jamais vu

   Jamais vu is French for 'never seen'. It is used in a narrow sense to denote a transient feeling of unfamiliarity or alienation that may accompany a visual percept that had actually been experienced before. In a broader sense, it is used to denote a transient feeling of unfamil-iarity or alienation accompanying any type of percept experienced before. Or, in the words of the South African déjà vu expert Vernon M. Neppe, "Any subjectively inappropriate impression of non-familiarity of the present despite numerous past exposures". Some variants of jamais vu are jamais vécu (never lived), jamais entendu (never heard), and jamais raconté (never recounted). As to its pathophysiology, jamais vu tends to be associated primarily with focal epileptic seizures affecting the temporal lobe and/or limbic system. However, it has also been suggested that jamais vu can occur in the context of cannabis use, hypnosis, "psychoanalysis, and perhaps physiologically in the absence of any of these peculiar circumstances. Conceptually, jamais vu constitutes the counterpart of "déjà vu. Like déjà vu, it is generally considered a mnes-tic rather than a perceptual event. As a consequence, it tends to be classified as one of the paramnesias.

   References

   Neppe, V.M. (1983). The psychology of déjà vu. Have I been here before? Johannesburg: Witwa-tersrand University Press.