DEJA VU

Have you ever been somewhere that you have never been before, but felt like there was something about it that struck a chord in your mind and seemed familiar? If so, you've experienced the mental phenomenon known as deja vu.

Deja vu happens to most people but it's something that no one has yet to fully understand. Approximately 60 to 70 percent of people have experienced deja vu on at least one occasion in their lives. When it happens, one of our senses - be it our sight, sound, smell or taste - can convince us that we have lived through an experience before even if we know on a rational level that we have not.


Scientists have come up with physiological hypotheses of why deja vu exists but to date nothing has been proven conclusively. It is important to stop here and note that deja vu, which is being convinced that a first visit to a place seems known or familiar even when it is not, is not the same as other similar phenomena such as precognition and clairvoyance.

Precognition is when an individual has a premonition about an event that will occur in the future. Clairvoyance is when an individual is able to perceive something that is out of the natural range of any of the five senses. These two phenomena are closely linked to deja vu but are not exactly the same.

In the context of LOST, this can be a possible explanation of the split universes, the island vs. the sideways world. Even in the apparent island time line, where Desmond meets Jack at the stadium for the first time, there is a deja vu moment. And when Jack meets Desmond at the Hatch, there is a immediate flash back connection even though their past meeting was minor and short. Likewise, the characters in the sideways world are living lives with a certain deja vu that something is hidden under the surface; things are not quite right.

Deja Vu Categories

Deja vu can be broken down into two categories. These categories include associative deja vu and biological deja vu.

Associative deja vu is more common. This is the kind of deja vu that the average healthy individual experiences. In this case the person can see, hear, smell, or touch something that evokes a feeling in them that is associated with a similar sensation to something they have experienced in the past. Researchers believe this kind of deja vu is connected to the memory centers found in the brain.

Biological deja vu happens to those individuals who suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy. In fact, these people often have an unusual experience such as this before they have a seizure. deja vu of this kind is often described as being very intense. It's an easier way for scientists to study the phenomenon and has helped them identify the parts of the brain that play a role in the sensations that arise. However, many researchers believe that associative deja vu, sometimes called typical deja vu, and biological deja vu are very different in nature.

Theories Regarding Deja Vu

Many individuals, including those in the scientific and medical community, have tried to explain away the phenomena of deja vu. Is it a psychic phenomenon or is it not? Why do some people experience it and not others? What is at work here when a person believes they have visited a place before but in reality have never set foot in that spot? These are all questions that at present defy answers.

Parapsychologists are psychologists who study paranormal phenomena. These professionals have theorized that deja vu is a past life experience re-emerging in a person's mind. Some individuals believe that it's an emotional response to an event that taps into some incident from the past.

Still others believe that the brain is short circuiting and that it is a neurochemical action taking place that has no connection whatsoever to any life events. In other words, an individual is overcome by a strange feeling and connects it to a memory when really it is something that is all together new and unfamiliar to them.

At the present time deja vu remains yet another one of the fascinating mysteries of life that involves secrets locked away in the brain that it is not ready to reveal. It is believed that the sense of sight is most often connected with the experience but that, too, is up for debate and requires more research. The knowledge we have gleaned about deja vu is only the tip of a much larger iceberg.

And here is where LOST intersections with the mysteries of science.

If deja vu is a paranormal phenomena, then the symptomatic use of deja vu in the series could be considered a clue as the premise of the show. There is an underlying medical condition to a primary character(s) who feed upon a mental abnormality to create the action we viewed throughout the series. This goes beyond a theory that this is all in Hurley's head (living in a mental institution with imaginary friends). This could postulate that the feelings of deja vu are more interdimensional memories and thoughts that bleed through time and space (life events on island bleed through to the sideways world, or vice versa). Deja vu is the packet (like computer signals on the internet) of information that registers in a person's subconscious, which other researchers believe is the key to evaluating and making later conscious decisions.