Go Detritus!

Either we are getting smarter, the questions are getting easier, or we had a lucky night. Whatever the reason we got one of our best scores in the Pub Quiz last night, 21 out of 40 (don't mock at that until you have tried it.)

Not only that we were 6th out of 11 teams, only about 7 points behind the winners!

What was just as annoying was the couple of questions we were convinced we knew the answer too, but just couldn't tease the information out of our beer dulled brains.

Convinced that there must be a name for this condition (apart from forgetfulness)I did a quick search on Google and found an interesting article on Wikipedia about a phenomenon known as "Presque vu" related to the more common Deja Vu, the term is from the French language, meaning "almost seen," the expression means almost, but not quite, remembering something. Often very disorienting and distracting, presque vu rarely leads to an actual breakthrough. Frequently, one experiencing presque vu will say that they have something "on the tip of their tongue".

This exactly describes how I felt last night, there were several questions where I could feel the answer just out of my grasp in my memory. I can remember related facts, where and when I had heard the name before, could even describe a person, but just couldn't quite bring the name into focus - very frustrating.

What is mildly worrying, is that the article goes on to say: "Presque vu is often cited by people who suffer from epilepsy or other seizure-related brain conditions, such as temporal lobe lability. This condition is related to people who exhibit strong artistic or imaginative abilities, however also related to the theory that Alien Abductions are most often psychic incidents, i.e. the person imagines the abduction, but at such a detailed level that they strongly believe it is true. Such a phenomenon is also knows as False memory syndrome.

I have always been fascinated by memory and how it is triggered by smells, sounds, even colour. I think more reading is required...