The great British neurologist John Hughlings-Jackson famously described the 'dreamy state' reported by some epileptic patients during seizures where they experienced complex hallucinations - sometimes of scenes and faces, feelings of false familiarity and a feeling of 'weirdness' or 'strangeness'.
A study published last year in neurology journal Brain re-examined these experiences by deliberately triggering them by electrically stimulating the brain.
The participants were all patients with epilepsy who were having neurosurgery to treat their otherwise untreatable seizures and the researchers, led by neurologist Jean-Pierre Vignal, specifically stimulated areas in the mesial [inner] temporal lobes.
The feelings of false familiarity are what we normally called déjà vu, but actually we t...
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