45.480 I wonder if this is a brain tumor. Well, in 0:48:45.560 --> 0:48:49.680 a typical mind, this sort of thought is probably quickly rejected. 0:48:49.880 --> 0:48:51.880 You're like, no, this is just a normal headache. I 0:48:51.920 --> 0:48:53.560 had one of these last week and it wasn't you know, 0:48:53.640 --> 0:48:55.800 when't a brain tumor, then it's not a brain tumor. Today. 0:48:56.080 --> 0:48:59.000 It's nothing to get upset about. Okay. But but if 0:48:59.040 --> 0:49:03.160 one's reality testing is faulty, the notion that this might 0:49:03.200 --> 0:49:06.160 be a brain tumor, it might persist, It might even 0:49:06.239 --> 0:49:09.560 become more dominant, It might you know, become the thought 0:49:09.560 --> 0:49:14.400 itself becomes a malignancy. Uh So this, you know, faulty 0:49:14.440 --> 0:49:20.160 reality testing plays into various delusions, especially delusions that are 0:49:20.200 --> 0:49:23.759 tied to the way our brains process the familiar and 0:49:23.800 --> 0:49:27.440 the novel. And one of the examples that Grand's points 0:49:27.480 --> 0:49:30.200 to is cop cross delusion, which we've discussed in the 0:49:30.200 --> 0:49:34.120 show before. Yeah, Cap craws, where you believe that um 0:49:34.600 --> 0:49:38.080 that people you know have been replaced by doubles. So 0:49:38.120 --> 0:49:40.480 like you might see you know, it often results from 0:49:40.520 --> 0:49:44.560 a particular brain injury or neurodegenerative disease or something that 0:49:44.760 --> 0:49:48.800 um causes a dysfunction of the part of the brain 0:49:48.880 --> 0:49:52.720 that accused the feeling of familiarity when you recognize familiar faces. 0:49:53.160 --> 0:49:56.319 So you might see members of your family and you 0:49:56.480 --> 0:50:00.040 recognize them, you say, that looks just like dad. What 0:50:00.280 --> 0:50:03.600 you don't feel familiar and thus you think that's not 0:50:03.760 --> 0:50:06.160 him though, so you think that he's been replaced by 0:50:06.200 --> 0:50:09.319 a doppelganger or look alike. Yeah. So, so we can 0:50:09.320 --> 0:50:11.920 see that as kind of an extreme example of an 0:50:11.920 --> 0:50:17.040 illusion that's tied to malfunctioning reality testing. Uh and uh 0:50:17.080 --> 0:50:19.760 and deja vou is also an example of a mental 0:50:19.800 --> 0:50:23.880 experience that is subjected to reality testing in a typical brain, 0:50:24.080 --> 0:50:27.879 and indeed, it will generally fail a reality test even 0:50:27.880 --> 0:50:31.279 if it's distracting. Part of the distraction for us is 0:50:31.320 --> 0:50:34.879 generally realizing that it's not real. Like just this week, 0:50:34.920 --> 0:50:37.719 those experiences I had, like one of the super distracting 0:50:37.760 --> 0:50:40.839 things was that I realized that this wasn't you know, 0:50:41.080 --> 0:50:43.600 that this something was weird here that you know, it 0:50:43.640 --> 0:50:47.280 made me question the software, the hardware involved a little 0:50:47.280 --> 0:50:49.160 bit but it didn't make me think you know that, 0:50:49.840 --> 0:50:52.799 you know, mind flavors are sending thought beams into my 0:50:52.840 --> 0:50:55.359 brain or anything. Yeah, I mean this is generally an 0:50:55.360 --> 0:50:59.480 interesting question. How how the brain tells what's real? I mean, 0:50:59.640 --> 0:51:02.200 I feel like we we could do episode after episode 0:51:02.200 --> 0:51:05.359 on this subject. Actually, but like, like this came up 0:51:05.360 --> 0:51:08.080 not too long ago when we were talking about visual imagination. 