The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Déjà Vu

Chris Moulin

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781315524917
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychologie
• Subtopic: Histoire et théorie en psychologie

Déjà vu is one of the most complex and subjective of all memory phenomena. It is an infrequent and striking mental experience, where the feeling of familiarity is combined with the knowledge that this feeling is false. While until recently it was an aspect of memory largely overlooked by mainstream cognitive psychology, this book brings together the growing scientific literature on déjà vu, making the case for it as a metacognitive phenomenon.

The Cognitive Neuropsychology of Déjà Vu reviews clinical, experimental and neuroimaging methods, focusing on how memory disorders and neurological dysfunction relate to the experience. Examining déjà vu as a memory phenomenon, Chris Moulin explores how the experience of déjà vu in special populations, such as healthy aging or those with schizophrenia, provides new insights into understanding this phenomenon. He considers the extensive data on déjà vu in people with epilepsy, dementia and other neurological conditions, assessing neuropsychological theories of déjà vu formation.

Essential reading for all students and researchers interested in memory disorders, this valuable book presents the case for déjà vu as a 'healthy' phenomenon only experienced by people with sufficient cognitive resources to oppose and detect the false feeling of familiarity.

1

An introduction to the cognitive neuropsychology of déjà vu

Felix, qui potuit rerum cognoscere causas

Virgil

What is déjà vu?

Déjà vu is the subjective experience of familiarity combined with the knowledge that this experience is false. It is a relatively striking but infrequent experience. In large-scale questionnaire studies it is estimated to be experienced by at least two-thirds of the population, and people generally report experiencing it less than ten times a year. For the person experiencing it, it is a somewhat mysterious and difficult-to-define feeling, although scientists are now beginning to offer some concrete suggestions about what causes the sensation and how it is produced in the human memory system. While it is experienced more in some conditions, such as certain forms of epilepsy, it is not thought to be particularly diagnostic of any type of cognitive problem or disorder. It is experienced by people with neurological and psychological disorders and healthy populations alike. Table 1.1 sets out a few descriptions of the experience and examples from those who experience it and those who study it.

