2006年有一部好莱坞大片，英文名叫Déjà vu，中文译名有翻译成《时空线索》的，也有叫《似曾相似》的，讲述的是一艘货轮意外爆炸，特工道格（丹泽尔•华盛顿饰）奉命前往调查。然而，当他到达现场时，却发现自己分明是第一次到这个地方，却对眼前的场景十分熟悉。道格经过缜密调查，发现了这起爆炸事件与自己有着密不可分的关系。 了解Déjà vu Déjà vu（似曾相识）是一种罕见的现象，但是当你感觉到的时候你就会知道。当你第一次穿过一座陌生的城市时，熟悉的东西在你脑海中闪过，让你停下脚步。你肯定来过这里。 Déjà vu is a rare occurrence, but you know it when you feel it. As you walk through a new city for the first time, something familiar clicks in your mind, giving you pause. You’ve definitely been here before. 但你没有。 好吧，没有人确切知道。déjà vu(法语中“已见”的意思)的起源，表示对全新事物的熟悉感，仍然隐藏在我们大脑深处。这种现象很难研究——当大多数人体验到déjà vu时，他们并没有被连接到一堆电极上，也没有准备好带着剪贴板的研究人员。 But you haven’t. Well, no one really knows for sure. The origin of déjà vu (French for “already seen”), a sense of familiarity with something entirely new, remains hidden somewhere deep in our brains. The phenomenon is difficult to study—most people, when they experience déjà vu, aren’t hooked up to a bunch of electrodes, with clipboard-toting researchers at the ready. 然而，科学家们对这个问题思考了很长一段时间：早在 1888 年就出现了对癫痫患者似曾相识经历的描述。这一观察结果并非巧合——患有某些类型癫痫的人似乎比没有神经系统疾病的人更容易感到“似曾相识”。对此类患者的研究表明，他们的“似曾相识”感可能与内侧颞叶的癫痫发作活动有关，内侧颞叶是与感觉知觉、言语产生和记忆关联相关的大脑部分。 However, scientists have pondered the question for quite some time: A description of a déjà vu experience in patients with epilepsy appears as early as 1888. The observation was no coincidence—those with some types of epilepsy seem to feel déjà vu more often than those without the neurological disorder. Research on such patients showed that their feelings of déjà vu were likely linked to seizure activity in the medial temporal lobe, the part of the brain associated with sensory perception, speech production and memory association. 在癫痫发作期间，神经元会失灵，将混淆的信息发送到身体的不同部位。对于这些患者来说，déjà vu是他们的神经交叉的结果。当一些病人接受脑部手术来阻止癫痫发作时，他们醒来后发现这种感觉消失了。 During a seizure, neurons misfire, sending mixed-up messages to different parts of the body. For these patients, déjà vu is a result of getting their wires crossed. When some patients undergo brain surgery to stop the seizures, they wake up to a world free of the phenomenon. 两种假设 一些科学家假设，类似的神经系统故障——系统中的一个小故障——也会导致健康的、没有癫痫发作的大脑在没有理由的情况下体验到一种熟悉的感觉。 Some scientists posit that similar neural misfiring—a glitch in the system—also causes healthy, seizure-free brains to experience a sense of familiarity when there’s no reason to. 第二个假设涉及另一个大脑错误；这一次，问题出在我们的记忆上，科罗拉多州立大学认知心理学教授安妮·克利里说。关于新情况或新场景的事情会激活对过去类似经历的记忆，但我们的大脑无法回忆起它。 A second hypothesis involves another brain error; this time, the problem is with our memory, says Anne Cleary, a cognitive psychology professor at Colorado State University. Something about a new situation or setting activates a memory of a similar past experience, but our brains fail to recall it. 克利里提供了这样一个场景来帮助解释：想象一下，你第一次来巴黎，来到了卢浮宫。你的目光落在从博物馆主庭院伸出来的巨大玻璃金字塔上，你会有一种奇怪的感觉。 Cleary offers this scenario to help explain: Imagine you’re visiting Paris for the first time, and you have arrived at the Louvre. Your gaze lands on the giant glass pyramid jutting out of the museum’s main courtyard, and you get that strange feeling. 在那一刻，你的大脑无法找到可以解释它的记忆：几个月前，你看了《达芬奇密码》，这部电影让你近距离地看到了卢浮宫的金字塔。