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."

Comments

Isn't....

[Seabass55]

...that called being "the one"?

Tsunami

[kdark1701]

"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." I do not envy the person who gets to tell the tsunami survivors: "You should have saw it coming"

Re:Tsunami

[AngryAzul]

Although it does seem that aboriginal people were forewarned, this is more responsibly attributed to their tradition of paying close attention to wildlife. While it is not well understood, animals seem to be more sensitive to the subtle environmental changes that precede events like earthquakes and tsunamis, and it's very smart of these people to take notice when the animals all flee to higher ground. BBC News article about this subject: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/4144405.stm

Re:Tsunami

[Ithika]

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.

Haha!

[Anonymous Coward]

I had a feeling this article was coming.

Re:Haha!

[CGP314]

I have a feeling we will see it again on the front page tomorrow as well.


-Colin

Re:Haha!

[Xeo 024]

You're a subscriber?

Higher ground

[Anonymous Coward]

Did the aboriginal tribemen ever go to higher ground when there wasn't a tsunami, or was this the first time they went there?

Re:Higher ground

[robomepp]

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.

Not another pseudoscience story

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Re:Not another pseudoscience story

[Zocalo]

No, they recognised the signs, there was even an interview with some of the tribesmen on TV where they explained this. In a similar vein there was a story about a young girl of who noticed that the sea had gone "all funny", realised that it might be what her geography teacher had told them about tsunami the previous term and got her family to flee. In both cases a "sixth sense" had nothing to do with it; it was just recognising the available signs for what they were and acting accordingly.

Re:Not another pseudoscience story

[pVoid]

I agree with you but there is some merit in this. Not enough to make a story called "the sixth sense" though.

All IMHO, the brain is a humongous pattern matching system. It learns by ways of emotional or genetic reinforcment. It might very well be that in fact seeing animals flee, even if they're just walking uphill might trigger a dormant pattern and pop up a completely irrational thought that maybe it's time to go up too.

But this is the equivalent of software. Not an additional hardware function that perceives stuff (the sixth sense). That would be like calling intelligence your 7th sense.

Aboriginal tribesmen

[shreevatsa]

No, AFAIK, the tribesmen affected by the tsunami (were they aboriginal? I don't know) knew to run to high places for safety not because of any sixth sense, but because of wisdom passed down the generations saying that whenever water in the ocean very quickly receded, it would soon come gushing and flood them. No sixth sense there!

Duh

[Reality Master 101]

Your sense of balance in your inner ear is your sixth sense (it's a sense of gravity). It just doesn't get any credit.

Re:Duh

[Dun Malg]

Your sense of balance in your inner ear is your sixth sense (it's a sense of gravity). It just doesn't get any credit.

Yeah, the whole "five senses" thing is crap from ancient greek philosophy. It's more accurate than their "four elements", but it's still not correct. There are numerous other senses. Balance (as you mentioned), sensed by the motion of fluid in the inner ear; proprioception/kinesthesia (as another poster mentioned), sensing body position; There are several "internal" senses-- hunger, full bladder, etc.-- as well. Basically, anything that your nervous system consciously registers (internal or external) is a sense. Technically, that tingling feeling you get just before a lightning strike during a thunder storm could be called your "sense of lightning". At best, those five senses Aristotle and his contemporaries enumerated could be called "the five most obvious external senses".

Of course, they couldn't very well interview

[Snarfangel]

the ones that headed for the coast at the first sign of danger.

Re:Stop with the damn "paranormal" stories!!!

[NoseBag]

I suggest you RTFA.

I did - expecting to read exactly what you expressed. I was pleasantly surprised.

Ugh

[Dachannien]

Calling this a "sixth sense" is very misleading. The normal five senses - sight, hearing, touch, taste, and smell, for those few who don't already know - involve the intake of information through specialized organs or tissues (eyes, ears, skin, etc.) in addition to the processing of those stimuli. This so-called "sixth sense" is simply the subconscious reprocessing of the same information obtained by the regular five senses (and that description misses the real point of the discovery anyway*), and so it hardly qualifies as a sense.

* The point of the discovery is that the region of the brain discussed in the article helps to determine, based on past experience and the current situation, whether something is a bad idea or not.

Every mother knows this

[T1girl]

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.

Also, from the article:

[shreevatsa]

In addition to what I just said, I also read TFA and found this:

Researchers provided study participants with a series of blue or white cues and asked them to push one button or another depending on the direction of arrows. Brain imaging suggested that an area of the brain had learned to recognize that blue cues indicated a greater potential for error, thus providing an early warning signal that negative consequences were likely to follow their behavior.

The rest of the article says essentially the same thing -- the brain learns to recognise a pattern of making mistakes, not that is able to sense impending danger before it happens or whatever.
The slashdot summary needlessly sensationalised this simple fact.

How do we know...

[astroblaster]

...that the aboriginals weren't just following the animals?

Sixth sense

[cphilo]

As an ex-cowboy (I'm from Montana), I can tell you that animals have sharp senses, and can find a small spring of water in a 10 square mile desert. If you spend enough time away from the noise, smells and chaos of civilization, you also develop sharp senses and can sense weather changes and natural phenomenon. Once in the city (when I live now) there is so much noise, weird smells and chaotic energy, this ability fades. I have no doubt that the aborigines sensed the Tsunami.

Yeah, for example

[sam_handelman]

I'm able to use my synaesthetic powers to detect complete bullshit!

It's true that there is definitely a region of the brain that manages anxiety - and that all sorts of things can make people anxious - seemingly for no reason!

However, neurotic != psychic. There are no *new senses* under discussion here, just a better understanding of how the brain manages that feeling of impending doom you sometimes get.

Do other mammals have similar brain structures? Yes.

