Deja Vu !!

 You walk into a room, and you suddenly feel like you’ve been there before — even though you know you haven’t. The feeling is overwhelming, then it disappears just as quickly as it came on.

The eerie feeling that you’ve been here and done this before is called déjà vu. It’s French for “already seen,” and it can be a very strange and even unsettling experience. Logically, you know you haven’t experienced this moment before, but your brain is telling you otherwise.

Déjà vu is a common experience — about two-thirds of people have had it. But it’s still widely misunderstood. The reason simply is it’s hard to study in a laboratory, so our understanding is limited. There are a few theories, though, about what might lead to this “glitch” in the brain.

A healthy brain can experience déjà vu. This doesn’t necessarily mean you should raise the alarms. The sensation is more likely to happen to people who travel often and have college or advanced degrees. And it can peak in young adulthood, but gradually go away with age. The common factor here? Being busy, tired, and a little bit stressed out.

People who are exhausted or stressed tend to experience déjà vu more. This is probably because fatigue and stress are connected with what likely causes most cases of déjà vu: memory.

Many people have experienced or will experience the feeling of having been somewhere or experienced a situation before. In many cases, it’s fleeting and goes away quickly — and that’s that. But it can be a sign of something more serious — such as epilepsy — if you have other symptoms that accompany déjà vu.

More often, though, it just means you might need to get a little more sleep or participate in an activity that can help lower your stress levels.