Around 70 percent of people say they have experienced déjà vu at some time in their life, a French term that can be translated as "already seen" and which gives name to the feeling of living an already experienced reality. It is a paramnesia , that is, a false memory. The explanation is not to be found in past lives or in prophecies, but in small lapses in the storage of memory by the brain .
Some experts distinguish déjà vu from déjà visite ("already visited"), déjà sentì ("already felt or smelled") and déjà vecu ("already experienced").
The opposite phenomenon, that is, the unfamiliarity with an object or a real situation that one has already experienced but does not recognize, is called jamais vu ("never seen") .
