The opposite state of déjà vu. What is jamevyu and why is it called the forgotten reality

Scientists have discovered that déjà vu is actually a window into the workings of our memory system. The study found that this phenomenon occurs when the part of the brain that detects familiarity becomes out of sync with reality.

“James” is a state when what you know as familiar seems unreal or somehow new. This can involve looking at a familiar face and identifying it as unfamiliar or unfamiliar. Maybe you've walked into a familiar place and lost your bearings or seen it with “new eyes”.

What is jame vu

This is an experience that happens even less often than déjà vu, and maybe is more unusual and disturbing. When scientists asked people to describe this state in questionnaires about experiences in everyday life, they gave the following explanations: “When writing exams, I write a word correctly, but I look at it again and again because I have thoughts that maybe , I wrote it wrong”.

Little is known about the condition of the skin. But the scientists decided to “evoke” it in the laboratory. If you ask someone to repeat something over and over again, they often find that it becomes meaningless and confusing. In an experiment, 94 students spent time writing the same word over and over again. They did this using twelve different words that ranged from common ones like “door” to less common ones like “sword”.

The researchers asked the participants to repeat the word as quickly as possible, but were told that they were allowed to stop for several reasons, including feeling strange, bored, or having a sore arm. The most common choice to stop was because the task began to feel strange, with about 70% of participants stopping at least once to experience something we defined as jamais vu. Most often this happened after about one minute (33 repetitions).

People described their experiences as “those words lose meaning the longer you look at them” to “it felt like they were losing control of their hand” and the most interesting answer: “it doesn't feel right, it almost looks like it's not really a word, but someone cheated makes me think it is.”

When an action became too automatic

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

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

It's only logical that this should happen. Human cognitive systems must remain flexible, allowing attention to be directed to where it is needed, rather than lost in repetitive tasks for too long.

Scientists say they are only beginning to understand the condition of the brain. The main scientific explanation is “saturation” – overloading the idea until it becomes meaningless.

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Author: alex

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