Deja vue
An expression of familiarity that is unexpected, deja vu is the sensation of having been to a place or experienced a situation before...
The french term for "already seen" can apply to feelings, thoughts, places, dreams, meetings and living in general, whenever something familiar seemingly happens for the first time...
Studies conducted on deja vu suggest that it is a common experience, with more than half of those polled reporting instances of deja vu, it also seems more common in children and women then men...
The phenomenon is though to be a psychological process where the unconcious mind is stimulated to recall past events of a similar nature that somehow get mixed up with the present event, some feel that it is evidence for reincarnation, memories of past lives being pushed to the surface of the mind by familiar surroundings or people in the present, some say it happens when one draws on the collective memories of mankind, while others believe it to be the result of out of body experiences during sleep, or other extra sensory phenomena....
jamais vu........
There is another experience worth mentioning; jamais vu. Its the opposite of deja vu. Instead of feeling extra familiar, thing seem totally unfamiliar. In this case there is too little connection between long-term memory and perceptions from the present. When a person is in this state, nothing they experience seems to have anything to do with the past. They might be talking to a person they know well and suddenly they person seems totally unfamiliar. Their sense of knowing the person, and knowing how to relate to them simply vanishes. A room in which they spend a lot of time suddenly becomes totally novel; everything seems new. Details they will have seen a thousand times suddenly become engaging...