https://www.sciencenews.org/article/people-can-sense-earth-magnetic-field-brain-waves-suggest
http://www.eneuro.org/content/early/2019/03/18/ENEURO.0483-18.2019
doi:10.1523/ENEURO.0483-18.2019
Birds, fish and some other creatures can sense Earth’s magnetic field and use it for navigation (SN: 6/14/14, p. 10). Scientists have long wondered whether humans, too, boast this kind of magnetoreception. Now, by exposing people to an Earth-strength magnetic field pointed in different directions in the lab, researchers from the United States and Japan have discovered distinct brain wave patterns that occur in response to rotating the field in a certain way.
These findings, reported in a study published online March 18 in eNeuro, offer evidence that people do subconsciously respond to Earth’s magnetic field — although it’s not yet clear exactly why or how our brains use this information.
[...]During the experiment, 26 participants each sat with their eyes closed in a dark, quiet chamber lined with electrical coils. These coils manipulated the magnetic field inside the chamber such that it remained the same strength as Earth’s natural field but could be pointed in any direction. Participants wore an EEG cap that recorded the electrical activity of their brains while the surrounding magnetic field rotated in various directions.
This setup simulated the effect of someone turning in different directions in Earth’s natural, unchanging field without requiring a participant to actually move. (Complete stillness prevented motor-control thoughts from tainting brain waves due to the magnetic field.) The researchers compared these EEG readouts with those from control trials where the magnetic field inside the chamber didn’t move.
Joseph Kirschvink, a neurobiologist and geophysicist at Caltech, and colleagues studied alpha waves to determine whether the brain reacts to changes in magnetic field direction. Alpha waves generally dominate EEG readings while a person is sitting idle but fade when someone receives sensory input, like a sound or touch.
Sure enough, changes in the magnetic field triggered changes in people’s alpha waves. Specifically, when the magnetic field pointed toward the floor in front of a participant facing north — the direction that Earth’s magnetic field points in the Northern Hemisphere — swiveling the field counterclockwise from northeast to northwest triggered an average 25 percent dip in the amplitude of alpha waves. That change was about three times as strong as natural alpha wave fluctuations seen in control trials.
[...]Even accounting for which magnetic changes the brain picks up, researchers still don’t know what our minds might use that information for, Kirschvink says. Another lingering mystery is how, exactly, our brains detect Earth’s magnetic field. According to the researchers, the brain wave patterns uncovered in this study may be explained by sensory cells containing a magnetic mineral called magnetite, which has been found in magnetoreceptive trout as well as in the human brain (SN: 8/11/12, p. 13). Future experiments could confirm or eliminate that possibility.
With this first compelling evidence that humans are subconsciously processing magnetic signals, “we can [try to] identify the brain region it originates from and try to identify the nature of the cells” responsible, says Michael Winklhofer, a magnetoreception researcher at the University of Oldenburg in Germany. “This is really the first step.”
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:23PM (4 children)
If my friend who believes in all the New Age medicine and Fong Sui hears about this, there is no way we'll escape the avalanche of Goop-grade BS that will get unleashed.
(Score: 2) by PartTimeZombie on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:26PM
Shuddup! I've got some tiger-repelling rocks to sell him.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:28PM (1 child)
You can probably make a fortune selling "magnetic realignment devices" to her crowd though - 30 minutes a day in the special chamber will be sure to leave you happier, healthier, and smarter! High-tech feng sui consulting firms, making sure the magnetic influences are correctly aligned, special shielding to prevent electrical wires from interfering with their brainwaves, electromagnetic toilets that align your bowels for optimal movement and ease of mind.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @11:54AM
Hmmm,
I have a box of old HD magnets, and another box of drives to be scrapped...my inner Ferengi Is muttering something about rules of acquisition 22, 69, 82, 239 and 292..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:38AM
is feng shui, fong's sister?
(Score: 0, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:36PM (4 children)
It's only a matter of time before they declare that compass points are an artificial construct imposed by society and that everyone should be able to self-declare what direction they are facing (or even that they see facing in multiple directions at once).
