Scientists from Radboud University in the Netherlands have proven that the human brain has the ability to predict the future and visually imagine the events that are going to occur.
For years it has been believed that the visual cortex was the part of the brain that perceives information most adequately. With our eyes we can analyze information twice as fast as with any of our other senses.
While scanning the brains of students during an experiment, scientists observed their predicting abilities in action.
Situations that require thinking ahead or guessing what's coming next are part of our daily lives. And oftentimes, making decisions with limited information and unknowns are done at one's risk.
"These can be as insignificant as catching a ball or as important as avoiding being hit by a car in the street. Regardless of the specific situation, scientists say that there is a mechanism in our brain that enables us to visualize what's about to happen in a series of events, " writes Science Daily.
Until recently, experiments aimed at studying the visual cortex were only done on animals. But scientists in the Netherlands have decided to take it to the next level and check the prophetic abilities of humans as well.
29 students participated in the study, who were given the task of staring at a white dot moving on a screen. After looking at it 108 times, the volunteers expected it to appear.
The volunteers were divided up into several groups and were given different dots to look at - some did not move or change at all, others changed only their final position, while still others moved all across the screen but very slowly.
Magnetic resonance imaging was used to examine the reactions of the students.
When observing the moving dot in the beginning, the visual cortices of the students were activated, indicating that they visualized the dot's stopping - although this occurred twice as fast in their brains as it did in reality.
According to the researchers, this proves that the human brain is not only able to foresee the future, it also works in tandem with its past experience.
The research team posits that it is highly likely that the visual cortex developed its ability of foresight to provide faster reactions, which would be able to save the person's life in numerous situations.
