Scientists in the United States say they have discovered a part of the brain responsible for the feeling of déjà vu.
Déjà vu, French for "already seen", is that uncanny feeling that one has witnessed or experienced a new situation previously; it is also called paramnesia.
Déjà vu is usually accompanied by a compelling sense of familiarity, and also a sense of "eeriness", "strangeness", or "weirdness" and the "previous" experience is usually attributed to a dream, although in some cases there is a firm sense that the experience "genuinely happened" in the past.
Déjà vu has often been described as "remembering the future" and is a very common phenomenon experienced by 70% or more of the population at least once.
It has been extremely difficult to create the déjà vu experience in laboratory settings, so few studies have been done on the phenomenon.
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, now say they have discovered the part of the brain that is responsible for déjà vu; they say neurons in the memory centre of the brain called the hippocampus make a mental map of new places and experiences, then store them away for later use.
They believe that déjà vu occurs when two events or places are very similar to each other, overlap and thus the feeling of déjà vu takes place.