Tuning the Mind and Body for Anticipatory Future

Can people really sense the future? If so, are you really geared up to face the future events even without having a slightest clue regarding the kind of events that you would confront?

The phenomena known as "presentiment: sensing the future" in the absence of a clue does exist.

This phenomenon was stated by the researchers from the Northwestern University research that analyzes the results of 26 studies published between 1978 and 2010.

According to the researchers it is known that our subconscious mind at times knows more than our conscious minds. And the physiological measures of subconscious arousal tend to show up before conscious awareness that something odd is cropping against us.

"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.

The researchers stated this with an example, where a person is involved in playing games at work with the headphones on. Due to this the person can't hear when his or her boss is coming around the corner.

"But the 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," Mossbridge said. "You might even have a chance to open that spread sheet you were supposed to be working on. And if you were lucky, you could do all this before your boss entered the room."

Mossbridge and other researchers are not sure whether people are really sensing the future.

"I like to call the phenomenon 'anomalous anticipatory activity,'" she 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. 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."

The study, "Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis," is carried by Mossbridge and other co authors that include Patrizio Tressoldi of the Universitadi Padova, Padova, Italy, and Jessica Utts of the University of California, Irvine.

The detail of this study is being published in the current edition of Frontiers in Perception.