What is jamais vu and how is it different from déjà vu?

Memory is a cognitive ability, a set of processes that allow us to learn, remember and work mentally with our own identity. However, memory processes are not a perfect mechanism, and this explains why memory distortions appear. One of these distortions, also called paramnesias or parapraxias, is the jamais vu.

He jamais vu It has to do with knowing and remembering certain situations, but not experiencing any sense of familiarity with them. That is to say, It is as if we were experiencing for the first time something that we have really already experienced..

The opposite happens than in déjà vu, another even more frequent paramnesia where we have a feeling of familiarity while experiencing a new experience.

In this article we talk about the differences between jamais vu and déjà vu and we introduce another phenomenon similar to jamais vuwhich we should not confuse: cryptomnesia.

What is jamais vu?

He jamais vu It is a perceptual phenomenon that defined as ‘an anomaly of recognition’. Specifically, it is a “paramnesia”, that is, a distortion of memory. The German psychiatrist Emil Kraepelin defined paramnesias as ‘pathological distortions of memory due to the inclusion of false details or due to an incorrect temporal reference’.

Paramnesias can occur both in healthy people (they do not have to be worrying) or in people with a mental disorder. In the case of jamais vuperson knows and remembers a situation, but does not experience any sense of familiarity.

It is much less frequent in the general population than déjà vu, the latter being the experience of believing that we have already seen or felt something that we really know is the first time we have seen or felt.

The loss of the meaning of words

A phenomenon related to jamais vu is the “loss of the meaning of words”, in which the word becomes an articulation of meaningless sounds when we repeat it focusing our attention on it.

Thus, to experience this phenomenon, it is enough to repeat a word many times, until it loses its meaning for us.

What is déjà vu and how is it different from jamais vu?

We have mentioned the phenomenon of déjà vu as a phenomenon differentiated from jamais vu. In the case of déjà vu, we talk about the belief, together with the sensation, of living something that we had already experiencedwhen in reality it is not like that.

Déjà vu can appear in the normal and clinical population (and appears much more frequently in the normal population than jamais vu). When it appears in the normal population (without previous psychological pathologies), it does so mainly among the youngest and under conditions of fatigue. Another characteristic fact is that it usually lasts very few seconds.

In the clinical population (with some psychological disorder), déjà vu appears especially in psychiatric patients, through a much longer and more continuous sensation. It is very common in disorders such as depersonalization, epilepsy and in people who have suffered some type of injury to the temporal lobe.

Differences between déjà vu and jamais vu

In déjà vu, we feel great familiarity with a phenomenon that is actually new to us. It happens especially in certain places, with certain people… when we have the feeling that “we have already experienced that.”

Instead, in the jamais vu, just the opposite happens; something that we have actually experienced, we feel like new. That is, we do not experience any sensation of familiarity with something we have already really experienced.

Another related phenomenon: cryptoamensia

Cryptoamnesia is, like jamais vu, another anomaly of recognition. It is defined as the experience in which a memory is not experienced as such (like a memory), but is believed to be an original production, experienced for the first time.

In this case, there is a failure in recognition and the feeling of familiarity is absent. It always appears with semantic material, when this recognition has not been associated with personalized cues or episodic memory.

Differences between jamais vu and cryptoamnesia

The difference between the jamais vu and cryptoamnesia consists of the following: while in cryptoamnesia the failure occurs in the recognition of ideas already known (and, therefore, remembered), in the jamais vu regularly experienced percepts are not recognized.

What happens in cryptoamnesia is that memories of self-generated thoughts become confused. with memories of real events.

An example of this phenomenon would be a researcher who believes that he has had his own idea when, in reality, he had heard that idea from someone else. Thus, what is an idea received from outside is confused with an original idea (generated by oneself).

In it jamais vuthere is a lack of recognition of a percept, while in cryptamnesia, confusion occurs about the origin of an idea (of semantic content).

Related clinical picture: Capgras syndrome

Capgras syndrome, also called Sosías illusion, is a clinical condition that is related to the phenomena described. In this case, the patient has the delusional belief that someone around you is a “double” or an impostor of who he says he is.

There is a break between the familiarity of that person (that we do know) and his memory; We firmly believe that this person is an imposter, that he is not who he really says he is.

Final thoughts

As we have seen, jamais vu and déjà vu are different, almost opposite phenomena, that we can all experience at some point without this being a symptom of abnormal functioning of our brain (pathology).

So, while in one we can identify an absence of familiarity in known events (jamais vu)in the other there is an excess of familiarity in “new” situations.

However, as a curious fact, there are psychological currents that propose that, in déjà vu, that feeling of familiarity occurs in situations that we have actually experienced. In this case, unconscious mechanisms of our psyche would operate that would allow us to understand the reason for its appearance.

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