THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 16

Déjà vu: Paranormal or Neurological?

     “Oh! Look the new cafe is finally open! I love how cosy and quaint it looks!” “Oh! Look the new cafe is finally open! I love how cosy and quaint it looks!” Pia was walking along the market with her mother, remarking casually on the new cafe which had opened up as an odd feeling swept over her that she had been in this exact situation before, commenting on this very cafe which had not even been in existence until a week ago! This eerie feeling of having experienced a situation before when, in fact, we know for certain we haven’t is termed “déjà vu” which is French for “already seen”. Some of us may even feel like we have “felt” something previously called déjà senti; or having had already visited a place called déjà visite.

     Deja vu is a familiar sensation that most of us have experienced and it can be somewhat unsettling due to its strange premonitory quality. 

     Parapsychologists attribute this phenomenon to clairvoyance and even to previous experiences in a past life repeating themselves. Since such a claim cannot be proved, disproved or otherwise investigated, we turn to research in neuropsychology to understand the nature and cause of déjà vu.

     Neurological causes are typically complex and varied given the complexity of the brain, only a fraction of which has rendered itself to scientific knowledge. Early investigations in to déjà vu centred around people with brain pathology as their reports of déjà vu were striking and frequent. For instance, in 1896, a prominent neurologist F.L. Arnaud described the déjà vu experience of a 34 year old man who was recovering from cerebral malaria. He claimed to recognise certain newspaper articles and seemed to “recognise” almost every situation.  

     A series of research spanning decades suggests that déjà vu is caused by misfiring of neurons in the part of the brain which is  responsible for recognising familiar stimuli. This particular system in the brain is responsible for judging if we have come across a certain situation before or not. In people suffering from epilepsy originating in their temporal lobe (which is on either sides of the brain), this recognition system falsely gives an impression of familiarity with a new situation, giving rise to a sense of déjà vu.

     In people who do not suffer from epilepsy or any other pathology of the brain, the brain areas responsible for retrieval of memory, i.e. accessing old memories to aid in the current situation, can lead to a sense of already having been there before. These brain areas have been identified by Spatt (2002) as being the prefrontal cortex (the front region of the frontal cortex) and hippocampus (a structure present in the limbic system of our brain crucial for memory processes).

     Deja vu is one of the glitches in our memory system which makes us ponder as to what makes our memories feel real or surreal as the case may be as the case may be. Oh well!

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL

THE BEANBAG PSYCHOLOGIST 06

On Meaning and Memory

     There works a mysterious mechanism within us which teaches us not to touch a hot iron twice, enables us to calculate forty divided by two, to recall what we first noticed about our favourite teacher, and even form a sense of who we are and what our life is about. It is a curious phenomenon which seems to decay even as it just begins to form! You will be able to understand this statement better if you heard a 10- digit phone number that seems easy enough to remember until when asked to repeat it! This amazing capacity allows you to recall in great detail every colour you saw and every sound you heard on a trip to your favourite amusement park while at the same time, it may fail you when you try to recall some important dates from your history lesson! This indispensable, yet sometimes amusing psychological process is Memory!

     There are many different kinds of information that comes to our attention every day. Some of these we may classify as irrelevant to us and these never get coded in our memory while some other bits of information may be necessary for our functioning and performance in our everyday tasks. These personally relevant information get coded and stored more easily than the peripheral data. Just imagine how much easier it is for you to remember the address of your new house than the birthday of your father’s friend!

     Information that stand out in terms of their novelty and intensity get coded in our memories faster and are retained for longer periods of time! A piercing noise that breaks the silence of your exam hall gets into your memory system more readily and strongly that the sound of a falling pencil. A funny comment in the midst of a serious lecture, for example, makes the information distinct and hence more easily committed to memory! Thus, the mood or the state of mind in which we receive certain information, hugely determines how much we are going to be able to recall later! The context in which we study such as our surroundings, background noise (or music in some cases!) can also facilitate or impede memory.

     Meaningful information get stored more easily than non-meaningful ones. A very interesting experiment by Hermann Ebbinghaus, one of the earliest contributors to research on memory, explained the  remarkable tendency of human beings to induce meaning into seemingly nonsensical information in order to memorise and recall them better! He made a list of what are called “nonsense syllables”, which are words that have no meaning. BAX, TOJ, LIY, DEQ and the like are examples. He also made nonsense syllables using only consonants such as DRW, FXP, KDR which are hard to even associate with words we know already! He found that people still attempt to induce meaning into these words and recall them!

     Imagine the sheer will to meaning that we as human beings have even when faced with recalling non-words! If only we can adopt a more meaningful approach to information in the curriculum so that the drudgery we associate with learning can be replaced with wonderment and enjoyment!

SANGEETHA MADHU & JYOTHI RAVICHANDRAN, THE HINDU IN SCHOOL