Researchers discover evidence of premonition

Researchers discover evidence of premonition

By Stacey Pounsberry | October 24, 2012


Credit: Flickr


Researchers at Northwestern University say that our body may be able to sense future events without any conscious clues.

According to an analysis performed by researchers at Northwestern University, in collaboration with other institutions, our bodies may be psychic.

The study, “Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis,” recently published in Frontiers in Perception Science, analyzes the results of 26 studies published between 1978 and 2010.

The studies examined used either randomly ordered presentations of arousing versus neutral stimuli, or a process of guessing tasks with correct versus incorrect feedback. Results were measured in terms of physical activity in the skin, heart, blood, eyes, and brain. The surprising results: Even if we can’t consciously express future events, our bodies subconsciously anticipate them.

“What hasn’t been clear is whether humans have the ability to predict future important events even without any clues as to what might happen,” said Julia Mossbridge, lead author of the study and research associate in the Visual Perception, Cognition and Neuroscience Laboratory at Northwestern in a statement. Co-authors of the study include Patrizio Tressoldi of the Università di Padova, Padova, Italy, and Jessica Utts of the University of California, Irvine.

This phenomenon is sometimes called a presentiment, or even a premonition, but Ms. Mossbridge said the research does not show whether or not people are really sensing the future, or just anticipating the supposedly random process based on minute clues.

“I like to call the phenomenon ‘anomalous anticipatory activity,’” Ms. Mossbridge said. “The phenomenon is anomalous, some scientists argue, because we can’t explain it using present-day understanding about how biology works; though explanations related to recent quantum biological findings could potentially make sense.” Further research in quantum biology might even be able to describe how to exploit such biology, or at least become aware of them.

Further explaining the term describing the anomaly, Ms. Mossbridge said, “It’s anticipatory because it seems to predict future physiological changes in response to an important event without any known clues, and it’s an activity because it consists of changes in the cardiopulmonary, skin and nervous systems.”

Although researchers know that it occurs, they don’t know precisely how it happens. Therefore, anomalous anticipatory activity may be difficult to test.

Let’s say, for example, you are playing a video game at work with your headphones on. The study suggests that with a heightened awareness and a little luck, you may be able to get away with it.

“[Our] analysis suggests that if you were tuned into your body, you might be able to detect these anticipatory changes between two and 10 seconds beforehand and close your video game,” Ms. Mossbridge said. “You might even have a chance to open that spreadsheet you were supposed to be working on. And if you were lucky, you could do all this before your boss entered the room.”