Table 1.1Some descriptions of the déjà vu experience

Healthy research participants
“On the bus with my Uni friends and felt like I had been there before, had the same conversation and people had the same positions, although I don’t remember seeing the faces before but when I was on the bus in that position the faces I saw fitted the vision perfectly.”	Healthy research participant quoted in Moulin et al. (2014, p. 281)
“I had this one instance of it a couple weeks ago that really sticks out. I was at my school, in our dining hall for a meeting about a blood drive. And I was suddenly and all at once hit with the realization that the scene I was set in had been the subject of a dream at some point, every bit of it. The lighting was vaguely orange and dim on a muggy day, the table placement was how I knew it to be. I was standing and talking to my friend, which I also associated as having happened. And I felt tired that day, my eyes were droopy in a way that was compatible with the déjà vu snapshot I related it to. I don’t remember ever directly dreaming about it, not at all, but I was hit with the idea that I had. I’m sure there’s some truth to the matter of me having dreamt it, but the prominence of the déjà vu I felt was just … It was just such a vivid, intense thing.”	Healthy participant from Fortier and Moulin (2015)
“Quite often I have experiences where I think I have seen something specific before, or have previously heard snippets from a conversation. When these experiences occur I usually feel like I am ‘outside’ of the scene looking in on it and I wait until I can no longer predict the next word/statement that someone makes. These experiences usually last no more than one minute, but are longer if my own statements are included in the experience (i.e. I remember/feel like I have previously experienced my own contribution to the conversation).”	Healthy research participant from Jersakova, Moulin, and O’Connor (2016)
“Déjà vu tends to happen to me a lot; one time my math teacher began saying something and I had a feeling that I had heard it before as if it were some dream. Everything she said, I knew she was going to say. Another experience was years before I began high school I had a dream about walking down a strange hallway, then years passed and the first day of high school came and there the déjà vu feeling was. (Of course maybe I never dreamt it, maybe it was just déjà vu that made me think I dreamt it.) One last experience I had was of a friend who	Healthy research participant from Jersakova et al. (2016)
was telling me information and I knew exactly what they were going to say next, it was a weird déjà vu moment; as if I had been there before or remembered them saying it before but it never actually happened before. Déjà vu makes me feel a little crazy because I tend to tell others that they had told me once before or years ago I had a weird feeling they would tell me that particular instance.”
Clinical research participants
“It will start off with me hearing something e.g. someone talking or anything, actually. It will just be some information that I am taking in. I will briefly think that I have heard what is being said before. It almost feels like I am having a premonition. If it was just this then I could cope but it’s what follows which is so disturbing and frightening to me. … I suddenly feel like all the happiness in me has been sucked out. I explain this to people like the dementors in Harry Potter. Its simply as though I have no happiness or hope or future. All I can think about is what the déjà vu was about. Nothing else. Everything else in my life has vanished totally from my mind. If I am somewhere I like, I will hate it and feel uncomfortable to be there. It feels different to how it feels normally. It’s like the way you see things in your dreams; you know them but they different in some ways and you feel disturbed by them. … As for the déjà vu [experiences] themselves; it feels like I have either heard it before or more frequently it feels as though it has been in a dream. I don’t think it has though. I sort of create a whole alternative world in my head for those few moments and nothing else in the world exists. I don’t feel at all comfortable with it and I would do anything to get away.”	Epileptic déjà vu experience described by young woman quoted from Moulin and Chauvel (2010, pp. 215–216)
“Another epileptic, an intelligent graduate school teacher, used to experience déjà vu sensations as a boy at school and these were often precipitated by the sound of the halting gait of a master with a club foot. Since this time he has experienced a similar sensation about once every three months, with a strange feeling in his stomach. He finds this experience pleasant and believes that he can cut it short if he wishes by concentrating his attention on other things.”	Roth and Harper (1962) describing one of their research participants with temporal lobe epilepsy (pp. 139–140)
“… I’m reliving something … but I can see you clearly … It’s as if what is happening now has already happened to me, it’s like an old memory that I am in the middle of living out.”	Epileptic patient undergoing direct electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe, quoted from Vignal, Maillard, McGonigal, and Chauvel (2007, p. 92)
“In the last two years of her life (she died at 88) I would have to say that she essentially lived in almost a constant state of déjà vécu whenever she was removed from her narrowly defined daily routine (in an assisted living residence). Whenever she spent time with me, for example, there was continual reference to ‘the trees have sure grown taller’, total strangers on the road had ‘gotten fat and, look, he has a new dog’, and every stranger she met was assured that she knew them already. Newspapers had been read before, she had repairmen in to find out why the television kept showing programs she had seen before, newly published books had been read years before, etc.”	Recollective confabulation patient as described by a carer, quoted in O’Connor, Lever and Moulin (2010a, p. 124)
“I recently went to take a test, I had been anxious about it as usual but for some reason when I sat down at the desk a calm began to come over me. When the test was handed to me a sensation as if I had already taken the test came over me, and somewhere in my head a voice, or thought came across with ‘You know you will pass this, you’ve done it before’. I’m sure this will also sound strange, however it also felt as if there was someone watching over my shoulder as I took the test. I remember the feeling was so strong, that I stopped and slightly looked over my shoulder to see if someone was there. I have had several experiences like this while taking exams.”	Respondent to an unpublished research survey, describing one of their ‘less-severe dissociative episodes’
Déjà vu described by academics
“There is a curious experience which everyone seems to have had – the feeling that the present moment in its completeness has been experienced before – we were saying just this thing, in just this place, to just these people.”	William James (1890) describing the experience (before the use of the phrase ‘déjà vu’ became common place) in his seminal textbook, The Principles of Psychology (p. 675)
“We set out to produce an illusion of memory of the sort described by Titchener (1928) and were successful in doing so. In Titchener’s example, memory for a glance across a street was experienced as déjà vu when the street was later crossed. We produced a similar illusion of memory by presenting an unconsciously perceived word before presenting that word in a test of recognition memory.”	Jacoby and Whitehouse (1989) describing their experiment which aimed to produce the memory illusion described by Titchener (1928) and which can be identified as being like déjà vu (p. 134)
“The déjà vu experience lacks any clearly identifiable eliciting stimulus or verifiable behavioural response, and these lacunae have presented impediments to systematic research efforts.”	Alan Brown (2003) in his influential review of the déjà vu experience (p. 394)

These quotes set out the topography and the range of this book. They suggest there are a range of intense sensations and thoughts associated with déjà vu – ideas of premonitions or prescience, dreams and confusion about the present moment. They also centre on the idea that the experience is difficult to pinpoint for the experient and the scientist/clinician alike. Many people describe déjà vu as like being able to predict the future. For the patients and carers included above, déjà vu may be seen as a helpful or malignant force, but it is no less striking or strange for the healthy participants who experience it. One of the quotes mentions empirical evidence – Jacoby and Whitehouse claim to have produced something similar in the laboratory. Brown (2003) asserts that the experience has been ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Information
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures
• List of tables
• 1 An introduction to the cognitive neuropsychology of déjà vu
• 2 What’s French for déjà vu?A historical overview
• 3 The human recognition memory system
• 4 Classifying déjà vu
• 5 Theories of déjà vu formation
• 6 Individual difference studies of déjà vu
• 7 Déjà vu in epilepsy
• 8 Recollective confabulation
• 9 The cognitive neuropsychiatry of déjà vu
• 10 Producing déjà vu in the laboratory
• 11 Déjà vuWhere have we been and where are we going?
• Acknowledgements
• References
• Index