Have you heard of another déjà vu variety that is almost so weird? Déjà rêvé- when you feel like you have experienced something before in a dream.
Déjà rêvé means 'already dreamed' in French.
According to Sanam Hafeez, a neuropsychologist: "It is a memory, a scene or a feeling that you experienced in a dream. And when the same experience happens again in the real world, it is déjà rêvé." A study published in the International Journal of Dream Research in 2010 found that up to 95% of people may have experienced déjà rêvé.
Scientists have discovered some things about déjà vu - for example, that seem to happen when two different circuits in the hippocampus, the part of your brain dedicated to memory and processing, are activated immediately. But déjà rêvé is more mysterious. After all, dreams often take inspiration from your true memories and experiences. But what lies behind the disturbing feeling that you are doing something you did when you were sleeping?
A French study published in Brain Stimulation in 2018 provided a new overview of déjà rêvé. The researchers took patients with epilepsy who had undergone electrical brain stimulation therapy. Brain stimulation is sometimes used for epilepsy to help control seizures and people with epilepsy are particularly prone to déjà vu. The scientists found that after treatment, some people began to experience déjà rêvé. They reported that they felt as if their current situation was in similar to a dream they had seen.
Researchers reported that while déjà vu is simply a vague sensation, people with déjà rêvé could often associate their feelings with accurate dream memories. Of course, they could not be sure that these were actual dreams, or if the people in the study only imagined they would have seen them before. Scholars believe that déjà vu may be a miscommunication, a distortion of a memory we currently have, or something else. Déjà rêvé can happen because of something similar in the way we remember - or think we remember - dreams in the past.
There is still a lot to learn about déjà rêvé - why it happens, why some people are more likely to feel it than others, and what it can tell us about our brains or our dreams. But if you feel it, do not be afraid. Just enjoy one of the weird, harmless side effects of having a brain.
