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In the moment of out-of-context perception, our brains process the familiarity of known things first, even if we don’t consciously recognize them, and that initial familiarity can color our perception of the whole otherwise-unfamiliar experience. For instance, seeing your building’s security guard at the gate wouldn’t feel familiar - it just is but seeing him at a restaurant might bring feelings of familiarity, even if you can’t place him. Seeing known objects or people out of context or unexpectedly is when familiarity strikes us, not seeing them within the usual, expected context.
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One suggests that déjà vu occurswhen a familiar object appears incongruously. They just found the new scene inexplicably familiar.Other explanations for déjà vu are more speculative. A2012 studythat immersed participants in different virtual reality scenes saw most report déjà vu when viewing a scene that appeared similar to a previous one - even if they could not directly recall the earlier scene or its similarity. Human memory is notoriously faulty and malleable this theory holds that déjà vu occurs as our brains’ frontal regions evaluate our memories and flag an error.Another explanation for déjà vu, with some experimental findings to back it up, is that our stored memories still influence our present perception even if we can’t consciously recall them. Like a physical itch, the mental itch of déjà vu likely has many causes, experts say.Probably the strongest theory, with some experimental backing, is that the false familiarity isn’t a sign of faulty memory, so much as it’s a sign of a well-functioning brain that actively fact-checks itself. Multiple theories attempt to explain it, with each being a potentially legitimate source of the sensation.
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The sensation does not seem to occur before age 8-9 (or perhaps children younger than that don’t have the ability to describe it), and experiences of déjà vu become less common as we age.But as for why we experience déjà vu at all - that’s less clear. People who travel often or who watch a lot of movies may be more prone to déjà vu than others who don’t. Déjà vu is almost impossible to study - people are rarely hooked up to electrodes or undergoing internal scans when they experience it - so most information about the sensation comes from self-reports, which suggest at least two-thirds of people will experience this fleeting mental trickery at some point in their lives. This conflict between what we know and what we remember is why déjà vu feels so eerie - almost paranormal or out-of-body. It’s a recognition we know is wrong, a memory we know doesn’t exist. Read the passage carefully and answer the following questions:Déjà vu - French for “already seen” - is a mental sensation of intense familiarity coupled with the awareness that the familiarity is mistaken.