14 February 2005

HAMBURG - Most of us have experienced deja vu at least once in our lives - that uncomfortable feeling that you have been here in this place, in this situation before.

Usually the sensation lasts for just a moment and is quickly followed by the realization that you have not in fact experienced the current situation in the past, and simply cannot know the place you are in.

Nevertheless, there is the feeling that something was there in our memory, either in part or whole.

The sensation of deja vu, meaning "already seen", was given its name in the 19th century, but for much longer the mental phenomenon has both fascinated and frightened those who experience it.

Science has had little to offer by way of explanation, adding to the mystery.

There have been attempts at clearing up the phenomenon, which some people see as evidence for metempsychosis - the belief that after death the soul passes to another body, whether human or animal.

One point of departure for researchers has been that a deja vu experience is linked to an experience in a dream that has been half or totally forgotten.

The French writers on the topic Marc Tadie and his brother Jean- Yves, one a director of a university department of neurosurgery, the other a professor of literature, point to this in their book "Le Sens de la Memoire".

It is characteristic of the experience that one is certain for a moment that one has lived through this experience before but can simply not remember at what point in time.

The description of dreams in works of literature can also point to a way of understanding deja vu experiences.

"In a dream the consciousness can move freely in a space without limits, in which past and future blend," the two Tadies say about descriptions of this kind.

In a contribution last year to the German magazine "Gehirn & Geist" (Brain and Spirit, published by Heidelberg) reference is made to research into memory processes conducted by John D.

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