This article is from the WeChat public account: Global Science (ID: huanqiukexue) , author: Sabrina Stierwalt, translation: land and water, Review: Zhang twenty-seven, from FIG title: pixabay
Most of us have a sense of sight. It is a sense of acquaintance that suddenly appears in daily life, as if you have already experienced this moment. This weird feeling is full of mystery. Some people understand it as a memory of previous lives or a prediction of the future. Some people think of it as evidence of the “brain in the tank”. It is a small error in the machine that controls the brain. So, what do scientists think of this phenomenon?
Is there an instant in which you feel that the scene in front of you seems to have happened. You met a stranger, but you suddenly felt “I have seen this sister.” Or after reading here, you started shooting and said, “I have dreamed about this!” “In this situation, it seems “I have experienced it in the past” is an illusion that often appears in daily life. In psychology, we call this phenomenon déjà vu , which is the Chinese word for “ 即 视 感 “.
The memory may be wrong
Scientists have tried to reproduce the sense of sight in the laboratory. In a 2006 study, researchers at the University of Leeds’ memory group (Leeds Memory Group) first created for subjects under hypnosis Make a memory, such as playing a game or seeing a printed word in a specific color, thenThe researchers suggested that different groups of subjects forget or remember this memory. Later, the group of remembered subjects will have a sense of sight when they see the game or word again.
Some scientists are also trying to use virtual reality technology to create a sense of sight. [span class = “text-remarks” label = “Remarks”> (virtual reality) A study transformed a scene in the Sims game (the Sims) into the same layout, such as a virtual All the bushes in the garden scene were replaced with garbage dumps, so the garden became a garbage dump with the same layout. Passing by this scene, the players said they had a sense of sight.
Based on these experiments, scientists began to think that the sense of sight was actually a memory phenomenon: We entered a scene very similar to memory, but we couldn’t find the corresponding exact memory. The brain recognizes the similarities between current scenes and memories, leaving us with a sense of familiarity that is beyond words.
Scientists are not satisfied with the above explanations. They have proposed many theories in an attempt to give specific reasons for memory failure. Some of these theories suggest that the sense of sight is like a short circuit in the brain that leads to long-term and short-term memory , so the new information does not stay in the short-term memory repository first, but goes directly to the long-term memory. There are also some theories that this is due to the absence of relevant memory support, and the nasal cortex and entorhinal cortex (collectively called rhinal cortex, which is responsible for sending familiarity in the brain Sensory area) was activated by mistake.
Another theory is that the sense of sight is related to “false memory”. This memory seems to be real, but it is actually false. This can lead to the feeling that you can’t distinguish whether something happened in reality or in a dream. However, subsequent research quickly refuted this theory.
For example, a study used functional magnetic resonance imaging (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, fMRI) Subject’s brain. If the sense of vision is related to false memory, then memory-related brain regions such as the hippocampus should beWill be activated. However, it is the brain regions that are involved in decision-making. Researchers believe that this is because the brain is trying to resolve conflicts: It is rummaging through past memories to see if we have actually experienced them.
Is the brain sick? Or predict the future?
The extreme case of visual perception is temporal lobe epilepsy (temporal lobe epilepsy) , which is a random Chronic disorders of the nervous system that occur in the temporal lobe of the brain are often manifested as focally conscious epilepsy (focal-aware seizure) . When this happens, people will continue to maintain basic consciousness, but will have an abnormal feeling similar to the sense of sight. Some scientists believe that visual acuity is a milder version of this neurological disorder.
There are also theories that this weird feeling is actually a glimpse of the future. Some people who have a sense of sight have said they seem to have a sense of predicting the future. But this theory does not have any scientific basis. According to research, their success rate of prediction and blind guessing are not different .
Should we worry about perception? As long as it has nothing to do with epilepsy, researchers don’t think there is any harm in this feeling. In fact, some scientists believe that the sense of sight may be beneficial. If it does occur because the brain is rearranging misplaced memories, this weird sense of horror may indicate that our memories are working well. This theory also explains why young people between the ages of 15 and 25 are more likely to develop a sense of sight. Scientists in the UK are studying a young man with a long-standing sense of sight. He frequently feels that he is re-experiencing past experiences, and the sense of sight that often occurs is as long as one minute each time. He felt like he was trapped in the movie “Illusion of Death.”
All in all, if you only occasionally have a brief sense of sight, and it will not affect your daily life, then there is nothing to worry about. You can go with “Initial D” episode “Deja vu” and enjoy this weird illusion.
Original link:
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-science-explain-deja-vu/
This article comes from WeChat public account: Global Science (ID: huanqiukexue) , author: Sabrina Stierwalt, translation: land and water, revision: Zhang twenty-seven