Dublin man diagnosed with permanent déjà vu

We all know people who claim to have seen it all before but one Dublin man has been diagnosed with a condition where he believes he has seen everything before, a permanent state of déjà vu.

Experiencing déjà vu is generally a bit unnerving but thankfully for most of us the feeling that we have lived an experience before is rare and brief.

However, there is an extremely rare condition where people can be trapped in a permanent state of feeling they have seen everything before, called déjà vecu.

Now a Dublin man, known only as an 89-year-old  called Patrick, has been diagnosed with it, according to today’s Sunday Times. Patrick no longer watches golf on TV as he feels he has seen the play already. When his daughter points out to him that it is live he says that it was live when they filmed it but that was yesterday, when he saw it.

Patrick also is convinced that TV stations show nothing but repeats. You can make your own jokes there.

Anyway it is believed that Patrick has a damaged or overactive hippocampus, the part of the brain that controls memory.

The term déjà vecu means already lived while déjà vu mean already seen. It sounds like an awful condition to us and to be denied the pleasure of watching live sport is surely one of the cruellest tricks the brain can play on you.

Patrick’s story appears in a book called Piece of Light: The New Science of Memory by Charles Fernyhough and his case is being studied by a neurologist in Leeds. We hope they can help him, as it sounds like an awful condition to us.