Let's talk about deja vu. It's not seeing a cat go by twice. It's a feeling that you have been in the exact same situation before, and you almost expect everything that is happening. It's kind of nightmarish and panic inducing, like sensory overload. You want to figure out why the situation seems so familiar, without ceasing to participate in the experience. For me, it's all over in about five seconds, and I'm left with only a vague recollection of the unpleasant feeling.

It happened to me yesterday, which got me thinking about all this. I was in a meeting with Jay, a woman in the Pathology department I've never met before. She was discussing the results of a QC inspection that was performed, for the first time, a few weeks ago. Nothing about the experience should have been familiar to me, but I felt as if I had been there, and been though it, all before. Hey... yesterday was Groundhog Day. Coincidence?

I've pondered the nature and origin of this feeling, and I have come to the conclusion that deja vu actually has little to nothing to do with having actually experienced an identical or even similar situation before. I postulate that the brain just makes up a memory of whatever you're experiencing as it's happening. So your brain thinks it's been through the same neural channels before, either because the part of the brain that retrieves memories is erroneously active during deja vu, or because your brain is actually creating a memory of the present, but dating it in the past, and then retrieving it while still in the midst of the experience.

I'd love to discuss deja vu or any other interesting brain blips with anyone. Time travel too.