克利里说：“在没有回忆起特定经历的情况下……你只会有一种熟悉当前形势的感觉。” At that moment, your brain is failing to retrieve a memory that could explain it away: A few months ago, you watched The Da Vinci Code, a film that provides an up-close look at the Louvre Pyramid. “In the absence of recalling that specific experience,” Cleary says. “You’re left only with this feeling of familiarity with the current situation.” 克利里怀疑这种熟悉感源于我们对周围环境空间结构的记忆能力。为了验证这一假设，她开始在实验室环境中诱导déjà vu。利用生活模拟游戏《模拟人生》，克利里和她的团队构建了两个场景，它们的功能不同，但布局相同。第一个是庭院设置，中心有一棵盆栽树，周围有各种植物，墙上挂着植物篮。第二个是一个博物馆布景，把树换成了一个大雕像，地板上的植物换成了地毯，悬挂的篮子换成了烛台。 Cleary suspected that this sense of familiarity results from our ability to remember the spatial configuration of surroundings. To test this hypothesis, she set out to induce déjà vu in a laboratory setting. Using the life simulation game The Sims, Cleary and her team built two scenes, different in their features but identical in their layout. The first was a courtyard setting featuring a potted tree in the center, encircled by various plants, and hanging plant baskets on the walls. The second was a museum setting that swapped the tree for a large statue, the floor plants with rugs and the hanging baskets with sconces. 当参与者探索第二个房间时，他们报告说体验到了一种似曾相识的感觉，但他们无法将这种感觉与他们在第一个房间中度过的时间联系起来。克利里说：“当场景布局相似时，人们确实会有一种似曾相识的感觉，但他们却想不起这种熟悉感的来源。” When participants explored the second room, they reported experiencing a feeling of déjà vu, but they couldn’t connect that to their time spent navigating the first room. “People do have an increased sense of déjà vu when the scene has a similar layout, but they’re failing to recall the source of that familiarity,” Cleary says. 另一种解释 克利里说，对déjà vu的另一种可能的解释可以追溯到1928年，当时心理学家爱德华·蒂奇纳用过马路的例子描述了这种感觉。当我们开始过马路时，我们本能地看向左边，但如果右边的东西引起了我们的注意，我们就会转向那个方向。当我们再次向左边看的时候，我们的大脑可能已经忘记了第一眼。这第二眼会让人产生一种熟悉的感觉，因为，在这种情况下，我们之前确实见过一些东西。 Yet another possible explanation for déjà vu, says Cleary, dates back to 1928, when psychology Edward Titchener described the sensation using the example of crossing a street. As we begin to cross a street, we instinctively look to the left, but if something catches our attention on our right, we turn in that direction. By the time we look to our left again, our brains may have forgotten the first glance. This second glance triggers a feeling of familiarity, because, in this case, we really have seen something before. 在很多情况下，体验过déjà vu的人无法确定为什么会发生这种情况。但不管怎样，我们的大脑正在试图告诉我们，克利里说。“舌尖体验”的运作方式大致相同：例如，我们知道自己知道某部电影中那个演员的名字，但我们无法把它搬到我们的脑海中。她说：“当检索失败时，我们的记忆仍然有一种方式提醒我们，其中有一些相关的东西。”“那里可能有我们想要继续寻找的东西。” In many cases, people who experience déjà vu can’t pinpoint why it’s happening. But for what it’s worth, our brains are trying to tell us, Cleary says. Tip-of-the-tongue experiences work in much the same way: for instance, we know that we know the name of that actor in that one movie, but we can’t pull it to the front of our minds. “When retrieval does fail, our memories still have a way of alerting us to the fact that there’s something relevant in there,” she says. “There’s something there that maybe we want to keep searching for.” 英文来源：smithsonianmag.com 图源：pixabay & unsplash 如果对文章开头提到的电影《时空线索》感兴趣，东方君再推荐下面三部电影，大家可以抽空刷一刷。如果你有过似曾相识的体验，欢迎留言^_^123
