eli5: why do we have those moments where we are like “i remember this exact moment happening before”

Question

idk how to explain it but it happens to me pretty often

In: 2

Answer 1

There’s a French term for this, deja vu. We don’t know exactly why it happens, but many people experience this feeling.

There is one theory that our brains have two settings for events, “this is happening right now” and “this already happened” and that normally, our memories of events go from one category to the other after they conclude. After we’re finished with something, our brain stores it in the past category. The idea is that deja vu might be what happens when our brain gets that process mixed up, and we feel that the event is happening right now, and already happened at the same time.