{"id":213416,"date":"2025-05-07T05:22:50","date_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:22:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/jamais-vu-the-science-behind-eerie-opposite-of-deja-vu"},"modified":"2025-05-07T05:22:50","modified_gmt":"2025-05-07T10:22:50","slug":"jamais-vu-the-science-behind-eerie-opposite-of-deja-vu","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/05\/jamais-vu-the-science-behind-eerie-opposite-of-deja-vu","title":{"rendered":"Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/jamais-vu-the-science-behind-eerie-opposite-of-deja-vu.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Our research found that the phenomenon arises when the part of the brain which detects familiarity de-synchronises with reality. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu is the signal which alerts you to this weirdness: it is a type of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.newscientist.com\/article\/2101089-mystery-of-deja-%20vu-explained-its-how-we-check-our-memories\">\u201cfact checking\u201d for the memory system<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>But repetition can do something even more uncanny and unusual. The opposite of d\u00e9j\u00e0 vu is \u201cjamais vu\u201d, when something you know to be familiar feels unreal or novel in some way. In our <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/09658211.2020.1727519\">recent research<\/a>, which has <a href=\"https:\/\/improbable.com\/ig\/winners\/#ig2023\">just won an Ig Nobel award for literature<\/a>, we investigated the mechanism behind the phenomenon.<\/p>\n<p>Jamais vu may involve looking at a familiar face and <a href=\"https:\/\/link.springer.com\/referenceworkentry\/10.1007\/978-0-387-79948-3_1167\">finding it suddenly unusual or unknown<\/a>. Musicians have it momentarily \u2013 losing their way in a very familiar passage of music. You may have had it going to a familiar place and becoming disorientated or seeing it with \u201cnew eyes\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our research found that the phenomenon arises when the part of the brain which detects familiarity de-synchronises with reality. D\u00e9j\u00e0 vu is the signal which alerts you to this weirdness: it is a type of \u201cfact checking\u201d for the memory system. But repetition can do something even more uncanny and unusual. The opposite of d\u00e9j\u00e0 [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":427,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[42,47,224],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-213416","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-media-arts","category-neuroscience","category-science"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213416","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/427"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=213416"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/213416\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=213416"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=213416"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=213416"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}