The Reporter Giving déjà vu a second look

"Déjà vu has developed to such an extent that he had stopped watching TV - even the news - because it seemed to be a repeat, and even believed he could hear the same bird singing the same song in the same tree every time he went out. Chronic déjà vu sufferers are not only overwhelmed by a sense of familiarity for new experiences, they can provide plausible and complex justifications to support this. “When this particular patient’s wife asked what was going to happen next on a TV programme he’d claimed to have already seen, he said ‘how should I know? I have a memory problem!’” Dr Moulin said.

For the first time, those who suffer chronic déjà vu can help provide sustained research into the problem. “So far we’ve completed the natural history side of this condition - we’ve found ways of testing for it and the right clinical questions to ask. The next step is obviously to find ways to reduce the problem,” he said."

redux [11.29.05]
The Wall Street Journal Turkey, Talk, Family: One More Reason It All Seems Familiar

"It was just a lampshade, in your line of vision as you settled in for the predinner olives and celery, but it unleashed a powerful feeling of déjà vu. Even though this was your first Thanksgiving at this relative's home, you were sure you had been there before. Or, it was a phrase spoken when a tablemate passed the creamed onions. Even though she was a new in-law, you were positive you had celebrated Thanksgiving with her in years past.

About two-thirds of people experience at least one déjà vu in their lifetime, and if you have had one you are likely to have more. For reasons unknown, the incidence of déjà vu decreases with age, rises with education and income, and is more common among people who recall their dreams, who travel, and who hold liberal political and religious beliefs."

"Past lives and precognition have failed to gain traction as explanations for déjà vu. But other approaches are doing better. Studies on memory and attention, says psychology researcher Alan S. Brown of Southern Methodist University, Dallas, are pointing to the neurological stumbles that produce déjà vu."

The Chronicle of Higher Education The Tease of Memory

"Most academic psychologists, however, have ignored the topic since around 1890, when there was a brief flurry of interest. The phenomenon seems at once too rare and too ephemeral to capture in a laboratory. And even if it were as common as sneezing, déjà vu would still be difficult to study because it produces no measurable external behaviors. Researchers must trust their subjects' personal descriptions of what is going on inside their minds, and few people are as eloquent as Hawthorne. Psychology has generally filed déjà vu away in a drawer marked "Interesting but Insoluble."

During the past two decades, however, a few hardy souls have reopened the scientific study of déjà vu. They hope to nail down a persuasive explanation of the phenomenon, as well as shed light on some fundamental elements of memory and cognition."

The New York Times Déjà Vu: If It All Seems Familiar, There May Be a Reason
[requires 'free' registration]

"Several people in e-mail contact with Dr. Brown say they experience déjà vu frequently, many times in a year. One of them, Suketu Naik, 26, a graduate student in Utah, has kept a diary of the sensations.

In one entry, Mr. Naik writes of attending a birthday party for a friend at a restaurant: "Everything, the conversation, the position of people, position of tables, plates were extraordinarily 'in place.' Most remarkable of all events. Very intense. Lasted for a long time. Which is odd - usually intensity and time are reciprocal. I could predict every single future event in this time period to utmost precision. Felt extraordinarily weird after this one. I sat there for the next minute to come back to reality."

But the evolving understanding of memory suggests he never really left."