Hate to break this to you, but that feeling you’ve had, that you’ve been somewhere before, maybe in a past life or that you saw in a dream? Totally due to the room layout.
Researchers at Colorado State University decided to test out the experience by designing rooms in “The Sims” that looked different in terms of colors and other decorations, but were actually laid out precisely the same according to a specific grid, with furniture in the same place.
Turns out, subjects felt a strong sense of deja vu seeing rooms laid out in the same pattern.
So if deja vu happens on a regular basis to you, make your friends move the couch.
image courtesy Infinite Ventures
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I always thought deja vu was about memory formation. Where you accidentally write information in your working memory to your long-term memory rather than your short-term memory. As you recall that info from your long-term memory it has a different feel to it, like it happened at some time in the more distant past, even though it only just happened.
You had me until “Researchers at Colorado State University”