The state opposite of déjà vu. What is jamais vu and why it is called a forgotten reality

Scientists have discovered that deja vu is indeed a window into the workings of our memory system. The study revealed that this phenomenon occurs when the familiarity-detecting part of the brain becomes out of sync with reality.

Deja vu is a signal that alerts you to this strangeness: it's a type of "fact-checking" for the memory system. But there's also an opposite condition – it's called "jamais vu," Science Alert writes.

"Jamais vu" is a state where what you know as familiar seems unreal or somehow new. This can encompass looking at a familiar face and finding it unusual or unknown. You may have walked into a familiar place and lost your bearings or seen it with "new eyes".

What is jamevu

It is an experience that occurs even less frequently than deja vu and is perhaps more unusual and disturbing. When scientists have asked people to describe this state in questionnaires about experiences in everyday life, they have given the following explanations: 'When writing exams, I spell a word correctly, but I look at it again and again because I have thoughts that I may have spelled it wrong'.

Little is known about the jamais vu condition. But scientists decided to "induce" it in the lab. If you ask someone to repeat something over and over again, they often find that it becomes meaningless and confusing. In the experiment, 94 students spent time spelling the same word over and over again. They did this with twelve different words that ranged from common ones like "door" to less common ones like "sword."

The scientists asked participants to repeat the word as quickly as possible but said they were allowed to stop for several reasons, including feeling weird, bored, or having a sore arm. The most common choice to stop was when the task started to feel strange: about 70% of participants stopped at least once to feel something we defined as jamais vu. This was more common after about one minute (33 repetitions).

People described their experience as "these words lose meaning the longer you look at them" to "seemed to lose control of my hand" and the most interesting response option, "it doesn't seem right, it almost feels like it's not really a word but someone tricked me into thinking it was".

When some action has become too automatic

It took scientists 15 years to complete this scientific work. The main conclusion is the idea that transformations and loss of meaning through repetition are accompanied by a special sensation – it's what's called jamais vu.

That is, it's a signal to you that something has become too automatic, too fluid, too repetitive. It helps us break out of our current processing, and the feeling of unreality is actually a reality check.

It makes sense that this should happen. Human cognitive systems need to remain flexible, allowing us to pay attention where it's needed and not get lost in repetitive tasks for too long.

Scientists say they are just beginning to understand the jamais vu state. The main scientific explanation is "saturation" – overloading a representation until it becomes meaningless.

Earlier OBOZ.UA told about the study of scientists, in which they found out the cognitive functions of people "larks", who go to bed early and wake up early, and often sitting up to night "owls". The results of the analysis showed which of these people have better memory and are more active during the day.

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