Do they probably use them to avoid danger, incl. forest fires and tsunamis? Almost certainly.

Do we, higher mammals, probably retain whatever hard-coded sensory cues cause our little forest friends to flee natural disasters? We probably do, yes. When someone is in the supermarket and they have a panic attack for no reason, might it be because the kiwi display is triggering the same mechanism that is supposed to make us flee from a tsunami? Maybe.

"In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision among mutually exclusive options, or after they made a mistake," Brown said. "But now we find that this brain region can actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake, even before a difficult decision has to be made. So the ACC appears to act as an early warning system -- it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to a negative outcome, so that we can be more careful and avoid making a mistake."

This has nothing to do with psychic powers! Fucking idiot journalists.

Re:So THAT'S how Bush won!

[eclectic4]

You watched the "herd" run to higher ground and you followed?

Well, that doesn't sound very hard...

More than six already

[ozmanjusri]

We already know we have way more than six senses. The idea that we only have six is one of those enduring fictions which we've inherited as part of our cultural mix.

Just try closing your eyes and touching your fingertips together. That's your sense of location working. Ever fly in an aerobatic aircraft? That strange feeling in your stomach is your sense of acceleration telling you which direction you're being shoved in. There are plenty more, if you care to think about them.

The headline is misleading though. The activity being measured in the tests;

"an early warning system -- one that monitors environmental cues, weighs possible consequences and helps us adjust our behavior to avoid dangerous situations."

is a consequence of analysis, not sensation. It looks like we have mechanism in brains which can reflexively assess and respond to novel dangers.
Quelle surprise...

Re:I've always known about this

[jwcorder]

You could have grabbed it. It would not have shocked you. Unless you touched another one of the wires or you were grounded some how. Asphalt shingles or or clay tiles will insulate you enough that you can hold onto that wire. I do it all the time when I clean my gutters out.

Science beats pseudoscience every time

[dustmite]

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.

A good example of the value that even conventional science holds over anything paranormal is the 10-year old British girl who recognized the warning signs from having listened in her geography class, and saved hundreds of lives by warning those on the beach and nearby hotel to evacuate.

By comparison: Even though there are millions of psychics/clairvoyants and other people who claim to be able to predict the future worldwide, not one predicted the tsunami! Remarkable?

This is not to say that there isn't something to the study descibed in the article; animals and aboriginals may all have 'felt' the earthquake (even from far - elephants' feet for example have specially adapted sensors that are very sensitive to vibrations), and just thought it prudent to get out of the way just in case. However the use of the term "sixth sense" implies a paranormal explanation, when in fact you can pretty much bet that the true explanation, whatever it turns out to be, is going to be quite logical and rational. This is perhaps more likely just poor journalism rather than poor science.

(These stories with a 'pseudoscientific bent' seem to reveal a creeping trend away from rational thinking on slashdot, which several years ago used to feel like one of the few good places on the Net where one could get away from that sort of gullible mainstream uninformed discourse :/ Is Slashdot now officially "mainstream"?)

Re:Science beats pseudoscience every time

[Flyboy Connor]

There's been a general dumbing of this forum over the years. Sure, we've always had "First Post!" types here, but I consider them amusing. What once was a technoscience community, with the kind of background knowledge that implies, now includes more than its share of people who discredit science for political, economic, and religious reasons.

That said, the fact that the "debunking" posts usually get modded up, is a sign that the crowd is still predominantly scientifically oriented.

Re:I've always known about this

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

BS. What are you doing on Slashdot then?

Pot? Kettle.

[commodoresloat]

Dude, your user id is "I be hatin'."

Only Five Senses?

[VValdo]

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

Attention: TFA has nothing to do with psychics

[porcupine8]

So could all of you who are whining about the paranormal and pseudoscience just calm down and read it?

They're using the term "sixth sense" because that's what many people call this ability - and attribute it to psychic, mystical phenomena. They're using the colloquial name for it, but demonstrating what it really is - an ability to subconsciously process subtle clues that you're not even consciously aware of, and use them to determine when danger is coming. The article makes no claims of psychic powers or mysticism or paranormal activity - if anything it's the opposite. It's like showing that people don't get sick because a bad spirit infested them, but because germs infested them. They're still getting sick, but for a real reason.

I agree - I've experienced this personally

[DG]

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

Re:The aborginals fled after they read the signs..

[ggvaidya]

Are you sure?

1. The deep fish story is a hoax.
   
2. So what are these red-tailed deep water fish turning up off the coast of Kerela?
   
3. The tsunami took place in the morning, and took about three hours to get to the coast of Kerela. Did the fisherman have enough time to go out, find "unusual numbers of rare red-tailed deep-water fishes" and report back to the government offices?

I'm very skeptical.

Re:Pot? Kettle.

[Mattintosh]

First of all, "Black American English" is not a language. It's a dialect marked by (usually) incorrect usage.

But for the sake of whacking your argument upside it's head, let's use this guy's name as an example here. "I be hatin'" could more easily be expressed as "I hate." The subject is the same (I) but the verb is pacified ("be" vs. "hate") in the incorrect case. To properly use a passive ("being") verb in this sentence, you would need the word "am" instead of "be". "I am hatin'."

However, the duration of this act (which is how you justify the use of the incorrect English) can be assumed to be the same. How? If there's a TV show that I hate continuously (every time it's on), then "I be hatin' this TV show" would be no more descriptive than "I hate this TV show". Both convey the meaning that you dislike this show strongly no matter what time or place you are exposed to it, and that you'll continue to feel this way into the indefinite future.

English does not lack the verb tense you speak of. There is no need to make excuses for people that refuse to learn to speak or write properly, or who for social reasons pretend that they know less than they really do.