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Study Points to Sixth Sense in Humans
Ben Sullivan writes "St. Louis researchers say there's something to the notion of a 'sixth sense' in humans. A part of the brain known as the cingulate cortex, they've found, likely combines multiple, sometimes unconscious data streams to come to conclusions and send warning signals to the conscious mind. Example: Aboriginal tribesmen somehow sensed the impending danger of December's tsunami in time to flee to higher ground before the first sign of water."
"Aboriginal tribesmen somehow sensed the impending danger of December's tsunami in time to flee to higher ground before the first sign of water"
No, they fled to higher ground after they saw the water level drop knowing that it would come back up the same amount that it dropped.
I suggest you RTFA.
I did - expecting to read exactly what you expressed. I was pleasantly surprised.
Cloned foods give the statement "We had that last week!" a whole new meaning.
Amazing how moms develop that "eyes in the back of the head." A sudden silence, absence of noise or motion around the house, and you just know the toddler is unravelling the toilet paper or eting out of the dog's dish (hey, it looks like Cheerios), or leaning over to retrieve a toy from the edge of the swimming pool. This extends to the tiniest facial expressions that tell you your kid's lying or troubled about something, or you notice the cookie jar lid is slightly awry, or someone got into your purse and didn't close it quite right, or a thousand other little signals. It probably helps the species survive.
I can't explain the tsunami warning phenomenon, but a lot of subtle perceptions lie close to the surface, and I think there's a scientific explanation for everything.
When I was 9 or 10 I climbed onto the neighbour's roof to get a model plane back. There was a staircase leading up to a flat area, a two foot wall and then the roof itself. I climbed that wall onto the tiles and put my hand out to grab the railing (a kind of stranded black wire).
Then I realised it was an overhead power line. There were four of them, crossing the house at shoulder level.
I don't know what made me stop my hand, inches from grabbing hold of that high voltage wire, but I've made the most of my life ever since. (And I never got that damned plane back, either.)
Hal Spacejock: Science Fiction with Nuts
...that the aboriginals weren't just following the animals?
That's not a sense (i.e. an input into your brain) .. it's your brain's model your body's current position. And it can get out of sync with reality, which is why baseball players punch their mitt before making a catch.
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It's probably not "wildlife" in the general sense, but some small set of animals whose physical senses will play up whenever the earth undergoes strenuous subterranean activity. The rest of the animals - and aborigines - just haven't lost the habit of paying attention to each other.
the layman's guide to computer science
Some of the local indigenous people had stories handed down over generations from their ancestors who had also suffered through a tsunami, and from these stories some of them recognized the warning signs and knew what to do. No mystical explanation required in that case.
:)
So, what, you're saying that history is a sixth sense?
Cool!!! Thats the best description yet!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
While I personally believe in a Sixth Sense. I remember reading that Indian tribespeople avoided the tsunami for two reasons:
1) Their land was not deforested and the trees slowed down the onslaught of the waves.
2) An ancient legend warns them to seek higher ground when the ground shakes.
Thus, all of them survived.
I have to agree with this. Living in a city or any highly populated area tends to create a lot of "white noise" for the 5 senses. However, I don't think that the ability fades, it's more about being squelched out by the noise/inteference. I can still predict rain by smell. No, not that there is a chance of rain but how long until it starts falling. Everyone can see the clouds but as the rain approaches there is a definite change in the smell of things that grows stronger as it approaches.
Also, IMHO, you spend more neural processing time on the environmental inputs the farther you are away from civilization.
In a report on NPR, (and I can't get more specific because I was driving), it was stated that there are little used nerve endings in our knee cartilage that evolved specifically for the purpose of detecting earth tremors. I can remember one time in my life when I sensed a very faint earth tremor (I live in a geologically stable region) and I sensed it through my knees, as I recall (I confirmed it via a news report later). Tribal people, living in a quiet setting, are probably more attuned to the sensations delivered by these nerves. Also, if their ears are very keen (not damaged by headphones, machinery, and too-loud speakers, as mine are), perhaps they could detect infrasonic sounds associated with an earthquate of the extreme magnitude of that one. Animals certainly are very good at detecting infrasonics, so the tribal peoples could have noted animal movements prior to the tsunami.
However the use of the term "sixth sense" implies a paranormal explanation...This is perhaps more likely just poor journalism rather than poor science.
Indeed. It might be more appropriate to say there are sixth, seventh, and eighth, etc. senses. It has been postulated that we are sensitive to a variety of stimula that other animals are capable of sensing (magnetic fields, pheromones, etc.) but that these senses are either vestigal or their input is overwhelmed by the high bandwidth requirements of vision, which we rely on to a much higher degree.
The real point of the article is that we register things like taste, sight, smell, etc. at a conscious level, and that we may also take in data that is valuable but that doesn't register with the same intensity. That sub-conscious data can still affect us, however, but we can't explain it in the same way we can explain the more direct stimuli.
