Sixth Sense Located in Huaman Brain
Human beings ’sixth sense’ for danger, long dismissed by some scientists as myth, actually exists in a part of brain that also handles conflict resolution, according to a recent report in the journal Science.
The brain region – known as the anterior cingulated cortex (ACC) – actually raises the alarm about dangers that fail to penetrate the conscience mind.
The ACC is located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and right brains.
Scientist used a computer program that required healthy young people to respond to activity on the monitor, and measured their brain activity at 2.5 second intervals with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI).
The experiments showed that “our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought.
In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision … or after they made a mistake. But now the region can “actually learn to recognize when you might make a mistake … it learns to warn us in advance when our behavior might lead to negative outcome.
The ACC is closely associated with some serious mental problems, including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. However, the same neurotransmitter involved in drug addiction and Parkinson’s disease – dopamine – also appears ‘to play a key role in training the ACC to recognize when to send the early warning signal.
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