Irina Shlionskaya

We often talk about intuition. Unlike logic, which draws conclusions from known facts, intuition is the ability to receive information at the level of sensations, without the use of any analytical data. Recently, scientists have become seriously interested in the phenomenon of the so-called “sixth sense”.

In particular, the US Office of Naval Research (ONR) has taken up the study of this phenomenon. Back in 2017, Time magazine published an article titled "The US military believes people have a sixth sense.” “We need to understand what gives rise to this so-called “sixth sense,” says Peter Squire, programme manager in the ONR Expeditionary Manoeuvre Warfare and Counterterrorism Division.
According to Squire, people often refer to the realm of intuition as irrational. But it is possible that this is still a psychological process, which is somehow explainable from a scientific point of view. If these mechanisms can be understood, then perhaps there will be ways to develop the intensity of the process and apply it for practical purposes.

Judith Orloff, MD, Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, says: that the mechanism of the "sixth sense" involves the entire right hemisphere of our brain, the hippocampus and the digestive system, which also has neurons. It is thanks to the work of the so-called neurotransmitters that “butterflies in the stomach” or a feeling of nausea arises in our intestines, and then we can accept or reject some things intuitively.

A few years ago, a group of scientists led by Dean Radin, Chief Researcher at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS), conducted a series of intuition tests involving 26 people who knew certain techniques to maintain a state of heart harmony. Volunteers completed two cycles of study protocols two weeks apart. They weren't told the real purpose of the research, they were told they would study reactions to stress.

At the same time, one half of the participants performed the protocols after intentionally reaching a state of cardiac coherence for 10 minutes, and the second did not preliminarily perform this procedure. At the second stage, the first group, on the contrary, did not go through the cardiac harmonisation procedure until the completion of the protocols, while the second one did.

The essence of the experiments was that each subject was seated at a computer and asked to press the mouse button as soon as they were ready. For six seconds after that, the screen remained blank. At this time, a special programme recorded the physiological parameters of the volunteer. Finally, 45 different images were randomly displayed on the monitor in turn. Each picture hung on the screen for 3 seconds, and the programme recorded the reaction to it. The next picture was displayed only 10 seconds after the previous one was removed.

It turned out that 30 images, depending on the plot, evoked a neutral reaction in the subjects, and 15 a strong emotional reaction. But this is not as surprising as the fact that the corresponding reaction occurred even before the pictures appeared on the screen - an average of 4.8 seconds before they appeared. And the most intense was the "cardiac" reaction.

“First, information is recorded in the heart,” comments Rollin McCarty, Ph.D., “then to the brain (emotional and prefrontal cortex), where we can logically correlate what we intuitively feel, and disturbs)". According to the authors of the experiment, in addition to the traditional "brain" intelligence, we also have intuitive or "heart" intelligence. No wonder we say: "I feel it in my heart."
-- Pravda.ru