Surprisingly deja vu allows us to look into the depths of our memory. Research has shown that this phenomenon occurs when the part of the brain responsible for recognizing what is familiar is gets out of sync with reality. In essence, déjà vu serves as a kind of “fact checking” for our memory system.

Photo: Openverse

However, sometimes this process goes beyond déjà vu and can lead to even more strange and unusual sensations.

The other side of deja vu is “jamevu“, the feeling when something familiar suddenly seems unreal or unfamiliar.

Jamevu can manifest itself in the fact that when looking at a familiar face, it appears for a moment to be strange or unfamiliar. Perhaps you yourself have encountered this phenomenon when, having visited a familiar place, you suddenly felt disorientation or perceived it with “new eyes”.

This feeling serves as a signal that something has become too much automatic, too repetitive, and encourages us to “emerge” from our current mental state. The feeling of unreality actually serves as a reality check.

This process is very important to maintain cognitive flexibilitywhich allows you not to get hung up on repetitive tasks, but to switch your attention as needed.

Although our understanding of jamevu is still in its infancy, one common scientific explanation is “satiation,” where the mental representation becomes overloaded and loses coherence.