May 24, 2008

Deja: Personality Disorder

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The combined reporting of deja vu and depersonalization experiences highlights a consistent theme in earlier investigations of deja vu. Many researchers assumed that deja vu was a symptom of a mood or personality disorder, rather than a routine cognitive dysfunction, and were primarily interested in documenting the relationship between deja vu and other moderate to severe psychological disturbances (e.g., depersonalization), psychopathology (e.g., schizophrenia), and ongoing personal dispositions (e.g., mood fluctuations, working rhythms, emotional sensitivity; cf. Heymans, 1904, 1906).

Leeds (1944) also used a prospective procedure in evaluating the intensity and duration of 144 of his personal deja vu experiences spanning a 12-month period. (An average of one every 2.5 days!) This extraordinary frequency motivated his self-analysis, and although Leeds provided summary information on his deja vuexperiences, this is not included in the present review because of the anomalous frequency of his episodes.

Two groups of individuals traditionally have been identified as having an atypically high incidence of deja vu experiences: TLEs and people with schizophrenia. In the case of schizophrenia, attempts have been made to link the deja vu experience to psychopathology (Cutting & Silzer, 1990; Sno, Schalken, & de Jonghe,1992), but it is difficult to determine whether the experience of people in this subgroup is similar to that of individuals lacking such pathology. Neppe (1983e) suggested that deja vu among people with schizophrenia may be of much longer duration (hours, not seconds) and associated with intense depersonalization, mak-
ing it qualitatively different from that experienced by nonclinical individuals.

With respect to TLEs, deja vu is part of the aura preceding the seizure in some, and this phenomenon has been studied with retrospective anecdotal reports (Cole & Zangwill, 1963; Gloor, 1990; M. Harper & Roth, 1962; Krijgers Janzen, 1958; Neppe, 1980), personal experiential reports (Hughlings-Jackson, 1888; Leeds, 1944;Wohlgemuth, 1924), and brain stimulation (Adachi et al., 1999; Bancaud, Brunet-Bourgin, Chauvel, & Halgren, 1994; Gupta, Jeavons, Hughes, & Covanis, 1983; Weinand et al., 1994).

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