Have Scientists Discovered Intuition?

[Flabbergasted]

http://www.spiegel.de/img/0,1020,975022,00.jpg
The brain knows more than we sometimes give it credit for. Those subtle feelings of foreboding may be your gray matter telling you that you've made a mistake.

http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,507176,00.html

Have Scientists Discovered Intuition?
By Gerald Traufetter

Whenever humans recognize a mistake, a mysterious wave of electricity passes through the brain. Researchers think the signal could explain addiction, error correction and even the sixth sense.

Stress is normal for the 5,500 scientists and engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. They know that whenever they make a decision, even the slightest error could have serious consequences.

Memories of 1999, after all, are still fresh. Eight years ago, when the Mars Polar Lander space probe entered the atmosphere of the red planet, radio contact was suddenly lost. The satellite simply disappeared from the screens at the control center. Four hundred million dollars had vanished into silence.

snip

Ability to Detect its Own Errors

Ullsperger, like a dozen other research teams around the world, is currently studying how the brain tracks down and processes its own errors. "Our brain has the fascinating ability to detect errors and, if they have already occurred, to learn from the experience," he explains.

"Error-related negativity" (ERN) is a concept that has captivated the scientific world. It refers to a characteristic wave of voltage beneath the skullcap, which can be measured whenever the brain detects that an error has been made. Especially surprising is the fact the ERN signal already begins to flicker even before a person is aware of his error.

In the early 1990s, Michael Falkenstein, a neurophysiologist from the western German city of Dortmund, observed for the first time how voltage declines by at least 10 millivolts in a specific group of nerve cells, and that this occurs only 100 milliseconds after a person has made an error -- about the time it takes for your cursor to respond to a click of the mouse.

Falkenstein's discovery marked the beginning of a period of systematic study of the brain's fine-tuned error detector. It paved the way for fascinating new theories on questions such as why compulsive disorders occur or why some people hesitate while others make confident decisions. It also shines a new light on the development of addiction.

snip

Stops Producing Dopamine

The method makes it possible to replicate the anatomy of error detection. What it reveals is that immediately following the ERN wave, the midbrain suddenly stops producing dopamine. This neurochemical signal is transferred to the basal ganglia and thus into the limbic system, in which emotions are generated.

[sam sarrha]

1. isn't that the area in republicans that only works to 1/2 the level of Democrats.??

i heard it referred to as the 'Critical Stop' function.. and in republicans it doesn't work very well..

so the government is being run by mentally deficient people who don't know what they are doing.. i have been saying that for decades.. what else is new??

there is new research out now about it, i heard about it on tom hartman and sam's show

[Flabbergasted]

2. You're not joking are you?

[RC]

5. No, he is not

The further to the right a person is, the further from reality they seem to function. Witness the current crop of "leaders" we have in the administration. Paranoid schizophrenia anyone?

[sam sarrha]

8. no i am not, it should be on randy rhodes web site LINK>

http://www.airamerica.com or tom hartman's

[midlife_mo_Jo]

11. In fact,

I would venture to say that people at the very far left can be as just as void of reality and just as paranoid as people on the far right.

[sam sarrha]

17. you are really full of crap... no democrat is as bad as Rethugs, none have gleefully killed as many

people as the rethugs... i agree we need to eliminate corporate campaign contributions.. but no dem has started a war in iraq, they were duped into voting for something they didn't understand that allowed this to happen.. but democrats world view is festering in a pool of rancid hate and intolerance

[Flabbergasted]

20. That is not what was said....

The paranoia on far ends of the political spectrum do tend to be similar....

[midlife_mo_Jo]

21. Thank you.

In fact, I love to surf and read various political sites, and the paranoia is much the same, but I wasn't even thinking about that so much, as the general disconnect of what can and cannot be accomplished with limited resources and multinationals ruling the world these days. I just kind of laugh when I read posts like, and I'm paraphrasing here, "Just think, if we could get everything, I could work on my art not have to get a job and not have to worry about affordable housing, health insurance, etc." Healthcare, yes. Affordable housing for someone choosing not to get a paying job? Uh, hello! Reality check! Ain't gonna' happen. By the way, I didn't read that here, I porposely chose something I read a while back on another site, but I see the same kind of thinking in "a few" posters" here. Cradle to grave everything for everyone is not ever going to happen. We can certainly do a lot like universal healthcare, better laws requiring sick leave, better childcare, better school funding, affordable housing for those in need, etc., but able-bodied people are still going to have to provide for themselves in large part.

