Source:
Yahoo
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Most people have had deja vu -- that eerie sense of having experienced something before -- but U.S. researchers have identified the part of the brain responsible for this sensation, and they think it may lead to new treatments for memory-related problems.
They said neurons in a memory center of the brain called the hippocampus make a mental map of new places and experiences, then store them away for future use.
But when two experiences begin to seem very much alike, these mental maps overlap and start to blur.
"Deja vu occurs when this ability is challenged," said Susumu Tonegawa, a professor of biology and neuroscience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Cambridge, whose work appears in the journal Science.