What causes deja vu, and how does it happen?

You feel like you've been somewhere before, even though you're not sure how, that’s déjà vu!

Imagine your brain is like a super detective, always looking for clues about what's happening around you. Most of the time, it does its job without you noticing. But sometimes, the detective gets confused, it sees something familiar, but not quite in the same way.

This happens because two parts of your brain are working at the same time: one is recording new information, and the other is remembering old information. It's like when you're eating a sandwich and suddenly think you've had this exact sandwich before, even though it’s not the same one!

Your brain has two ways of processing things:

• One is fast, like when you see something and react right away.
• The other is slower, like when you take time to think about what you just saw.

Sometimes the fast one thinks it already knows what’s happening, but the slow one hasn’t caught up yet! That mix-up makes your brain go “Wait… this feels familiar!”, and that's déjà vu. You feel like you've been somewhere before, even though you're not sure how, that’s déjà vu!

Imagine your brain is like a super detective, always looking for clues about what's happening around you. Most of the time, it does its job without you noticing. But sometimes, the detective gets confused, it sees something familiar, but not quite in the same way.

This happens because two parts of your brain are working at the same time: one is recording new information, and the other is remembering old information. It's like when you're eating a sandwich and suddenly think you've had this exact sandwich before, even though it’s not the same one!