Or at least, similar actions can be explained without inventing a sixth sense.
It's basically a combination of these two things: your skin is much more sensitive than you realize, and that sense is not nearly as accurate as you think it is.
To see this, get two friends to help test this sense. You will stand (or sit, whichever) in the middle of the room, blindfolded and wearing ear plugs, and one friend will stand behind you at a designated spot, being careful not to breath on the back of your neck. The other friend will blow a loud whistle - loud enough to hear through the earplugs - occasionally and at each whistle blow you will need to say if someone is behind you or not. Make sure that your friends choose whether to stand behind you or not before each whistle blow by using some random source, such as a coin flip or dice roll.
If this "sense" does not completely disappear when you've eliminated sight and sound, then retest while wearing a coat with a hood, or something else to completely cover your arms, back, and neck.
I have found myself that during the winter I can navigate around in complete darkness without bumping into things because I "sense" them about half an inch before I'd bump into them. It's not a sixth sense - it's that the static in the air makes the hair on my exposed legs stand up when I approach most objects. A pair of longjohns kills this "sense" completely.
At the risk of sowing pearls before the swine...
Humanity is multi-dimensional. There are those individuals who can quiet the mind totally and in so doing raise their consciousness to tune into the higher realms. The bible and other religious doctrines talk about this a great deal.
Information coming from the higher realms is based in love and not in fear.
Before you flame this post reflect carefully upon this:
"Can you quiet your mind where not a single thought occurs for 15 minutes? 5 minutes? 1 minute? 10 seconds? Try it and see.
The small still voice that guides from the higher realms is like a soft playing flute compared to the ego which is like a brass marching band. When the mind is active then the flute is inaudible. When the mind is still then the flute can be heard.
Those individuals living close to Mother Earth follow the small still voice that guides them in ways they might not understand while it is occurring but later reveals the reason for the guidance. The tsunami is an example. All humans were given the message, only a few were capable of hearing and following it for only a few had minds quiet enough to comprehend.
And in the end, the love you take is equal to the love you make
From James Randi for proving the paranormal. Once and forever, anecdotal evidence ain't science. It's how politics and other such scams are done, not science.
Vote Quimby!
It seems almost common sense to move away from the sea if it does something unusual. I wonder what it says about modern culture that most didn't...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
But a different mode of processing data.
I grew up on a farm, and know exactly what they are talking about. It is sort of a 'gestalt' of the environment, so that if something changes, you 'sense' it, by combining 'subconsciously' a number of cues.
Likewise, living in a different ecosystem produces a sense of unease, because the cues are "off".
This isn't paranormal, just a different mode of processing a large amount of data.
Intuition might be another word for this or a similar phenomenon.
They knew to flee to higher ground because the animals did... when all the animals start running the same direction, common sense tells you to follow them, even though they know what's going on and you don't. Plus, if any of the tribal persons had seen the wave coming, they wouldn't have stood there gawking at it like some did in other places. They would have fled.
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Interestingly, an article in the Washington Post (can't find it now) mentioned that one particularly old tribe of fisherman also fled, but only after the waters receded (the ultra "low tide" effect that occurs before the tsunami hits). Apparently, folk stories passed generation-to-generation included references to ancestors who experienced tsunami. Armed with this cultural folklore, they fled while others gawked at the strange sight of the sea leaving the shore.
I've always felt those "five senses" were an overgeneralization. I mean, taste and smell are basically the same thing, aren't they? As I understand it, smell is basically your nose "tasting" molecules captured from the air. Your sense of taste, meanwhile, is pretty hampered when you plug your nose.
;)
Isn't hearing basically a type of interpreted "feeling"-- your inner ear contains small hairs that feel the compression of air, which are then experienced as sound.
Since people are talking about phantom-limb, I think one might also mention the reverse-- the sense that your body extends beyond its normal self-- ie, that weird feeling that you've 'fused' with a car/game/musical instrument so that they feel like an attachment or extension to you-- that you become so comfortable with them that you don't think of the interface between you and that object.
When I'm driving for long periods of time, I do sometimes feel as though the car has become to some effect an extension of my body. To move the car, I don't conciously think that I need to use my arms to turn the wheel, I just kind of will the car to turn, and my arms do what's necessary. I've had this experience with video games as well. In a way, your brain accepts that you've become part OF that object. Another example-- once I learned to type, I no longer needed to think about the mechanics of typing, the words just kind of flow to the screen as I think them.
I guess one's brain just adapts itself to your physical "hookup" and tries to streamline the input and output streams so that they are as efficient as possible.
So, yeah, I agree that the 5 senses idea seems kind of over-simplified. I suspect that whatever your nerves are wired to, after along enough your brain will adapt enough to accept it as a source of "input". I'm sure this has been tried. Does anyone know of an experiment like this one where a person's senses were "extended" via hardware?
And what about that creepy-- and often annoying-- feeling that someone's reading over your shoulder? That "feeling" that you're being watched? What's that all about? Which of the five senses is used to describe THAT?
