Presentiment without any external clues may, in fact, exist, according to new Northwestern University research that analyses the results of 26 studies published between 1978 and 2010.
Researchers already know that our subconscious minds sometimes know more than our conscious minds. Physiological measures of subconscious arousal, for instance, tend to show up before conscious awareness that a deck of cards is stacked 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.
A person playing a video game at work while wearing headphones, for example, can't hear when his or her boss is coming around the corner.
"But our 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 spreadsheet you were supposed to be working on. And if you were lucky, you could do all this before your boss entered the room," Mossbridge said in a statement.
This phenomenon is sometimes called "presentiment", as in "sensing the future", but Mossbridge said that she 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," she added.
"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," she said.
