I’m pretty sure everyone on earth has had the feeling of déjà vu, and attributed various meanings to it. Akira O’Connor and Christopher Moulin’s “Jamais vu: the science behind eerie opposite of déjà vu” on The Conversation explains the mechanism of déjà vu as a sort of memory fact checking. Even more interesting to me is the description of déjà vu’s opposite: jamais vu. Jamais vu is when suddenly that which is known, familiar, and even common to you is somehow strange. The article sets up that jamais vu is even rarer than déjà vu, but then goes on to explain how it can be induced.

Funnily enough, I have noticed and remember several instances where I have experienced jamais vu. Is this because I have recently learned about it and, like with anything, having noticed a new thing I now see it everywhere I hadn’t noticed it before?

The described method of inducing jamais vu by writing out a word over and over again is especially memory inducing for me as I have a lot of experience with writing lines over and over again.