0:51:08.160 --> 0:51:11.160 I think this was an episode from last summer. Um 0:51:11.320 --> 0:51:16.080 how there is evidence indicating that the brain uses some 0:51:16.200 --> 0:51:21.160 of the same infrastructure for imagining visual images that it 0:51:21.280 --> 0:51:24.239 uses for seeing with the eyes. And so if it 0:51:24.280 --> 0:51:26.120 does that, if there's stuff going on in the visual 0:51:26.160 --> 0:51:29.160 processing centers of the brain, just like when you actually 0:51:29.200 --> 0:51:32.560 look at a basketball, uh as when you imagine a basketball, 0:51:32.600 --> 0:51:36.080 how does your brain know that when you are imagining 0:51:36.080 --> 0:51:39.120 a basketball, you're not really seeing one. Clearly, there can 0:51:39.120 --> 0:51:42.920 be cases where that that reality testing fails. And this 0:51:42.920 --> 0:51:45.319 would be like you imagine seeing something and then you 0:51:45.360 --> 0:51:48.919 think it's really there. This is you know, I think 0:51:48.920 --> 0:51:51.759 what's generally accepted to happen in psychosis is like your 0:51:52.040 --> 0:51:55.680 your reality testing fails in the line between what is 0:51:55.719 --> 0:52:00.360 imagined and what is perceived as reality breaks and this 0:52:00.400 --> 0:52:03.720 of course, applies yet to dreams as well. Grant's pointed 0:52:03.760 --> 0:52:08.359 out that during dreams are reality testing is effectively switched off, 0:52:08.719 --> 0:52:13.720 so we simply have experiences. We don't have beliefs about experiences, 0:52:13.800 --> 0:52:17.360 which was interesting. I I don't think i'd ever you know, 0:52:17.400 --> 0:52:19.719 certainly we've covered dreams in the nature of dreams and 0:52:19.760 --> 0:52:22.160 thoughts about dreams in the show before, but I don't 0:52:22.160 --> 0:52:25.520 think I've ever heard it put so succinctly before. Yeah. Well, 0:52:25.560 --> 0:52:28.120 I think we have talked about the idea that in dreams, 0:52:28.160 --> 0:52:32.799 clearly critical thinking is reduced. Yes, yes, definitely that that 0:52:32.880 --> 0:52:36.040 seems to be an extremely common feature of dream cognition, 0:52:36.360 --> 0:52:39.560 and not just the kind of deliberate, effortful critical thinking 0:52:39.600 --> 0:52:41.560 that you do when you're like, okay, and I'm trying 0:52:41.560 --> 0:52:44.040 to understand is there a problem with this scientific claim 0:52:44.120 --> 0:52:47.960 or something. I mean, the normal automatic critical thinking that 0:52:48.000 --> 0:52:51.320 we do that forms the basis of our intuitive reality testing, 0:52:51.360 --> 0:52:54.240 even that is sort of turned off sometimes in dreams, 0:52:54.440 --> 0:52:58.000 or at least greatly diminished. Yeah, it's the kind of 0:52:58.000 --> 0:52:59.840 statement that makes me feel better about being such a 0:53:00.040 --> 0:53:02.279 horrible lucid dreamer. Not that I put in a lot 0:53:02.280 --> 0:53:05.239 of work on it. But I have frequently noticed that 0:53:05.800 --> 0:53:08.080 at times, the rare times where I feel like I 0:53:08.120 --> 0:53:11.560 could have lucid dreamed, I clearly didn't have it in me. 0:53:11.800 --> 0:53:15.320 Like I just fell right back into into just experiencing 0:53:15.560 --> 0:53:18.719 and certainly not having any beliefs or thoughts about the experience. 