You've Been Here Before. You Haven't.

You walk into a room for the first time and your brain insists you've lived this exact second before. Around two out of three people have felt it. So what is actually happening in your head during déjà vu? In this video we go through the science: why déjà vu peaks between 15 and 25, what happened when surgeons stimulated one tiny spot in the brain, how a psychologist triggered déjà vu with rooms built in The Sims, why the feeling that you know what comes next is an illusion, and why déjà vu may be a sign your memory is checking itself for errors. Plus the man who felt déjà vu all the time, and its eerie opposite, jamais vu. ⏱ Chapters 0:00 The kitchen you've never been in 0:50 Who gets déjà vu 1:51 The spot in the brain that triggers it 2:46 Déjà vu inside The Sims 3:39 The illusion of predicting the future 4:14 Your brain is fact-checking itself 5:21 When the checker breaks 5:57 Jamais vu: the opposite glitch 6:37 What to remember next time 📚 Sources • Brown, A. S. (2003). A review of the déjà vu experience. Psychological Bulletin. • Bartolomei, F. et al. (2004). Cortical stimulation study of the role of rhinal cortex in déjà vu and reminiscence of memories. Neurology. • Cleary, A. M. et al. (2012). Familiarity from the configuration of objects in 3-dimensional space and its relation to déjà vu. Consciousness and Cognition. • Cleary, A. M. & Claxton, A. B. (2018). Déjà vu: An illusion of prediction. Psychological Science. • O'Connor, A. R. et al. (2016). Research presented at the International Conference on Memory, University of St Andrews. • Moulin, C. J. A. et al. (2005). Persistent déjà vu: a disorder of memory. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. • Moulin, C. J. A., Bell, N., Turunen, M., Baharin, A. & O'Connor, A. R. (2021). The the the the induction of jamais vu in the laboratory. Memory. (Ig Nobel Prize in Literature, 2023) If this video felt familiar, don't worry, your frontal lobe is just doing its job. Subscribe for more strange things your brain does every day. #DejaVu #Psychology #BrainFacts