What is the link between deja vu and simulation theory? Let’s find out how this theory explains this mysterious mental effect.
Probably, there are no people that have never experienced deja vu – a strange feeling that something has happened before although you know that this is not the case. What is it? Vague memories that come to the surface from the dark corners of our subconsciousness? Fragments of dreams we don’t remember? Or perhaps it is an indication of reincarnation, hinting that it’s not our first life on Earth?
The name of the phenomenon comes from a French phrase that means “already seen”. The experience of deja vu is so elusive and fleeting that for many years it has been considered impossible to study. However, in 2006, British scientists from the University of Leeds conducted an experiment that involved volunteers suffering from recurring deja vu.
Research into Deja Vu
The head of the research team Dr. Chris Moulin claims that for the first time, he faced a clinical case of deja vu when he met a patient haunted by this phenomenon. That patient had even stopped watching TV and reading newspapers because every time he did, he had a feeling that he knew everything in advance.
At the same time, he was suffering from lapses in memory: the poor man couldn’t remember what happened a few minutes ago. How to help such a patient to remember what has happened in reality and to forget what has never happened? What if it’s not just a figment of the imagination, but some other reality?
Researcher Akira O’Connor attempted to reproduce the mysterious phenomenon of the human psyche in the laboratory. She was using hypnosis with her patients, offering them to memorize a few words, then using suggestion to make them forget everything, and finally showing them cards with the same words.
At the end of every session, O’Connor was asking patients to describe their subjective feelings. Almost all of them experienced something like deja vu. Some patients found it really painful to try to reproduce the circumstances under which they had heard these words. However, almost no one managed to.
Deja Vu and Memory
Is deja vu about erased memories? But how would our memories be erased? So far, there are no answers to these questions.
A close study of the phenomenon of deja vu has allowed scientists to take a fresh look at the problem of how memory and consciousness are related. It’s unexplainable how people experiencing deja vu can remember every detail of meetings or events that have never taken place in reality.
It could mean that sensations associated with the phenomenon of deja vu are not connected with memory. In other words, we are talking about two different systems operating in the brain. But what system is responsible for producing “false” memories?
Research shows that at the moment of recalling something, a certain chain of neurons fires in the temporal lobe of the brain. In a person with chronic deja vu, this chain is in a state of hyperactivity, which causes the flow of memories about never existing events.
Deja Vu and Simulation Theory
The phenomenon of deja vu is quite popular in science fiction books and movies. Remember “the Matrix”? Our world is a great computer program and people are puppets in someone’s hands… What we used to consider real is actually an illusion…
If we regard the existence through the prism of the simulation theory, how many virtual worlds are there and is deja vu a way of receiving signals from these parallel worlds?
After all, this intriguing theory does not contradict modern scientific ideas such as the strings theory and the theory of black holes, according to which the Universe consists of a super-dense substance that doesn’t let the light through and anybody getting inside may become a time-traveler or find themselves in other dimensions.
According to the theory of dark energy and dark matter, these two still hypothetical substances form 95% of the material world around us. In other words, everything we can see: Earth, stars, planets, and the observable universe in general – it’s only a tiny fraction of what actually exists.
If we take all this into consideration, could there be a link between deja vu and simulation theory? Could this odd mental phenomenon come to us from the vast expanses of dark matter? What if people who suffer from this brain malfunction (as scientists tend to define it) can receive messages from other worlds?
It’s just a theory, but a very interesting one. No one knows for sure, and the phenomenon of deja vu remains a mystery to this day.