Michio Kaku: What Is Déjà Vu? | Big Think

What Is Déjà Vu?
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Michio Kaku on what makes a supergenius.

Dr. Michio Kaku explains one theory behind déjà vu and asks, "Is it ever possible on any scale to perhaps flip between different universes?"
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MICHIO KAKU

Dr. Michio Kaku is the co-founder of string field theory, and is one of the most widely recognized scientists in the world today. He has written 4 New York Times Best Sellers, is the science correspondent for CBS This Morning and has hosted numerous science specials for BBC-TV, the Discovery/Science Channel. His radio show broadcasts to 100 radio stations every week. Dr. Kaku holds the Henry Semat Chair and Professorship in theoretical physics at the City College of New York (CUNY), where he has taught for over 25 years. He has also been a visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, as well as New York University (NYU).
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TRANSCRIPT:

Michio Kaku: Déjà vu is a phenomenon that all of us have experienced, that eerie feeling when you walk into a room or enter a new situation and you say to yourself, “I’ve been here before. I mean, everything here is familiar.”

It turns out that we can actually induce forms of déjà vu in subjects in experiments. So there is a theory that says that déjà vu simply elicits fragments of memories that we have stored in our brain, memories that can be elicited by moving into an environment that resembles something that we’ve already experienced. So we don’t have to invoke parallel universes, we don’t have to invoke the multiverse in order to explain most déjà vu.

However, it does raise the other question: is it ever possible on any scale to perhaps flip between different universes? And the answer there is actually rather unclear. We physicists believe, for example, that there is really a multiverse that exists even inside our living room. We are waves, vibrating waves given by the **** function, and these waves vibrate and then split apart with time.

Steve Weinberg, winner of the Nobel Prize, compares it to the following. Think of radio. If you’re inside your living room listening to BBC radio, that radio is tuned to one frequency. But in your living room there are all frequencies - radio Cuba, radio Moscow, the Top 40 rock stations. All these radio frequencies are vibrating inside your living room, but your radio is only tuned to one frequency.

Now, in other words when two universes are in phase, they are coherent and you can move back and forth. But as time starts to evolve, these two universes decouple. They start to vibrate at different frequencies. They can no longer interfere with each other. So why is it that your radio cannot listen to Radio Moscow? Why isn’t it possible for your radio to listen to all frequencies? Because your radio is decohered. It is no longer vibrating in unison with these other frequencies.

And the same thing in quantum physics. We consist of atoms. Our atoms vibrate, but they no longer vibrate in unison with these other universes. We have decoupled from them, we have decohered from them. So in other words, deja vu is probably simply a fragment of our brain eliciting memories and fragments of previous situations. However, in quantum physics, there really are in some sense parallel universes surrounding us, the problem is, we can’t enter them because we have decohered from them. We’re no longer vibrating in unison with them. Sorry about that.

[_chew_]

Every time I have a deja vu, I get the feeling that not only have I "been here" before, but  that last time I also had a deja vu. So it feels like it's at least my third time in that situation.

[wordsmithgobshite]

I'm sure I've seen this video before.

[bodhixxx]

It is nice Dr. Kaku takes time to explain his research to the common idiot like myself.

[LunatiqueRob]

From everything I've read about déjà vu, the only convincing explanation is that our brain sometimes malfunction and the information from our senses are routed to our long-term memory first before short-term memory, which is why we "remember" a situation as it's happening.

[davidjozsefferenczi]

I feel very sorry for Michio Kaku for being so smart and living with us on earth :S

[ankurmittal]

Remember what he always says.."We could be wrong"

[MrRawax]

Interesting talk. But there is something that I don't know how to explain. When I have Deja vu it feels like I already lived that. But interesting thing is that about 30% of Deja vu moments are different for me. Not only I feel like I lived it but I can predict what will happen or what will someone talk about in very near future. Like 10 second for example. Not everything that will happen. Just one thing. Like "He will walk trough the door" or "He will say this".

[Miss_Sippy]

I've always felt that Deja'vu is speeding ahead and waiting for others to 'catch up'. Sometimes you might have time to tell others everything about to happen, and most times, NOT because it's all just freakin' fast!

[jersydvl]

im pretty sure its a glitch in the matrix

[Batmanforever]

Officer: How high are you?
Michio Kaku: I'm good officer, how are you?
Officer: No how high are you?
Michio Kaku: No officer it's hi how are you?

[Ufan]

I have a theory that Deja Vu might be a "check point" so to speak, for time travel. Like a "window of opportunity". It might not be actual "time travel" but could potentially be a way to carve a better path for yourself and change your own history. If you could predict deja vu, and actually act on whatever happens "next", but you're aware of the best possible outcome, then you could set a new path for yourself. Too bad no one's come up with a way to tap into these experiences yet.

[MEZNAY]

My theory is that it is just a "brain fart" in which your brain perceives present time as a memory  

[amaxwell]

Finally an easy to understand reason why physicists believe that we live in a multi-verse.

[clarkrick]

I've dreamed about someone I didn't know, and met them in real life. Still can't explain that shit till this day...

[Nicholas_Crow]

When I experience deja vu, I can recall where the memory came from; In a dream. There have been times that I described a dream to someone and months sometimes years later the situation occurs with the same person and they remember when I described it to them. Deja vu seems to be related to precognition, at least in my case anyway.

[figocooldude]

I am a bit disappointed. I came here to hear him say: "What is déjà vu? It's a wormhole in our brain."

[roviep]

Dejavu is not just something similar to a past memory. I was able to predict within a split second what would happen next before a dejavu moment fully completed while it was occurring to me. It was one of the craziest things that happened to me (predicting something before it even happened). This is something far too significant to explain. I'm beginning to think that all possibilities whether past present and future are actually happening right now. And what we experience is just a manifestation of those possibilities that are already there and have always been there. Seems impossible for your head to wrap around but this has to do with different dimensions and the things which we can't grasp and fully comprehend are limitations the human mind has within the third dimension.

[AbhishekSanyalTGV]

That '**** function' at 1:10 is 'Schrodinger Wave function'

[-h-work-week]

What if deja-vu is a delay?
Maybe seeing / hearing something is one thing, being aware of it is another. Maybe becoming aware is like writing on disk, the brain fails to write, tries to write again from buffer being successful the 2nd time. That's when you're aware of the info, and some "frames" are already there from the 1st attempt. Maybe it writes again the part that it failed to write adding a fraction of a secon from before, like those split videos when part 2 starts with the last few seconds of part 1.

[mockingbbirdkilla]

I have dreams of the future sometimes. I will dream it, and in a few days or weeks time, the dream will happen in real life. Same place, same conversation, and with the same people. Kaku should try and explain that.