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opinion
It's
déjà vu all over again
Same shit, different day. Hold up, this conversation's different.
Wait no, it's the same ... somehow. You're not sure where
you have experienced this before, but you swear that you have.
You can even predict the words about to come out of the other's
mouth. Looking around, you know you've already been at this
exact moment in your life. But you ask yourself, how?
Some psychologists explain the phenomena as a dysfunction
in the brain's prefrontal cortex. Basically, they think it's
a hallucination. In some studies, the temporal lobe was electrically
stimulated or chemically activated, producing the experience
that can be described as déjà vu.
Other studies explain that the experience is the result of
a defective memory system, which is responsible for our judgments
in familiarity. The result is that a moment is given the characteristics
of familiarity that normally accompany a conscious recollection.
Then, the normal functioning of other brain structures involved
in memory retrieval leads to the qualities we feel during
a déjà vu episode.
Another French term, Jamais vu, translates to "never
seen." In other words, it didn't happen. We just think
it did.
So perhaps it is merely the biological experience of a spastic
frontal lobe or a whacked-out parahippocampal gyrus and its
cortical connections. But maybe it's more.
Maybe it transcends the physical realm and touches more
on the supernatural tip of a paranormal experience. Who knows?
Déjà vu could be a memory from a past life.
I personally oppose the idea that it's all in our heads. There
has to be more to the eerie feeling than a simple brain spasm.
It's similar to the weird feeling you get when you meet someone
that you feel like you've met before. How do you explain that
both parties involved are feeling the same thing? Could it
be simultaneous frontal lobe seizures? I don't think so.
Déjà vu can be just another state of consciousness
or unconsciousness that our minds are not fully tuned into,
like a disturbance in our conscious state where the subconscious
surfaces briefly, revealing some light of truth. A ha, it
is a glitch in the system.
Actually, my theory is this: We're all living to come back
to certain moments throughout our lives that are destined
to happen. No, I don't think we're free. When we experience
the feeling of déjà vu, we're actually experiencing
a realignment of elements that are supposed to take place.
Whether we turn left or right at those forks, at some point,
we inevitably cross those elements again. I think subconsciously,
we all know what the storybooks of our lives will reveal.
Christine Shin is a journalism major at Cal State Long
Beach.
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Christine
Shin
-
Jargon Juxtaposed -
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