ABSTRACT
Deja vu has been described in art, literature and scientific works in a consistent and steady fashion for about 200 years. What makes this historical perspective important is understanding the contribution of parapsychology and French neurologists working in the late nineteenth century to the development of deja vu as a scientific concept. The early descriptions and arguments about deja vu have undoubtedly shaped contemporary research into the phenomenon. This chapter considers the study of deja vu in the modern era from its origins in France through early work in epilepsy and electrical stimulation of the cortex to contemporary developments including the measurement of subjective experience in memory and neuroimaging of cognition. The history of deja vu owes much to the study of epilepsy. After the early work examining consciousness and introspection, the history of psychology is dominated by behaviourism, which had its origins in Pavlov's consideration of stimulus-response links.
