History Of Déjà Vu

Historically, ‘déjà vu’ has been used as an umbrella term to describe a range of possible déjà experiences.  Physiologists, for instance, have opined that its origin lies in delayed communication between the cerebral hemispheres; psychologists figure these experiences must be due to memory glitches (that the person has seen something in his or her past, and a present situation recalls it); neurologists say they are often caused by temporal lobe epilepsy; and some parapsychologists say they may arise from precognitive dreams. Others prefer reincarnation as an explanation.

In his 1981 doctoral thesis, the South African neuropsychiatrist Vernon Neppe listed 21 variants of déjà vu. Among them were the aforementioned déjà vécu, as well as déjà visité (‘already visited’), déjà rêvé (‘already dreamt’), déjà entendu (‘...