A term introduced in or shortly before 1959 by the Canadian neuroscientists Wilder Graves Pen-field (1891-1976) and Sean Francis Mullan (b. 1925) to denote an illusory perception of one's present environment or state in which things seem familiar, strange, altered, or unreal. Judging by the examples given by Penfield and Mullan, their conception of the illusion of recognition is quite similar to the "déjà experience. As employed by these authors, illusions of recognition are classified as "psychical illusions, which themselves fall into the category of "psychical states (i.e. "aurae occurring in the wake of an epileptic seizure or during a cortical probing experiment). In this specific context, the term illusion of recognition is used in opposition to the terms " auditory illusion, " visual illusion, " illusional emotion, and a nameless remaining group containing relatively rare phenomena such as illusions of increased awareness, illusions of alteration in the speed of movement, and visuo-vestibular disturbances.
References
Mullan, S., Penfield, W. (1959). Illusion of comparative interpretation and emotion. Archives of Neurology and Psychiatry, 81, 269-284.
Dictionary of Hallucinations. J.D. Blom. 2010.