Deja Vu Recreated in a Lab Setting

esocid writes writes to tell us BBC News is reporting that scientists may have found a way to study deja vu, that uneasy feeling you have seen something before. Using hypnosis, scientists claim to be able to incorrectly trigger the portion of the brain responsible for recognition of something familiar. From the article: "Two key processes are thought to occur when someone recognizes a familiar object or scene. First, the brain searches through memory traces to see if the contents of that scene have been observed before. If they have, a separate part of the brain then identifies the scene or object as being familiar. In deja vu, this second process may occur by mistake, so that a feeling of familiarity is triggered by a novel object or scene."

This is deja vu

[palindromic]

all over again..

Seriously though, as soon as I read the line "using hypnosis in a laboratory" the plausible-interest part of my brain shut off and my eyes glazed over. Recreate THAT in a laboratory.

You're quite the Unknowing Fool

[2nd Post!]

Research is research. Understanding how the brain works is vital in progressing the state of the art. We will only be able to find a cure for Alzheimer's or MCD by pure luck unless we also happen to have a decent understanding of how the brain works. Science is not at all directed, as most people imagine, but much more like evolution; a hundred million different approaches all aiming for different goals, filtered through successful applications, and then repeated all over again.

Who knows but maybe the cure to Alzheimer's is FOUND because we understand how the brain triggers recall, which is touched upon when deja vu is wrongly invoked?

Re:It's Official

[2nd Post!]

I do hope you're joking and not serious. Being able to understand how something works (like the brain) as well as how it works incorrectly (like deja vu) is pretty important in figuring out how to fix it when something really breaks (like Alzheimer's or dementia or psychosis).

Re:Dupe!!!

[Stavr0]

Ok, let's be honest. How many of us came in here just to make that exact same joke?

Hypnoscience

[Attaturk]

Seriously though, as soon as I read the line "using hypnosis in a laboratory" the plausible-interest part of my brain shut off and my eyes glazed over. Recreate THAT in a laboratory.

My thoughts exactly. Since when did data gathered from hynposis or 'hypnotised' patients make its way into the lab? Even hypnotists admit that the discipline involves suggestion. Subjects' responses are usually compatible with the expectations of those around them - the data is tainted. Find a biochemical way of triggering a neurological deja-vu response and I'm interested.

From the article:
The Leeds team set out to create a sense of deja vu among volunteers in a lab.
They used hypnosis to trigger only the second part of the recognition process - hoping to create a sense of familiarity about something a person had not seen before.
The researchers showed volunteers 24 common words, then hypnotised them and told them that when they were next presented with a word in a red frame, they would feel that the word was familiar, although they would not know when they last saw it.
Green frames would make them think that the word belonged to the original list of 24.
After being taken out of hypnosis, the volunteers were presented with a series of words in frames of various colours, including some that were not in the original 24 and which were framed in red or green.
Of the 18 people studied so far, 10 reported a peculiar sensation when they saw new words in red frames and five said it definitely felt like deja vu.

I suppose science - or at least its standards - must have changed a lot since I was in school.

Something just occurred to me.

[Kelson]

Technically, no post on this article should be "Redundant."

Re:One explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

That's very interesting, I've often wondered what could be a logical explanation to this phenomenon.

For what it's worth a personal experience showed me it's definitely due to the brain not working correctly (maybe some people - not many on /. for sure - still believe it's a form of that seeing the future nonsense). I've experienced a 2-hours long deja-vu as side-effects of "magic" mushrooms. It becomes really annoying after 2 hours when everything you do, hear and see seems to have already happened before... Maybe if scientists can artificially provoke the same anomaly I've experienced it could be a good way to prove how it really works.

I'm not saying giving mushies to students plugged to a brain scanning device in hope of them getting the same effect though :)

Re:One explanation

[Anonymous Coward]

I believe the hippocampus is involved in the storage (consolidation) of memory. It does not itself store and recall memories, this is done in cortex. This is why there are seperate neurological bases for retrograde and anteriograde amnesias. An inability to form new memories is associated with hippocampal damage. So I think it is unlikely that deja vu is a hippocampal "hiccup".

Re:less frequent now

[timcrews]

I, too, have experienced deja vu so strong that I knew what was going to happen next, and I turned out to be right. It's happened twice. One of the times, the predicted event was fairly mundane, so it might have just been dumb luck. But for the second one, I don't think there was anything in the situation that could have lead to a natural prediction of the following event. I'm with the parent poster -- I am a scientist through and through, but I must also reconcile science with my actual experiences.

Re:less frequent now

[paxmaniac]

I think you watched Donnie Darko one time too many.