Scientists explain déjà vu

A couple of days ago, my mum was asking me "what exactly is déjà vu"?

I have just come across the following article from the Mail & Guardian that explains this very phenomenon.

Scientists try to explain déjà vu

Paris, France
21 July 2006

Researchers believe they have found a key insight into déjà vu, the eerie sensation of seeing something that has already been experienced, the New Scientist magazine reports.

Experiments suggest that déjà vu can be triggered independently, without a real memory to prompt it, the British weekly magazine reports in next Saturday's issue.

Recognising a familiar object or scene is believed to unleash two processes in the brain.

First, the mind searches through its memory archive to see if the contents of that scene have been observed before. If so, a separate part of the brain then identifies the scene or object as being familiar.

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