Deja vu feels like you’ve seen or heard something before. Statistics show that as many as 60% of the world’s population has experienced this phenomenon. Deja vu became widely known in 1900 when French medical scientist Florence Arnaud described it, and psychologist Emile Boirac used the term “Deja vu” for the first time. Many scientists have studied extensively to understand the cause of Deja vu, but the exact cause remains unknown, and numerous hypotheses exist. 

One strong hypothesis links Deja vu with memory. If you have never seen or remembered something before, Deja vu cannot occur. Therefore, Deja vu, which feels like reliving past experiences or memories, is closely related to the temporal lobes of the cerebrum and the hippocampus in the brain. 

The hippocampus is the part of the brain that learns new facts and processes narrative memory. The cortical regions around the hippocampus are also responsible for memory formation. These two areas primarily serve to verify connections with memory, but if the hippocampus does not perform this role well and only the cortical region functions properly, you may feel a connection even though it is not in your memory. Researchers argue that Deja vus is caused by confusion in information transmission in the neurons. 

To support this hypothesis, one of the symptoms that occur in patients with temporal lobe epilepsy is Deja vu. This condition causes confusion and loss of balance due to irregular electrical stimulation of brain nerve cells and leads to seizures. Therefore, when Deja vu occurs in patients with these symptoms, it suggests that there is something in the temporal lobe that causes the phenomenon. However, since many other hypotheses remain unclear, further research related to Deja vus eagerly anticipated. 

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