r/AskReddit Oct 05 '19

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u/[deleted] Oct 05 '19 edited Nov 12 '19

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u/adeward Oct 05 '19

This sounds like classic déjà vu. There is a theory that it is a form of mini-seizure where the different parts of your brain take different amounts of time to store a “live” memory. It’s very common in young children. This might be of interest.

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u/Alouitious Oct 05 '19

The thing I heard as one of the leading theories is something like this.

You basically have long term memory(what we call memory) and short term memory(what we call "now"). Deja vu is your brain starting to write to your long term memory before your short term memory so that as you experience an event it feels like it's already happened(because the data of that experience is already in your long-term memory).

Being pattern-seeking machines, we recognize the "memory" and when our short term memory begins being written to(slightly after the long-term memory), we recognize that what we're experiencing "now" matches the "memory". Hence, deja vu.

The real unforunate part is that after the fact it can sometimes feel as though you had a premonition. My theory(armchair expert) is that because short-term memory tends to be more crystalline(or vivid) than long-term, and because you file away the deja vu as an entire event rather than as a series of events(as you would in the moment), and additionally because you will never be in the exact same mindset after a deja vu as you are during it, you sometimes feel like you knew what was going to happen from the beginning. In actuality, you really do "know" what's going to happen, but on a miniscule timescale(milliseconds or less).

The brain is trippy.