title: Déjà vecu for news events but not personal events: A dissociation between autobiographical and non-autobiographical episodic memory processing.
abstract: In déjà vu, the feeling that what we are currently experiencing we have experienced before is fleeting and is not accepted as true. In contrast, in déjà vecu or "recollective confabulation", the sense of déjà vu is persistent and convincing, and patients genuinely believe that they have lived through the current moment at some previous time. In previous reports of cases of déjà vecu, both personal events and non-personal, world events gave rise to this experience. In this paper we describe a patient whose déjà vecu experiences are entirely restricted to non-personal events, suggesting that autobiographical and non-autobiographical episodic memory processing can dissociate. We suggest that this dissociation is secondary to differences in the degree to which personal and emotional associations are formed for these two different types of event, and offer a two-factor theory of déjà vecu.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, London, UK; Formerly of Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Department of Clinical Neuropsychology and Clinical Health Psychology, St Georges University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust, London, UK. Electronic address: martha.turner@ucl.ac.uk.
authors.forename: Martha S
authors.initials: MS
authors.lastname: Turner
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: E Arthur
authors.initials: EA
authors.lastname: Shores
authors.affiliation: Formerly of Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia; Neuropsychology Unit, Department of Neuroscience, Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Nora
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Breen
authors.affiliation: Formerly of Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia; ARC Centre of Excellence in Cognition and its Disorders and Department of Cognitive Science, Macquarie University, Sydney, NSW, Australia.
authors.forename: Max
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Coltheart
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D003690:Deja Vu / Q000523:psychology*; D003702:Delusions / Q000523:psychology*; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008569:Memory Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D061212:Memory, Episodic; D011939:Mental Recall / Q000502:physiology*; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests
keywords: Autobiographical memory; Delusion; Déjà vecu; Recollective confabulation; Reduplicative paramnesia