Charan Ranganath

Sometimes you'd actually get a memory that a person would re-experience just from electrically stimulating some parts. Sometimes they just have this intense feeling of being somewhere before. And so one theory which I really like is is that in higher order areas of the brain, they're integrating for many, many different sources of input.

What happens is is that they're tuning themselves up every time you process a similar input, right? And so, that allows you to just get this kind of a fluent sense that I'm very familiar. You're very familiar with this place, right? And so just being here, you're not going to be moving your eyes all over the place because you kind of have an idea of where everything is.

What happens is is that they're tuning themselves up every time you process a similar input, right? And so, that allows you to just get this kind of a fluent sense that I'm very familiar. You're very familiar with this place, right? And so just being here, you're not going to be moving your eyes all over the place because you kind of have an idea of where everything is.

What happens is is that they're tuning themselves up every time you process a similar input, right? And so, that allows you to just get this kind of a fluent sense that I'm very familiar. You're very familiar with this place, right? And so just being here, you're not going to be moving your eyes all over the place because you kind of have an idea of where everything is.

And that fluency gives you a sense of like, I'm here. Now I wake up in my hotel room and I have this very unfamiliar sense of where I am, right? But there's a great set of studies done by Ann Cleary at Colorado State where she created these virtual reality environments. And we'll go back to the metaverse. Imagine you go through a virtual museum, right?

And that fluency gives you a sense of like, I'm here. Now I wake up in my hotel room and I have this very unfamiliar sense of where I am, right? But there's a great set of studies done by Ann Cleary at Colorado State where she created these virtual reality environments. And we'll go back to the metaverse. Imagine you go through a virtual museum, right?

And that fluency gives you a sense of like, I'm here. Now I wake up in my hotel room and I have this very unfamiliar sense of where I am, right? But there's a great set of studies done by Ann Cleary at Colorado State where she created these virtual reality environments. And we'll go back to the metaverse. Imagine you go through a virtual museum, right?

And then she would put people in virtual reality and have them go through a virtual arcade. Mm-hmm. But the map of the two places was exactly the same. She just put different skins on them. So one looks different than the other, but they've got same landmarks and same places, same objects and everything, but carpeting, colors, theme, everything's different.

And then she would put people in virtual reality and have them go through a virtual arcade. Mm-hmm. But the map of the two places was exactly the same. She just put different skins on them. So one looks different than the other, but they've got same landmarks and same places, same objects and everything, but carpeting, colors, theme, everything's different.

And then she would put people in virtual reality and have them go through a virtual arcade. Mm-hmm. But the map of the two places was exactly the same. She just put different skins on them. So one looks different than the other, but they've got same landmarks and same places, same objects and everything, but carpeting, colors, theme, everything's different.

People will often not have any conscious idea that the two are the same, but they could report this very intense sense of deja vu. So it's like a partial match that's eliciting this kind of a sense of familiarity. And, and that's why, you know, in patients who have epilepsy that affects memory, you get this artificial sense of familiarity that happens.

People will often not have any conscious idea that the two are the same, but they could report this very intense sense of deja vu. So it's like a partial match that's eliciting this kind of a sense of familiarity. And, and that's why, you know, in patients who have epilepsy that affects memory, you get this artificial sense of familiarity that happens.

People will often not have any conscious idea that the two are the same, but they could report this very intense sense of deja vu. So it's like a partial match that's eliciting this kind of a sense of familiarity. And, and that's why, you know, in patients who have epilepsy that affects memory, you get this artificial sense of familiarity that happens.

And so we think that, and again, this is just one theory amongst many, but we think that's, we get a little bit of that feeling. It's not enough to necessarily give you deja vu. even for very mundane things, right? So it's like if I tell you the word rutabaga, your brain's gonna work a little bit harder to catch it than if I give you a word like apple, right?

And so we think that, and again, this is just one theory amongst many, but we think that's, we get a little bit of that feeling. It's not enough to necessarily give you deja vu. even for very mundane things, right? So it's like if I tell you the word rutabaga, your brain's gonna work a little bit harder to catch it than if I give you a word like apple, right?

And so we think that, and again, this is just one theory amongst many, but we think that's, we get a little bit of that feeling. It's not enough to necessarily give you deja vu. even for very mundane things, right? So it's like if I tell you the word rutabaga, your brain's gonna work a little bit harder to catch it than if I give you a word like apple, right?

And that's because you hear apple a lot. So your brain's very tuned up to process it efficiently, but rutabaga takes a little bit longer and more intense. And you can actually see a difference in brain activity in areas in the temporal lobe when you hear a word just based on how frequent it is in the English language.

And that's because you hear apple a lot. So your brain's very tuned up to process it efficiently, but rutabaga takes a little bit longer and more intense. And you can actually see a difference in brain activity in areas in the temporal lobe when you hear a word just based on how frequent it is in the English language.

And that's because you hear apple a lot. So your brain's very tuned up to process it efficiently, but rutabaga takes a little bit longer and more intense. And you can actually see a difference in brain activity in areas in the temporal lobe when you hear a word just based on how frequent it is in the English language.

So we think it's tied to this basic, it's basically a byproduct of our mechanism of just learning, doing this error-driven learning as we go through life to become better and better and better to process things more and more efficiently.