0:53:18.800 --> 0:53:22.040 This is so embarrassing. I'm such a dream loser. I've 0:53:22.080 --> 0:53:25.759 probably told you this before, but a very common experience 0:53:25.800 --> 0:53:28.840 I have in dreams is stopping in the middle of 0:53:28.880 --> 0:53:33.560 a dream and thinking, hold on a second, I'm dreaming 0:53:33.680 --> 0:53:37.000 right now, right is this a dream? And then in 0:53:37.040 --> 0:53:41.000 the dream I try to pursue that question and interrogate it, 0:53:41.320 --> 0:53:45.080 and then I, invariably every single time, end up concluding no, 0:53:45.400 --> 0:53:52.000 this is definitely real. Uh See, I've had I've probably 0:53:52.000 --> 0:53:55.040 shared this before too. I'll have experiences where I'm dreaming, 0:53:55.160 --> 0:53:57.400 I realized I'm dreaming, and then I just click it 0:53:57.520 --> 0:53:59.319 right back off again, and then I just fall right 0:53:59.320 --> 0:54:01.319 back into the dream. I had that moment where I 0:54:01.400 --> 0:54:05.000 was like raising my my head above the waters, and 0:54:05.120 --> 0:54:07.640 I could concede like that seems the time to take 0:54:07.680 --> 0:54:10.520 the reins of of the dream and and then engage 0:54:10.520 --> 0:54:12.600 in lucid dreaming. But I don't. I just fall right 0:54:12.640 --> 0:54:15.080 back underwater. This is funny. So we've got similar things 0:54:15.160 --> 0:54:17.759 going on, actually, except I just like I address it 0:54:17.800 --> 0:54:22.800 more head on and still fail. By the way, Grande 0:54:22.920 --> 0:54:25.719 is the author of the Measure of Madness, Philosophy and 0:54:25.760 --> 0:54:28.960 Cognitive Neuropsychiatry, which was published by m T Press if 0:54:29.000 --> 0:54:31.960 anybody wants to to look up more of their work. 0:54:32.120 --> 0:54:36.080 But uh, in general, though, just about the connection between 0:54:36.120 --> 0:54:38.719 deja vu and dreams, I guess it's gonna be the 0:54:38.760 --> 0:54:41.319 next episode of Stuff to Blow your mind where we'll 0:54:41.360 --> 0:54:45.040 definitely touch on on some studies related to that, but 0:54:45.080 --> 0:54:47.760 then we'll also get into really some of the core 0:54:48.239 --> 0:54:52.719 theories regarding that the true nature of deja vu itself. Yeah, 0:54:52.800 --> 0:54:55.960 next time we're gonna explore scientific theories that have tried 0:54:56.000 --> 0:54:59.600 to explain why the brain creates the feeling of deja vu, 0:54:59.680 --> 0:55:02.839 what comes from, and we'll look into dreams, we'll look 0:55:02.880 --> 0:55:06.520 into anxiety and more. I think it's gonna be very fun. Yeah, 0:55:06.560 --> 0:55:09.080 and certainly feel free to reach out to us in 0:55:09.120 --> 0:55:11.400 the meantime, knowing, of course that there's about to be 0:55:11.440 --> 0:55:14.440 another episode where we'll we'll probably answer some of your 0:55:14.520 --> 0:55:16.960 questions but hey, maybe not. Uh So it's always good 0:55:17.000 --> 0:55:19.359 to hear from you either way. In the meantime, if 0:55:19.400 --> 0:55:21.320 you want to check out other episodes to Stuff to 0:55:21.320 --> 0:55:23.919 Blow your Mind, you can find us wherever you find 0:55:23.920 --> 0:55:27.320 your podcasts, wherever that happens to be. Just support the 0:55:27.360 --> 0:55:31.160 show by rating, reviewing, and subscribing, uh though. That's the 0:55:31.440 --> 0:55:34.200 trinity of actions that help our show out. And if 0:55:34.200 --> 0:55:36.160 you just go to stuff to Blow your Mind dot com, 0:55:36.160 --> 0:55:38.640 that will shoot you to the I heart listing for 0:55:38.800 --> 0:55:41.440 our show where you can basically do all three of 0:55:41.480 --> 0:55:44.319 those things as well. Hughes. Thanks as always to our 0:55:44.400 --> 0:55:47.839 excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson, who, again I just 0:55:47.840 --> 0:55:51.040 want to emphasize, has been doing really heroic work while 0:55:51.280 --> 0:55:53.200 Robert and I and all of us are trying to 0:55:53.200 --> 0:55:56.239 work from home and do social distancing. Uh. 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