Deja, Jamais, Presque

Okay, so, look at the picture above. ‘Hello’. Simple enough, eh? Now, look closer. And longer.

Do you still see a ‘Hello!’? Stare harder. Still see it?

No. Of course, no! 

You probably see the alphabets H, E, L, L, O written in deep orange on a grey background. You know the alphabets form the word that is used as a  way of greeting someone or introducing oneself. And still you have a nagging feeling!

What does this word mean? Oh well, yeah, I am using it all the time. I am using it every time I start a Facebook chat. But it’s just a few alphabets aligned in a haphazard way. How can that mean something? It’s just H E L L O there. 5 letters! One word that…OH WELL. What does it matter anyway. (thinks to oneself) Strange!

Does that happen to you? To me it does every time I stare at a word long and hard! 

There’s nothing unusual in this. It’s a phenomenon of the human brain called Jamais vu.

Wikipedia defines Jamais vu as a ‘most commonly experienced phenomenon when a person momentarily does not recognize a word,person or place that he,or she already knows’!

It’s more rarely experienced with people and places.

See? This is what I was talking about!

There are two other forms of vu. They are Deja vu and Presque vu.

Deja vu! ‘The phenomenon of having a strong sensation that an event or experience currently being experienced, has been experienced in the past, whether or not it has actually happened.’

Deja vu is the most commonly experienced of the three ‘vu’ s.

It’s a regular phenomenon with me. Once I even thought I knew(almost) my bengali weekly test marks. AND LIKE HELL IT WAS WHAT I ACTUALLY GOT!

Deja vu is the French term that literally means “already seen“. In it’s presence,(and I’m quoting) we experience a momentary lapse in one of the two cognitive perception systems which usually function simultaneously.

That happens, no? 😀

There are a lot of scientific facts backing up these phenomenon.I better not go into details. If you are interested, browse for the terms!

 There’s Presque vu too. It is called the T-O-T phenomenon. Tip-Of-The-Tongue.

Perhaps the most significant example to site would be your forgetting something before an exam. Something that you have studied well and hard and you know it just so well. It’s like,almost at the tip of your tongue, just not at the tip of your pen!

Presque vu is the ‘failure to retrieve a word from memory, combined with partial recall, and a feeling that the retrieval is imminent’.

Do you ever experience these mysterious ‘vu’s ?
Check out Michael Steven’s video on the YouTube channel V sauce, ‘ What is Deja Vu?’