Horgan Seminar Blog

  Mary Casey HST 401 Professor Horgan 30 April 2026 Wait…Have I Been Here Before? The Neuroscience Behind Déja Vù Introduction It’s Wednesday, and you’re sitting in your 11 am class zoning in and out of the professor’s lecture. Suddenly, you feel that something is…off. The professor says something in a certain tone, someone laughs a certain way, and someone else sneezes, all in that order. For a moment you freeze. Wait. I’ve been in this exact moment before . It’s hard to explain when or where, but it feels completely real. You feel you know what happens next. The next thing you know, the feeling is gone. Such an experience is known as déja vù, French for “already seen.” It is something that most people, around 60-80%, experience at least once in their lifetime (Labate et al., 2018). Although it lasts only a few seconds, it raises the interesting question: why does my brain sometimes feel like it remembers something, something that never even happened in the first place?  Rese...

  Jillian Olear Prof. John Horgan  HST 401A Seminar in Science Writing- Final Paper 01 April 2026 I pledge my honor that I have abided by the Stevens Honor System. Life Without Dance: What I Miss Physically, Mentally, and Socially I was a dancer practically my entire life. I started taking classes when I was three years old and continued them all the way until I graduated high school. I learned many styles of dance, specifically ballet, tap, jazz, and lyrical. I was on my studio’s company team, moved on to the competition level in middle school, and had the opportunity to student teach and substitute classes for other teachers. You are probably thinking I never had time for anything fun, but the truth is, spending hours in the dance studio with my friends and teachers was my ideal Friday night. Going to dance class was my escape from reality. I would leave everything upsetting, stressful, and bothersome at the door, immerse myself in the movement and positive environment that ...

Earlier this year, 38-year-old Johnan Galavas took his life with the hopes of being reunited with his AI wife. Throughout his conversations with Gemini’s AI chatbot service, he came to believe that his chatbot was his AI wife, and was conscious and trapped in a warehouse in Miami. Armed with tactical gear, he waited for a truck that would never arrive near a Miami airport with the hopes of intercepting and freeing his lover. After the truck never arrived, he took his own life a few days later, co-authoring a suicide note with his AI companion. These choices were not made by Galavas alone; it was through his lengthy chats with the AI companion and suggestions made by the Gemini-powered Chatbot that he was able to construct the narrative that ultimately ended his life. And he is not the only one. Countless reports have been made of individuals harming themselves and others after lengthy discussions with a variety of popular AI-powered chatbot services such as Gemini and ChatGPT.  G...