1. THE CLASSIFICATION

2. Arthur Funkhouser There are several types of “déjà experiences” Déjà vu experiences can be categorized into 3 different types of déjà experiences  Déjà vecu  Déjà senti  Déjà visite

3. Déjà Vecu Déjà vecu (already experienced or lived through) – The most common déjà vu experience – Involves the sensation of having done something or having been in an identical situation before and knowing what will happen next – The experience is often incredibly detailed and is usually connected to very normal activities – e.g. You’re having a dinner with your friends discussing some current political topic, and you have a feeling that you’ve already experienced the very thing - same friends, same dinner, and same topic

4. Déjà Senti Déjà senti (already felt) – Episode of recollection feels like the recovery of long sought information – During the experience, one feels the satisfaction of retrieving a memory although the memory was not actively sought – It feels as if a dream has simply been sucked out to the actual, physical environment and set to play again in every detail

5. Déjà Visite Déjà visite (already visited) – The most rare déjà vu experience – A person visits a new place and feels that it is familiar – It’s associated more with spatial dimensions – e.g. You’re traveling to England for the first time and you’re touring a cathedral, and it seems like you’ve been in the very spot before

6. THE SCIENTIFIC THEORIES BEHIND IT

7. Anomaly of Memory Result of an overlap between the neurological systems responsible for short-term memory and the systems responsible for long-term memory. The event is stored in memory even before the conscious part of the brain receives the information and processes it.

8. Vision One eye records what is seen a little bit faster than the other, creating a strong recollection sensation of the same scene being viewed milliseconds later by the opposite eye. However, this theory does not explain how other sensations are involved. Revised theories are developing, suggesting that one hemisphere of the brain receives information faster than the other, creating the recollecting sensation.

9. Brain Malfunction Our brain only needs bits of sensory information to construct a 3D image. When the brain receives a small sensory input that is very familiar with a detail experienced in the past, the entire memory is brought forward. The brain then takes the past experience and analyzes it as the present situation. This explains the physical effects of déjà vu, but it does not explain how some memories brought up aren’t necessarily from past events.

10. Dream Fulfillment Déjà vu is the subconscious repetition of a past experience, but with a happy ending.

11. Physics New findings such as the particles traveling back in time and time loops and multiple universes suggest that neurological “time travel” might be possible

12. Parapsychology (a study that seeks to investigate the existence of psychic abilities, near-death experiences, and life after death using scientific method) Déjà vu is the phenomenon of reincarnates remembering the past life.

14. Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Result of improper electrical discharge in the brain. Most people suffer a mild epileptic episode regularly (the sudden jolt that we feel), and it is thought that similar action happens in our brain during the déjà vu experience.