on Recognition

I was watching a short film the other day and suddenly got a terrible case of Deja Vu.  I could have sworn I'd seen this particular scene.  A few minutes later the feeling subsided.  Deja Vu is not a prediction, or a memory from a past life.  It's a random misfiring in the memory center of your brain, giving you the sudden feeling of recognition without actual memory connections.  If you think you're suddenly having a psychic moment, try your hardest to predict what is going to happen next.  Once the next thing happens your brain will still trigger the recognition, but you won't be able to predict it.  A string of these recognitions will eventually alert the warning centers of the brain, telling you something ominous or wonderful is about to occur.  This is a defense mechanism scientists are still trying to work out.

Pattern recognition is an ability we are born with.  Babies see the shapes of faces, regardless of orientation (whether the face is upside down, sideways or right side up).  Eventually, before they can really focus, they can recognize their parents' or caregivers' faces from strangers.  Our brains can pick shapes, color, darkness & lightness out of nearly any image and turn it into a face, a body, or anything we can recognize.

Sometimes, if I wake up in the middle of the night and look at one of the pictures on the wall, or the lamp at the bedside, the shape may be common, but my brain can't recognize it.  It may take up to a minute or two for me to finally realize it's just a lamp and not a person standing there.  Sometimes I actually get angry because my brain searches for a reason that the painting on the wall is unrecognizable and comes up with an excuse: obviously that picture has been switched out by my partner.  If I'm still mostly asleep my brain may concoct an entire story about why the picture has been replaced. As I wake up and the picture's details emerge more clearly it will trigger the recognition and I will now remember where it came from and that it is the very same picture hanging on the wall for years.  I imagine this is how Alzheimer's disease feels as those memories disappear and all the familiar things and people no longer trigger recognition.