W
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This is my SIG. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
If the five senses where introduced by the ancient greeks, schools never cared to update those concepts. I have as most people a limited sense of balance. The sensor is located in the ear, but has nothing tot do with hearing.
Anonymous
What it says is frightening, the same message you get from watching clips of Darwinian actors trying to pet a wild moose or bear. My childhood years were spent in the industrial Midwest and I would never think petting a moose is a good idea, what kind of childhood leads someone to believe it is?
I agree with you, both in the claim that this phenomenon is not psudoscience, and that calling it a "sixth sense" is somewhat sensational.
The article spells out the test methodology in detail, and it seems solid.
But I have personal experience with this.
I have had extensive navigation training, first as a pilot, and then later in a military career. The Army in particular had very high standards for needing to know exactly where you were at all times (to within 100m) without the aid of something like a GPS.
So you learn to keep a visualization of your surroundings in your head, and to cross-reference that visualization against whatever tools you have (like a map, compass, or odometer) at regular intervals to keep the internal representation in sync with the real world. After some practice, this becomes second nature - muscle memory stuff.
But there's an odd side-effect, at least there is with me. If I make a wrong turn, miss an exit, or make some sort of navigational mistake, something in my subconscious will pick up on it well before I'm ever consciously aware of it (especially if my conscious is somehow distracted away from navigation) It's hard to put into words... but I will get a profound sense of "wrongness", like an inaudible alarm bell. The more I ignore it, the worse it gets.
I have learned not to ignore it. If that alarm goes off, I'll immediately make navigation the highest-priority mental task - and without fail, I will have just goofed somehow.
Unfortunately, this ability does not convey any other information other than "you are no longer on the planned course". There is a recognition function in there, but no follow-on advisory function. It's still up to conciousness to correct the problem once discovered.
When it happens though... it's really a very odd feeling, and it's quite strong.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
Which, incidentally, is a verb tense in Black American English that Standard English lacks. It comes down to us from certain West African languages, and indicates a state of continuance. We have past, present, future, and moods indicating completion or incompletion (which is subtly different).
Really.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
I'm sorry to inform you that Bayesian is no longer a techno-buzz-word. Last year, it was acceptable to apply the word Bayesian to any sort of stastical process and sound like a genius.
Ah, you belong here at Slashdot. Your sense of sarcasm is highly tuned. Unfortunately, I think this is like Bayesian Inference.
From Wikipedia: Bayesian inference is statistical inference in which probabilities are interpreted not as frequencies or proportions or the like, but rather as degrees of belief.
I can't help but see the similarities between taking in a bunch of evidence and subconcsiously adjusting how much you believe you are in danger as a result. In Bayesian spam filtering, there are values assigned to how dangerous a given input is already, and this is obviously not as clear in the case of a human brain doing the same to given environemental conditions, but the similarity is still interesting.
We obviously can't say this is exactly like Bayesian filtering, since we don't know how it works for humans exactly; the point is, the human mind appears to be incrementally adjusting its perception of danger according to various dynamic variables. If you can't see the similarity there, then relax a bit -- you're trying too hard to be the sarcasm-weilding, skeptical guy that loves nothing more than going on the attack.
dmiessler.com -- grep understanding knowledge
"may be different those those attuned to earthquakes (prior to which I believe even cats and dogs have been shown to get agitated)"
I can confirm that. We had a medium-sized earthquake down in Hawkes Bay, New Zealand when I was a kid (big enough that it was mildly frightening, not big enough to break anything major) and about thirty seconds before the first shock hit our cat went apeshit trying to get out of the house. It got outside, bolted off down the driveway and found itself a bit open space to run around in. We all went outside to watch, and then the first shock hit.
Quite interesting.
Being able to interpret input and make a logical and reasonable descision is all this article is about. All the scientists have done is find an area that specialises in determining what input indicates a potential hazard to our lives.
In other words...another sense? Which would be a sixth sense, seeing as we have five others?
Sixth sense doesn't automatically mean "psychic." If they find a part of the brain that senses danger which didn't previously know about, then that's another sense that we have; a sixth one.
I want to see more studies on this, of course. Just playing devil's advocate here.
Um, this isn't exactly secret knowledge. I grew up on the American West Coast, and I remember being taught about "tidal waves" in grade school. Not that there had been one of any size in living memory, of course. But we were taught that if we saw the ocean water retreating more rapidly than an ordinary tide, we should try to get away from the shore to avoid the incoming wave that would follow.
;-)
...
I'd bet that this is known to shore dwellers almost everywhere. Of course, some people are too stupid to listen when their teachers try to tell them about such things. (And some teachers are probably too stupid to teach it.
But it's hardly the sort of knowledge that's restricted to a privileged few. Not if it's taught to American children.
Of course, later on they finally admitted that "tidal wave" was a bad term, unless you live in one of the estuaries that actually has tidal bores. So we were taught a funny new Japanese word
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.