Memory-based explanation
Implicit memory
Research has associated déjà vu experiences with good memory functions.[31] Recognition memory enables people to realize the event or activity that they are experiencing has happened before. When people experience déjà vu, they may have their recognition memory triggered by certain situations which they have never encountered.[17]
The similarity between the effect stimulus and an existing, or non-existing but different, memory trace may lead to the sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past.[23][32] Thus, encountering something that evokes the implicit associations of an experience or sensation that cannot be remembered may lead to déjà vu. In an effort to reproduce the sensation experimentally, Banister used hypnosis to give participants posthypnotic amnesia for material they had already seen. When this was later re-encountered, the restricted activation caused thereafter by the posthypnotic amnesia resulted in three of the 10 participants reporting what the authors termed liked para.
Two approaches are used by researchers to study feelings of previous experience, with the process of recollection and familiarity. Recollection-based recognition refers to an ostensible realization that the current situation has occurred before. Familiarity-based recognition refers to the feeling of familiarity with the current situation without being able to identify any specific memory or previous event that could be associated with the sensation.
Dream-based explanation
Dreams can also be used to explain the experience of déjà vu, and they are related in three different aspects. Firstly, some déjà vu experiences duplicate the situation in dreams instead of waking conditions, according to the survey done by Brown (2004). Twenty percent of the respondents reported their déjà vu experiences were the dreams of 40% of the respondents reported from both reality and dreams. Secondly, people may experience déjà vu because some elements in their remembered dreams were shown. Research done by Mr. Z (1966) supported this idea by investigating the relationship between remembered dreams and déjà vu experiences, and suggested that there is a strong correlation. Thirdly, people may experience déjà vu during a dream state, which links déjà vu with dream frequency.
Medical disorders
Déjà vu is associated with temporal lobe epilepsy.[20][21][medical citation needed] This experience is a neurological anomaly related to epileptic electrical discharge in the brain, creating a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced has already been experienced in the past.
Migraines with aura are also associated with déjà vu.[22]
Early researchers tried to establish a link between déjà vu and mental disorders such as anxiety, dissociative identity disorder and schizophrenia but failed to find correlations of any diagnostic value.[23] No special association has been found between déjà vu and schizophrenia.[24][25] A 2008 study found that déjà vu experiences are unlikely to be pathological dissociative experiences.[26][medical citation needed]
Some research has looked into genetics when considering déjà vu. Although there is not currently a gene associated with déjà vu, the LGI1 gene on chromosome 10 is being studied for a possible link. Certain forms of the gene are associated with a mild form of epilepsy, and, though by no means a certainty, déjà vu, occurs often enough during seizures (such as simple partial seizures) that researchers have reason to suspect a link.
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