How ‘Deja Vu’ Works

how stuff works: Have you ever visited a store for the first time and had it feel eerily familiar? Or maybe you’re deep in conversation with a friend and you suddenly get the feeling that you’ve had the exact conversation before, even though you know that you haven’t. If you’ve ever found yourself in either of these situations, you’ve experienced déjà vu. Sixty to 70 percent of us admit to getting this feeling at least once in our lives. The sight, sound, taste or even smell of something makes us think that we’ve experienced it before, although we know that we couldn’t have.

There are more than 40 theories as to what déjà vu is and what causes it, and they range from reincarnation to glitches in our memory processes. In this article, we’ll explore a few of those theories to shed some light on this little understood phenomenon.

Déjà vu is a French term that literally means “already seen” and has several variations, including déjà vécu, already experienced; déjà senti, already thought; and déjà visité, already visited. French scientist Emile Boirac, one of the first to study this strange phenomenon, gave the subject its name in 1876.

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