Deja Vu Explained?
Massachusetts Institute of Technology neuroscientist Susumu Tonegawa believes he has found an explanation for the near-universal human experience called déjà vu. There is a part of the brain which allows a human to distinguish between memories of places and situations that appear to be similar. Memories are stored in the hippocampus, as many people know, but it is only a small part of it, says Tonegawa, which has the responsibility for what he calls “episodic” memories. This is the dentate gyrus. It functions similarly to the way a computer does when it logs a user’s activities. Older people in particular have increasingly frequent déjà vu experiences because their brains begin to lose that ability to separate similar places and situations. The full story can be found below:
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20070607/sc_livescience/originofdejavupinpointed