This year, the Nobel Prize in Medicine was awarded for the discovery of "the internal GPS in the brain." This brain function is responsible for our ability to navigate. But can it guide us in another area too?
The theories based on this discovery touch the world of intuition and "coincidence". When you find the right person at the right time, could this internal global positioning system (GPS) be at work?
Norwegian scientist Edward Moser, his wife May-Britt Moser and British-American scientist Dr. John O'Keeffe discovered so-called grid neurons in the brain that make up the internal GPS.
Grid neurons are located in the hippocampus and may also reside in the entorial cortex, which is associated with emotions, says Dr. Bernard Bateman, a Yale University psychiatrist who is currently at the University of Virginia.
This emotional aspect of grid neurons can make individual locations in a 'map' within our brains more visible. Like the maps used in GPS, this 'map' can allow us to find our way to emotionally important people, places, things,”wrote Dr. Bateman.
Journalists asked Moser what he thinks about this idea. Edward Moser responded by mail that "the connection with emotions is highly speculative."
Dr. Bateman agrees that the relationship is ambiguous. “But it is on the basis of such discoveries that such theories can be developed,” he says. The many coincidences he collects clearly show that humans are somehow capable of locating people and places to which they are emotionally attached.
Promotional video:
“How this happens is another matter,” he says, and gives an example. “The mother felt that her 6-year-old daughter was in danger and rushed to a water-filled career where her daughter was playing on the very edge. How did she feel threatened? How did she know where to run?"
As with the lost child, Dr. Bateman found his dog, mistakenly wandering into a familiar neighborhood. He went in this direction unexpectedly for himself and came to the right place.
The filing cabinet effect may explain some of these coincidences, he says: “We remember all the times when we accidentally find what we need, but we forget about all the times when it didn't. If we take into account all the failed cases, then "accidentally" found things will not look incredible from the point of view of statistics."
However, Dr. Bateman believes that the filing cabinet effect does not fully explain the phenomenon, and he is not the only one to think so. Veterinarian Michael Fox knows stories when animals found their owners or sought help in emergencies, covering distances that cannot be explained by their developed sense of smell or hearing.
Bateman and Fox believe that there is a sensory database around us that we unconsciously perceive. This base can guide us like a GPS. Bateman calls it the "psychosphere," and Fox calls it the empatosphere. This is a level of existence that we do not perceive with our usual five senses, but contains information that we can perceive with some still undiscovered receptors.
If we could make this discovery or better understand this phenomenon, then useful coincidences would become more common in our lives, says Dr. Bateman. Perhaps this GPS could help find missing children. Perhaps with the help of it one could find love, a suitable job or help at the right time. Of course, this phenomenon is still a mystery, but for Dr. Bateman this is just a reason to continue further research.
Robert J. Yang, professor of aeronautics and associate professor at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Princeton University, wrote about a "spatial grid" or "mind graph."
In his book Edge of Reality, he discusses the physical reality of human consciousness and how it can be displayed. He also ponders how, in terms of quantum physics, consciousness can move towards its goal: “We use expressions such as 'close' friend or 'distant' relative; "Deep" thought or "superficial" thinking; an idea can take a "central" or "secondary" place or be "divorced from reality"; our thoughts "wander" when we talk about different ideas, and then we take our "position" on the problem."
This is a qualitative characteristic. He wonders if it is possible to develop a quantitative characterization of consciousness. According to his hypothesis, human consciousness is in the form of waves that physically move through the brain and outside it. He says that further development of the mechanics of consciousness can form "a timeline along which consciousness moves towards its goal, making identifications or associations at each stage, as in a charade or puzzle."