You’re walking down the street, you glance at a stranger and suddenly have this feeling of ‘I’ve seen this before.’ This is called Deja Vu. The word deja vu means “already seen” in French. This is the feeling of seeing or experiencing something before. Students feel that that they are stuck in a loop and this action is repeating itself. We know very little about this topic and why it happens. Is deja vu evidence of a past-life? No one knows for sure. Deja Vu and the feeling is very complex.“When I look at complete strangers sometimes I swear I have seen them before,” said sophomore, Anna Paul.

Many people think that having deja vu means you have predicted a part of the future. Scientists disagree; few believe that predicting the future is possible,according to pbs.org. Deja vu has confused many scientists that try to research and find an answer.

Many theories have been brought up as to why this happens. Studying deja vu can be very difficult to accomplish. Deja vu is so unpredictable this makes studying it almost impossible. Although research has shown that those of us who can remember our dreams tend to have deja vu more often, than those that cannot. A great percentage (70%) of the population has experienced some type of deja vu.

There are no correlations between genders but age does seem to play a role in this phenomenon.The majority of the above cited 70 percent are in the age group of 15 to 25. Deja vu can happen in any individuals with or without a mental conditions. There are many speculations as to why and how this phenomenon happens. Many parapsychologists believe that deja vu is caused from a past-life experience. Deja vu is a strong overwhelming feeling of familiarity.

This feeling of familiarity is signaled by brain cells in the temporal lobe. Sometimes the temporal lobe can be ignored by other parts of the brain to ensure everything makes sense.

“Sometimes I walk into a room and feel my brain get fuzzy and just feel confused,” said sophomore London Moseley.

There are no consensus yet on why this happens. Sciences suspect that deja vu is a reaction of the brain’s memory system when encountering object, or images that are similar to things you have seen before. “I always thought deja vu was just me remembering something that happened in a dream,” stated sophomore Jack Cudney.

Experiencing deja vu appears to be harmless and does not mean suffering from a bad memory.  Although, there has been a story of a woman who had experienced deja vu for twenty years. Later on this woman found out she had epilepsy, a disorder in which the brain cells are disturbed resulting in seizures. Some scientists believe that deja vu comes from dreams that you have forgotten and you are seeing them in reality.

“Sometimes I have a dream then a few days later I see the same things when I have woken up,” said Moseley. He went on to say “I think the feeling of deja vu is cool, it’s not really like anything else”. Deja vu is a strange feeling and even stranger to research. It seems that students are left with more questions than answers.