Many of you’ve heard about Déjà vu, but Presque vu is more common and even more annoying. Unlike Deja vu, presque vu is likely to occur with everyone. Whether you’ve felt Deja vu or not, I’m sure you have felt presque vu. Presque vu is a tip of the tongue phenomenon. Forgetting something is simple but the strong feeling that you are on the edge of an oracle, strong epiphany but it never happens. For example, you forget the name of the place but you feel like you’re about to say it. Basically, it is associated with the feeling of incompleteness or near-completeness and becomes a frustration.

But the question is, why does it happen?

Well, “Mind has always been a mystery to us”, isn’t it? It happens because you know you know something but you’re not able to speak it out. When you try to retrieve information about something, certain neural networks are activated. Suppose you are trying to remember the lyrics of a song. So certain clusters that have information about that song lyrics are activated. Sometimes you can retrieve all the details but sometimes you can’t. Let’s say you have great knowledge about mobile phones. Your friends also know that you remember a lot of models. Sometimes they test you by showing you a random mobile model and ask you to tell the model name. At that time you just cannot remember the name, even though you know you knew it. Another example is, let’s suppose your teacher asked you a question and you’re not able to answer even you knew about it but words didn’t come out.

There is an additional theory that says when you try to recall a word your mind blocks similar words so it can bring back the actual word. But when you hear or remember similar words, sometimes it blocks the actual word! And you are left with presque vu. There is no need to worry about it until or unless it happens daily.

Don’t confuse presque vu with feeling like you forget something!!

You’re not just able to recognize at that moment.

And if you ever felt this way then share your experiences with us in the comment section 🙂