Towards a conflict account of deja vu: The role of memory errors and memory expectation conflict in the experience of deja vu

Deja vu can be defined as conflict between a subjective evaluation of familiarity and a concurrent evaluation of novelty. Accounts of the deja vu experience have not explicitly referred to a "conflict account of deja vu" despite the acceptance of conflict-based definitions of deja vu and relatively recent neuroimaging work that has implicated brain areas associated with conflict as underpinning the experience. Conflict monitoring functioning follows a similar age-related trajectory to deja vu with a peak in young adulthood and a subsequent age-related decline. In this narrative review of the literature to date, we consider how deja vu is defined and how this has influenced the understanding of deja vu. We also review how deja vu can be understood within theories of recognition memory and cognitive control. Finally, we summarise the conflict account of deja vu and propose that this account of the experience may provide a coherent explanation as to why deja vu experiences tend to decrease with age in the non-clinical population.