# Deja vu **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [January 3, 2003, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382 "2003-01-03T07:02:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Mr.Pills](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/fbc32d/32.png) [@Mr.Pills](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Pills)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/1 "2003-01-03T07:02:10Z")
I get deja vu like three or four times a week. Cecil once wrote that this is frequent among epileptic people. I do not have epilepsy, so can anyone explain why I get it so often? And im not just confusing it, i swear this crap has happened before, exactly like how i remember, but then againt it hasnt. ---
**Author:** ![hammerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hammerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hammerbach)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/2 "2003-01-03T07:03:58Z")
I’d swear I’ve seen this post before… ---
**Author:** ![hammerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hammerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hammerbach)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/3 "2003-01-03T07:07:14Z")
Liking chocolate is also “frequent among epileptic people”, but it doesn’t mean that being epileptic makes you like chocolate. ---
**Author:** ![hammerbach](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/73ab20/32.png) [@hammerbach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hammerbach)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/4 "2003-01-03T07:09:01Z")
And welcome to the SDMB, too, Mr. Pills! ---
**Author:** ![TJdude825](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/dec6dc/32.png) [@TJdude825](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TJdude825)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 7:14am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/5 "2003-01-03T07:14:26Z")
Welcome to the boards, **Mr. Pills**. I think the column you’re talking about is [[link]](http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a5_113.html) and while it did say that epilepsy can cause deja vu, that doesn’t mean that it won’t happen to others too. I get it a lot too. “Deja vu is usually a glitch in the matrix. It happens when they change something.” -_The Matrix_ ---
**Author:** ![AHunter3](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ahunter3/32/368_2.png) [@AHunter3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AHunter3)\ **Post date:** [January 3, 2003, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/6 "2003-01-03T15:35:15Z")
I never got Deja Vu. The Uninvited was causing me sufficient misery on its own, and by the time I decided to give Deja a try the floppy disk was corrupted. ---
**Author:** ![sunstone](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sunstone/32/3372_2.png) [@sunstone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/sunstone)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2003, 5:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/7 "2003-01-04T05:48:47Z")
Interesting first post, Mr. Pills. I’ve read several explanations, including the one linked above. I have my own wild eyed guess as to the cause of deja vu, and obviously no cite for the following…We constantly try to relate new situations to our past experiences, either consciously or subconsciously. We compare the important features of the newsituation to our catalog of past experiences. As an example, a new friend may remind you of your second cousin because they have a number of shared features or habits. In deja vu, we recognise that the new situation has a set of features that we’ve encountered before, but we can’t remember the past experience, and somehow the time element of “now vs then” gets messed up. The result is that eerie feeling of deja vu. No doubt someone else has thought this before. ---
**Author:** ![bibliophage](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bibliophage/32/7615_2.png) [@bibliophage](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bibliophage)\ **Post date:** [January 4, 2003, 6:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/8 "2003-01-04T06:39:04Z")
Welcome to the SDMB, **Mr. Pills**. Since this is a comment on one of Cecil’s columns, I’ll move this thread to the Comments on Cecil’s Columns forum. bibliophage moderator GQ ---
**Author:** ![Conrad\_Verloc](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/9de053/32.png) [@Conrad\_Verloc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Conrad_Verloc)\ **Post date:** [January 6, 2003, 12:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/deja-vu/146382/9 "2003-01-06T12:18:56Z")
Somewhere, in the last year or two, I remember reading that deja vu is now thought to be caused by a misclassification of sensory input. As well as I can recall, the brain tags current sensory data as if it were a memory. The deja vu feeling arises from the conflict of having what we know is a new experience while our mind is telling us its a memory. Anyone else ever heard of this theory?