Jamais Vu

It’s an experience which is even rarer than déjà vu and perhaps even more unusual and
unsettling. When you ask people to describe it in questionnaires about experiences in
daily life they give accounts like: “While writing in my exams, I write a word correctly like
‘appetite’ but I keep looking at the word over and over again because I have second
thoughts that it might be wrong.”
In daily life, it can be provoked by repetition or staring, but it needn’t be. One of us,
Akira, has had it driving on the motorway, necessitating that he pull over onto the hard
shoulder to allow his unfamiliarity with the pedals and the steering wheel to “reset”.
Thankfully, in the wild, it’s rare.
We asked participants to copy out the word as quickly as possible, but told them they
were allowed to stop, and gave them a few reasons why they might stop including
feeling peculiar, being bored or their hand hurting. Stopping because things began to
feel strange was the most common option chosen, with about 70% stopping at least
once for feeling something we defined as jamais vu. This usually occurred after about
one minute (33 repetitions) – and typically for familiar words
A study by Chris Moulin of Leeds University asked 92 volunteers to write out "door" 30
times in 60 seconds. In July 2006 at the 4th International Conference on Memory in
Sydney he reported that 68 percent of volunteers showed symptoms of jamais vu, such
as beginning to doubt that "door" was a real word. Moulin believes that a similar brain
fatigue underlies some symptoms of schizophrenia and Capgras delusion. Moulin
suggests that people with these conditions could be suffering from chronic jamais vu.
Jamais vu involves a sense of eeriness and the observer’s impression of experiencing
something for the first time, despite rationally knowing that they have experienced it
before.

Have you ever suddenly looked at a word that you write frequently and questioned
whether you spelled it correctly, as if you we seeing it for the first time? That could be
jamais vu.

Or have you walked into your childhood home as an adult, and for some reason, the
living room — which has not changed — feels completely unfamiliar to you? That is
jamais vu.

While jamais vu can be disconcerting, what does it mean for our health? What happens
to the brain to cause jamais vu? And does it have any implications for brain health and
mental health?

Medical News Today spoke with six medical experts to get the lowdown on this unusual
occurrence.