“Cosmos magazine is reporting that even the blind experience deja vu — backing the idea that it is caused by misfires in the brain’s temporal lobe. They quote a British study where a blind man feels like he has ‘already seen’ some unfamiliar situations. ‘Hearing and touch and smell often seem to intermingle in the déjà vu experiences,’ said the study subject, whose name has not been made public. ‘It is almost like photographic memory, without sight obviously… as if I was encountering a mini-recording in my head, but trying to think “Where have I come across that before?”
Déjà vu, French for ‘already seen’, is the illusionary feeling that one has previously witnessed or experienced a new situation, and has been reported to occur in up to 96 per cent of the population.