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @12:30AM
Just stick a magnet on their hat and watch them walk in circles.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 21 2019, @03:53AM (2 children)
The sad thing is someone probably will. There is no longer any progressive-sounding position so absurd that someone on the left will not take it.
Me, I'm mostly interested in the responses in men vs. those in women. A significant difference would explain so very much.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @11:20AM (1 child)
and this claim by a regressive-sounding person which is so absurd is unfortunately commonly viewed on the right to the degree that it is simply accepted as fact.
me, i'm most interested in why people on both sides are so tribal now. maybe the new bill and ted film will finally manage to get people to at least pretend to be excellent to one another, even if tolerance is mostly intolerable to maintain for the long-term.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Saturday March 23 2019, @02:57AM
Sorry but thanks for playing. Progressives and regressives are the exact same people at the moment. I'm a liberal, which means always moving towards liberty.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by legont on Wednesday March 20 2019, @11:55PM (6 children)
I've read somewhere that Aboriginal Australians do not have words for left/right. How they make it? When in danger one could scream to his buddy "crocodile to the south-west". Apparently they are aware of the geographical position all the time. Perhaps they do it by sensing magnetic field. (The source claimed they keep track of their their orientation)
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 21 2019, @12:54AM (4 children)
Hmmm, this post seems to be presupposing that we didn't nearly wipe them out.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday March 21 2019, @03:23AM (3 children)
Well, Americans did not use wheel even though it was invented for toys.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 21 2019, @03:57AM (1 child)
We didn't need to. We lived by the fishing holes to start with, so where was there worth going?
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by legont on Thursday March 21 2019, @04:50PM
This is only possible by strict population control. Again, I've read somewhere about South American Amazon tribes where the deal was simple: 1. Most girls were killed at birth. 2. Hunting near the village was taboo. 3. Young man would get wives from a military expedition to a tribe near by.
See how many goals are achieved by such a simple system? Green Deal they had.
"Wealth is the relentless enemy of understanding" - John Kenneth Galbraith.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @10:24AM
Thought the position on that was there is currently no evidence they used the wheel for anything other than toys. From the toys they've found, it's obvious they were au fait with the concept of axles etc, but I don't recall ever seeing any spoked wheels, if they'd developed them, things might have been different.
(Besides, if my good friend Giorgio is to believed, they didn't need the wheel, what with all that ancient alien tech they had access to...)
(Score: 2) by Pav on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:40AM
It's probably the same reason the average computer used is clueless compared to 50 years ago - if ones environment is so modified for comfort there is just no need to develop the skillset previously needed. Same can be said for mental calculation, grammar/spelling skill, common sense vs dangers that used to be much more common in our lives etc... I'm sure lacking an always-on directional sense is almost inconceivable to a hunter-gatherer.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @12:02AM (6 children)
Have you noticed that some people have a very good sense of direction (without a GPS phone)? Maybe they are using this magnetic effect in some way, although they may not consciously know how?
My cousin doesn't wear a watch and years ago (long before cell phones) you could ask her what time it was and she knew to the minute. This wasn't a fluke, she was consistently accurate. I don't know how to explain this but it was far better than any series of lucky guesses at the time.
One of my first bosses had worked in an automotive engine assembly plant where part tolerances weren't all "damn near perfect" the way they are now. Pistons had to be measured and then matched with cylinder bores to give an acceptable clearance. He reported that after some time doing this, the more skilled operators could look at the block and select a suitable piston with their hands (then confirmed by measurement). Saved a lot of time hunting through a box of pistons. Can you see and feel a thousandth of an inch (~1/40th mm) repeatably? These workers could, although I have no idea how.
