Originally Posted by MacScot

Déjà vu......

Generally, in a few fleeting moments you may get a feeling that you are experiencing a carbon copy of a moment that you are convinced that you must have experienced before...or more simply a been-here-before feeling.

In the past, psychologists spoke not only of déjà vu but of déjà entendu (already heard), déjà senti (already smelled), déjà lu (already read), and déjà vécu (already lived).

Déjà vu is very difficult to study in the laboratory...we still do not know its cause, what triggers it, or why it trails off with age. Even studying normal memory is in its infancy..so trying to experimentally study something such as déjà vu will be very difficult. However, I do love Sigmund Freud's take on the subject. Freud traced the feeling, somewhat predictably, to one's mother’s genitals: 'There is indeed no other place about which one can assert with such conviction that one has been there before.'

Some facts on déjà vu
(from http://discovermagazine.com/2005/sep...y-of-deja-vu):

1. About a third of the population has never experienced déjà vu.

2. Déjà vu is more likely to occur during periods of stress and fatigue and that it tended to occur late in the day and late in the week.

3. The more educated, well traveled, wealthy, and liberal a person is, the more likely he or she is to experience déjà vu.

4. Déjà vu trails off dramatically with age with someone in their 20s experiencing it about 3 times a year, while middle-aged (me) experience it about once in a decade.

5. Déjà vu trails off dramatically appears to be located in the temporal lobe, and people with damaged temporal lobes may suffer from chronic déjà vu.

It has been suggested that, in damaged temporal lobe cases cases, déjà vu may be the result of a small seizure in the part of the temporal lobe that governs our sense of familiarity.

I think 3. above fits in with you Eva...do you experience déjà vu often?

Originally Posted by Eva

Thanks for that.....not really conclusive/definitive though is it?. It's the only thing which keeps me agnostic however.
MacScot you are doin the silvery tongued lounge lizard speak again-hahahaha.
It does make me laugh though.
Oh and yes I do,p'rhaps more as I get older even

Originally Posted by MacScot

..definitely not conclusive/definitive...very difficult to study directly when it only occurs 3 times a year in someone in their 20s and once a decade for older people !! It's all post-experience narrative and one tends to forget immediately after it's occurred. Silver-tongued..naw, just an observation that many on the Bored have made...some men fear bright women !