[Flabbergasted]

22. No problem and Welcome to DU.

[CoffeeCat]

7. I would say that Republican brains...

...are working exactly as ours do.

The problem with Republicans--and people who do not admit or face their errors or weaknesses--is that they
need loads of denial to wall off feelings of inadequacy or feelings of loss of control.

It's the denial that creates the disease. Denial creates an alternate universe in someone's mind.
Sometimes denial can protect you from danger or trauma. However, so many people who do bad things
use denial to be oblivious about the pain they create and the errors (as small as an addition problem,
as big as a war). This stunts growth. This impedes learning and self actualization.

It takes so much energy to hold up that wall of denial. When you've done a lot of bad things that
you don't want to face--you are constantly running on a self-created treadmill that never stops. You
become the treadmill. You are no longer in "self".

I would say that anyone (and this includes the warmongering PNAC crowd specifically) who ignores their
intuition and continues to make errors (killing innocents, lying, etc)---experiences that "mistake" effect just as we
all do. However, they part ways with compassionate, caring people because they end up cultivating so much
denial in order to stuff down what their brains all ready know.

Denial creates the monsters and prevents the monsters from realizing that they're monsters.

[pscot]

12. Oooom,I am the Treadmill, Oooom

Thank you for those images; the treadmill, the wall of denial. You can fit a whose who of the GOP into your model.

[sam sarrha]

14. actually they are caught in an Apriori Loop, a world view that doesnt work and when it doesnt work

they blame that on outside factors..the liberals. where ever you apply input into this dysfunctional view they come up with the same conclusion.. and you must be one of those who f it up all the time..

i wrote a paper for juvenile parole in Nevada as a parole officer entitled

"Apriori and inductive logic as perceptual dysfunction and a stalemate in the counseling process"

it states simply that the Loop is self perpetuating and invincible ignorance.. it is only thru art, music/as in learning to play an instrument with a teacher, repetitious exercise/jogging/swimming laps/cycling distance and Meditation will positively effect the condition. and only because those behaviors physically reorganize the brain and the person begins to live in a world of solutions instead of a world of problems.. and they cure themselves.

Rush Limpballs uses a form of brain washing to lure people into an Apriori loop, it is what make a freeper freep... it is the essence of freepism

the kids i taught meditation in the prison were paroled in 30 to 60 days. there is a video called 'doing time doing Vipasina , the system is used in india with amazing results, and it is spreading to other countries

[Bonhomme Richard]

3. I trust mine 100% I have learned that every time ..................

I ignored my intuition there was trouble. Now I take no chances.
I'm not a religious guy by a long shot but I call it my guardian angel. I guess it's a "growing up catholic" thing.

[vlas]

4. I don't know but something tells me they have...

call it a hunch :)

This may explain why people dislike to be proven wrong even over the smallest of things - the brain zaps you for it! I wonder if insisting that you're right, sticking to your guns no matter what, with confidence, fools the brain enough to not withhold the dopamine. So with effort, denial of facts or rationalization of error could be as comfortable as being correct. Fascinating.

[Flabbergasted]

6. On the other hand people in denial tend to be miserable....

Lack of Dopamine?

[vlas]

9. true

It's fascinating that the brain withholds dopamine when we make an error. So people are wired to try to get things right.

[nebenaube]

13. yep...

Mom can't really handle the real world so she embraces xti-anity...

[sam sarrha]

15. .....here is the real reason... not only comportable...but ADICTIVE

they are Obcessed and Compulsive about it... political junkies and more disgusting than a herion addict

[BlooInBloo]

10. Nah. People have known about it for 1000s of years.

[sam sarrha]

18. yea, that is why the french revolution removed them from the gene pool

[Mythsaje]

16. I've always taken a great deal of what people call "intuition"

as the sub-conscious assimilation and calculation of data. Everything you see, hear, taste, feel, and smell enters your brain even though you're not aware of it. On some level you might even be aware of the effects of pheremones or other scent markers produced by other human beings. The subconscious files this data and, sometimes, compiles it to produce "feelings" that have no conscious origin but are actually simply the products of routines happening farther "back" in the person's consciousness.

:shrug:

Makes sense to me.

[Raksha]

19. I tend to agree. Intuition is sometimes called "reason in a hurry,"

although there could still be other factors going on at the same time, as the OP indicates.