I've had the sensation of deja vu on and off (particularly when tired) over the past 10 years. This began after experimenting with lsd in my early twenties and has sort of tapered off since. On one of the first occasions trying the drug I had a momentary (and vivid) recall of what felt like the hundreds of times in my lifetime I had the sensation of deja vu. Sort of like some circuit for deja vu related memories was activated. For many of the memories, I had remembered them previously as being about the sensation of deja vu (so in one sense I could at least validate some of them were correct when recalled agian). There were many others I couldn't be sure were actual fragments of my past that were being recalled for the first time. Fleeting.
The persistence of the sensation has broken over the years. Only when jetlagged or exhausted will the deja vu filter reappear.
Another thing I've noticed is that if I'm super tired - that type of tired when you can fall asleep in 10 seconds - is that one half of me will fall asleep faster than the other. If I'm woken in those few seconds I awaken with what feels like two sets of memories for those few seconds that goes with a strong sense of deja vu.
* I've been to doctor and discussed this. Had MRI & EEG (nothing unusual), and removed a lot of stress my life combined with a good diet and exercise. I've had little in the way of such strange experiences in a long while except a little deja vu every now and again.
I wonder would it be possible - like in steganography - to hide the waveform in ambient noise or music so that it's not perceptible if used with speakers and microphone within audible ranges?
It has been suggested by peers/friends - who have clinical expertise in this area - that I'm somewhere on the spectrum. I don't see it but it has been mentioned enough times to me by different people (always in a careful/courteous manner mind you) that I've let it warrant some consideration over the years.
No biggie. I've a partner, am employed and happy. Kinky too as far back as I can remember. It certainly made for a different kind of sexual development in my teens and early twenties. There was some sense of frustration and disappoint as I couldn't fathom how my sexual trajectory had become so misaligned to that of my peers. It was just different enough that I'd considered I might be the only one so kept quite about it. It took a while longer (post university) to realise there were plenty of others with similar interests.
On occasion I've bumped into or met/seen some professional peers (same research interest) in these settings. Slightly unsettling to say the least from a practical point of view as I could end more directly working with any of these people in the future. I've felt such incidents are difficult to put down to coincidence.
Maybe a bit more likely to arrive on the consumer market are EEG devices (non invasive) that can do more than detect that you've blinked or squinted your face...
There is a broad scope of work surrounding the use of such signals like the P300(& related ERPs) combining in mobile contexts, eye tracking, etc.
In effect, all this potentially could make it very difficult to hide certain things like recognition processes (I know the photo of that place/person) or anything connected with attentional orientation (e.g. that XXX rated advertisement in the corner of the screen captured my attention).
If one can get the gist of what various neural signals can index here from browsing through the literature, it's not too difficult to see Orwellian type applications that could be built. I'm thinking along the lines of airport security screening your brain to see if you recognize certain types of information such as recognizing a bit of a weapon somebody should not recognize or an instrument that might be used in a drug lab.
Putting issues like signal-to-noise and other confounds\limitations aside some scary applications can already be built and deployed with the most basic of available signals.
tACS, tDCS and similar techniques ("putting stuff in") are development and have been shown when used with careful timing and electrode selection that certain ongoing processes in the brain can be tweaked.
[http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/24998643]
Before we go worrying about having probes shoving into our brains, I would begin to worry about the more practical implications and privacy concerns surrounding many of those cheap EEG platforms that everybody - could potentially - wear. E.g. Sam wears an EEG for attention monitoring in the workplace but with some basic eye tracking (via EOG) and coregistration with eye fixations/movements we can begin to figure out everytime he looks at Michelle's chest he and the 20 other people he works with have a 'P300' response. You get where I am going with this....
Regularly, I'd walk in a park near my workplace to work out problems and I began too often to play games and tricks with the magpies (another type of Corvid like the crow). I'd do things like throwing twigs on either side of them to see how they would react (no magpies ever injured!). After a while I'm certain the magpies had a particular warning call any one would call out when I arrived in the park that would set them all of making that cawking sound until I left. After a while I needed to avoid the park for a bit and I think I was forgiven when I slowly started integrating myself in by leaving bits of food like nuts.
I was amazed too at how observant they were, keeping a different distance if they noticed I had am umbrella or something in my hand or if I was walking funny.
The persistence of the sensation has broken over the years. Only when jetlagged or exhausted will the deja vu filter reappear.
Another thing I've noticed is that if I'm super tired - that type of tired when you can fall asleep in 10 seconds - is that one half of me will fall asleep faster than the other. If I'm woken in those few seconds I awaken with what feels like two sets of memories for those few seconds that goes with a strong sense of deja vu.
* I've been to doctor and discussed this. Had MRI & EEG (nothing unusual), and removed a lot of stress my life combined with a good diet and exercise. I've had little in the way of such strange experiences in a long while except a little deja vu every now and again.