Bottom line, with training (and perhaps some genetic luck), certain people are much more sensitive/capable than average people. This isn't limited to elite athletes, although they can be truly extraordinary.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 21 2019, @01:02AM (3 children)
I like the fact that this experiment was performed using electromagnetic coils - perhaps it's measuring a similar effect to what I noticed. However, I never had any appreciable sense of direction, so I wouldn't put money on it.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by sjames on Thursday March 21 2019, @01:27AM
HArd to say without more experimentation, but it's notable that high tension lines have a stronger alternating field vs. the Earth's natural field.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:18AM
Same here, riding in a car under high tension lines, around 8 years of age. I guess I started ignoring it when I got older. Don't know for sure if I could still feel it, and by now there would definitely be confirmation bias.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 21 2019, @04:04AM
I'm the opposite. I can almost always tell you within ten degrees which way each cardinal direction is but I wouldn't know a power line from a garden hose without looking. Unless, as I recently found, I currently have a headache. It fucks me nine kinds of up if I'm somewhere I'm not already familiar with.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by Unixnut on Thursday March 21 2019, @01:24AM
> My cousin doesn't wear a watch and years ago (long before cell phones) you could ask her what time it was and she knew to the minute. This wasn't a fluke, she was consistently accurate. I don't know how to explain this but it was far better than any series of lucky guesses at the time.
Heh, I have been able to do that since I was a kid. It became a party trick of sorts (people would randomly ask me what time it is, and I could consistently get it right to the nearest 1-5 minutes, depending on when I last looked at the time).
Not sure how I do it either, I just seem to have a good grasp of how much time passed since I last looked at a clock. So I can say to myself "about 1h30 ago it was 1400, so its about 1530 now". Growing up I thought it was normal, but apparently it wasn't.
Might have something to do with playing an instrument (I learned from a very young age). Once thing learning to play an instrument teaches you is the concept of tempo, and the tracking of time and rhythm. Not sure if the same applies to your cousin, but its the only hypothesis I can think of for myself (unless I subconsciously count my heartbeats, and instinctively know the average number of beats per minute or something).
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Thursday March 21 2019, @04:46AM
As someone who grew up in the northern hemisphere and tended to have a pretty good feel for where north was, moving down under has seriously screwed with my ability to tell north. If anything, I'm consistently off by ~90 degrees much to my annoyance (e.g. what I think is north is really east). I'd assumed it was all about sun location/direction, but why that'd give me 90 and not 180 off has bothered me. But maybe it's more about magnetic field lines after all?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 21 2019, @02:14AM (1 child)
But unlike dogs, it's not making me shit in a certain alignment.
(Score: 3, Funny) by The Mighty Buzzard on Thursday March 21 2019, @04:01AM
I almost always shit facing south. That's the way my toilet faces and I don't go in for bathroom acrobatics.
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 2) by ledow on Thursday March 21 2019, @08:34AM
Additionally, it's long been proven that if humans are blindfolded and taken into a large enough field and asked to walk in a straight line, they will inevitably spiral around upon themselves until they are utterly lost.
Though the Earth's magnetic field might cause small changes in the body (hardly surprising, we're 60kg of calcium, carbon and water), it doesn't mean that we actually sense it in any way at all, or do anything useful with that information.
Like all living things we *probably* share a lot of mechanisms that are no longer used, where other species make absolute 100% use of them all the time. Dog's noses. Pigeon's homing instinct and directionality (caused by sensing Earth's magnetic field!). The ability to regenerate. Immunity to cancers. Virtual immortality in the case of some lobsters. Bioluminiscence (we actually do bioluminesce ever so slightly). Ability to see ultra-violet or hear ultra-sound. All these things are possible, if there are certain gene activations, failures, problems elsewhere in the body (e.g. you can perceive UV if you lack a certain protective barrier in the eye), etc. Almost every living thing share a vast chunk of DNA with any other living thing.
Fact is, whatever it is, it's effect isn't utilised.
When this experiment has been repeatedly confirmed, and things like "I could feel the techician waving the magnet" eliminated, we might be able to tell what's happening and what we could possibly do with that.
But it's no more a surprise that any of the other billions of things we have that we share with animals and just don't use the way they do.
(Score: 2) by Muad'Dave on Thursday March 21 2019, @11:49AM
Could it be that the exquisitely sensitive EEG was picking up induced currents from the moving electromagnetic field? I hope they saw results at times when the external field was not moving.