HAVE you read this before? A 23-year-old man from the UK almost certainly feels like he has – he’s the first person to report persistent déjà vu stemming from anxiety rather than any obvious neurological disorder.

It’s a vicious cycle: anxiety causes his neurons to misfire, which triggers déjà vu, which leads to anxiety

Nobody knows exactly how or why déjà vu happens, but for most of us it is rare. Some people experience it more often, as a side effect associated with epileptic seizures or dementia.

Now, researchers have discovered the first person with what they call “psychogenic déjà vu” – where the cause appears to be psychological. The man’s episodes began just after he started university, a period when he felt anxious and was also experiencing obsessive compulsions. As time went on, his déjà vu became more and more prolonged, and then fairly continuous after he tried LSD. Now, he avoids television and radio, and finds newspapers distressing as the content feels familiar.


There are different theories as to what is going on, says Christine Wells at Sheffield Hallam University in the UK, who has written a paper on the man’s experiences. “The general theory is that there’s a misfiring of neurons in the temporal lobes – which deal with recollection and familiarity. That misfiring during the process of recollection means we interpret a moment in time as something that has already been experienced,” she says.

Surprisingly, when Wells gave the man a standard recall test, he scored more similarly to people of his own age without the condition than those with epilepsy-related déjà vu. An MRI and an EEG scan of his brain activity also showed no abnormalities.

It may be that his anxiety is causing a misfiring in the brain, which causes the déjà vu and in turn causes him more anxiety. “It’s a vicious circle,” says Wells, who is investigating other cases of anxiety to see if anyone else has reported something similar (Journal of Medical Case Studies, doi.org/xpv).

This article appeared in print under the headline “Oh no, it’s déjà vu all over again … and again”