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Subscribe to RSSNo need to call a psychic hotline -- we're naturally clairvoyant as human beings.
With one of the first studies of its kind, researchers at Washington University say they are unlocking the process our brain uses to make these everyday near-future predictions. But hold on stockbrokers, Wall Street analysts and crystal ball readers: The study also discovered why we may not be as good at predicting events down the road.
It’s about what Jeffrey Zacks, associate professor of psychology at Washington University and lead study author calls our “stream of consciousness.” When his team focused on the mid-brain dopamine system, an evolutionary ancient system that signals the rest of the brain to predict events, they also found the brain encodes prediction error when we are forced to choose what happens next. That’s why we’re sometimes wrong.
“I can predict the future, and so can you,” says Zacks, “and it’s not extrasensory perception. It’s just using the information in front of us to predict what’s happening all the time. It’s so ubiquitous that we don’t even notice. But from time to time, we mess up, and what we’ve found here is that messing up corresponds to a fundamental element in our stream of consciousness.”
However, not everyone has a good stream of consciousness, and that’s what happens to people who are aging, or suffering from early-stage Alzheimer’s disease, neurological diseases or brain injuries. Scientists believe they can use this information about how we segment events to figure out how to treat people who have trouble making these connections.
Predicting the near future is an important part of guiding behavior, language processing and learning, says Zacks, whose research will be published in the December edition of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience.
Zacks and other researchers asked a group of healthy, young volunteers to watch movies of everyday events such as someone washing a car and doing laundry. The volunteers were asked to predict what would happen next when the movie was stopped. When it was stopped in the middle of a scene, participants were more than 90 percent correct in predicting what would happen next. But when shown a completely new scene and asked to predict what would happen in the next five seconds, they were less than 80 percent correct, and much less confident in predicting the outcome.
Researchers then used MRI exams to watch midbrain activity, and discovered the brain responses “really light up at hard times, like crossing the event boundary and when the subjects were told they had made the wrong choice,” Zacks says.
“A big chunk of the brain is devoted to figuring out what is going to happen next,” he says. “These studies show that mechanisms operate when we understand everyday activities. The parts of the brain that are specialized for tracking predictions are on the job, and they tell us when a meaningful event has ended and a new one has started. When they go south, it has consequences for understanding and memory.”
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Yet another msnbc grammar goof ... please, "everyday" is an adjective meaning "ordinary" or "commonplace". The adverb form meaning "each day of the week" is always 2 words; i.e. "every day".
Those annoying little spaces can make a big difference. Some years back a local hospital ran an ad stating that its emergency room would "accept every body". Needless to say, within a day they took out the extra space!
What's you're next bitch?
Heh - that it should be "your", not "you're".
Psychic ability seems to be related to Common Sense ?
Oh well, I guess my clairavyance is broken.
Someone's ability to be over-irked by the mundane is in proper working order!
Do you righties believe in this "psychic" crap too or does your gullibility stop after believing the republican lies and the gaaawwd fairytale? Just wondering...
Another God-hater.
"...it would be folly to govern this great country without the Bible..."
George Washington
Unless you're of greater stature than George, shut it.
leroy brown is correct. "Psychic" is crap. This article's author should be fired, or at least warned to not write such horsesh** again.
logres is not (correct). Atheists are not god haters because there is almost certainly no god to hate. Stature has no place in the house of logic and reason.
Logres, surely you don't believe in Santa Claus anymore. Do you HATE Santa? How about the Easter Bunny, why do you HATE such a wonderful, caring, and magical rabbit? Not believing in something's existence and hating it are completely different things. In fact it is IMPOSSIBLE to hate something if you don't think it exists. Even you godders are smart enough to know this, so the question is why do you people keep saying that atheists HATE god when you KNOW that this can't possibly be true?
But there is a very clear line between not believing in something, and being disrespectful towards someone elses beliefs.
Hence bashing the (a certain demografic's Lord's name) "gaaawwd" and calling said entity a "fairytale".
Could be considered an insult rather than an opinion.
Of course Im chatting to Americans here, and since you're all full of s**t, you'd probly just prefer to troll eachother.
No, this article isn't horsesh**. Do you guys understand what goes into writing a scientific article? It's not the same as writing an article in a newspaper. Scientific articles involve doing experiments and gathering evidence. If you don't have enough evidence to prove your claim, your article doesn't get published.
I predict I will hit the Post Comment button in the next few seconds.
Amazing!
Totally disagree. While everyone can put their instincts to work, no everyone can do it well. It's a challenge to predict the future for yourself because you're too close to it. Psychic advisors often go to each other for an objective reading. --author-intuitive and phone psychic for two international phone psychic networks
hey callie - I need to talk to you
P.S. That's "not" everyone can do it well. I should have sensed the edit tool was AWOL.
www.calorey.com
Per my understanding of the brain, this article is a purposeful misrepresentation of the research and of the brain. The brain is a prediction machine alright, but not in any psychic sense. It is such a machine in a cold calculated sense. This has everything to do with neurology and nothing to do with clairvoyance. This has been known for many years. I've know about this as a theory since at least 2004 or 2005 when Jeff Hawkins' book On Intelligence came out.
Given the MSNBC crowd, a simple misinterpretation will go a long way in fueling irrationality.
I am a former student of this researcher. I am now a PhD candidate in the same field, and deal with these issues every day.Either Zacks or the author of this piece is grossly oversimplifying his research here. If Zacks is oversimplifying, it is because he wishes to make headlines. If the author is oversimplifying, it is because she wishes to make headlines.Forecasting the future is an obvious role of the human mind-- and we do it, with some accuracy, all the time. Obviously, the further out in time we try to predict the less accurate we are. There's nothing in this article that proves anything else.If you are curious about these matters, then MSNBC or any mainstream media outlet is not the place to be searching for results. Take all these articles with a grain of salt, because in the end they are merely vehicles for advertisements.Zacks and his colleagues work tirelessly for independent funding in order to research these areas free from hysterical speculation and journalistic bias. If you are truly interested in the topics at hand, there is a vast and deep world of legitimate published and ongoing research devoted to the most fundamental questions of nature and the human mind. If you have the impetus to explore this world, the answers you will find are only outnumbered by the questions you concurrently form.If you are satisfied by traditional answers you have found in the bible, or even secular answers passed to you by folk tradition, then prepare for your world to be blown apart.
And if you need to know whether someone can reason, do you hand them a logic test or an Rorshacht inkblot?
AB-1981: You can actually predict the future. Premonitions are well documented. I've had hundreds in the past couple of years, some visual types premonitions, but you only see them - or, I do - as sort of a memory. There is tons you can read up on this subject. Just google this stuff.
Here are two quick articles anyone here can look at:
For those who want to hear true predictions,read the KJV bible.
Shame on MSNBC and shame on the author of this article. In the news feed, it had the teaser that "all humans are naturally clairvoyant" echoing the intro to this pieces. Why they feel the need to "spice up" a science piece in this cheap and misleading way is journalistic incompetence. Many readers will come away with the impression that a) scientists are fleecing the public with psychic studies or 2) scientists legitimize psychic nonesense.
MSNBC, just report science as science. Please. Try to be jounalists.
Rachel, check out anything by Michael Newton, PhD for an explanation as to why, if you have not yet (your links didn't post). My premonitions or critical answers usually come as dreams.
This just in: Duh!!!!!
Using a psychic to predict the futures makes about as much sense as using a monkey as a flotation device.
My short term predictions: The sun comes up tomorrow, it rains somewhere, somewhere someone is born, somewhere else, someone dies, and I'll have to go to work.