A fMRI Brain Imaging Study of Presentiment
📄 Original study📌 Appears in:
Plain English Summary
Can your brain react to something before it happens? This pioneering study used fMRI brain scanning to find out. Ten volunteers viewed randomly ordered erotic, violent, and calm pictures in a scanner. Brain regions lit up during the anticipation window before emotional pictures, even though participants could not know what was coming. Women showed this anticipatory buzz before both erotic and violent images; men only before erotic ones. The amygdala — the brain's emotional alarm center — responded selectively to emotional content. This was one of the first studies to capture presentiment (the body seemingly sensing the future) via brain imaging rather than skin-conductance, and it later fed into a 2012 meta-analysis confirming the pattern. The authors called results exploratory and urged replication.
Research Notes
One of the earliest fMRI studies of presentiment effects, extending skin conductance findings (Radin 1997, Bierman & Radin 1997) into BOLD neuroimaging. Published as conference proceedings at Human PSI Forum (OVTA, Makuhari, Chiba, Japan). Key precursor to the Mossbridge et al. (2012) PAA meta-analysis which included this study. Visual cortex and amygdala regions showed emotion-specific anticipatory patterns.
Ten subjects (6 male, 4 female; mean age 27.2) were scanned with 1.5T fMRI while viewing 48 randomly presented pictures (erotic, violent, neutral; randomized with replacement). Each trial comprised 4.2s anticipation, 4.2s stimulus, 8.4s recovery. Analysis used GLM with 6 predictors in BrainVoyager 2000. Anomalous anticipatory BOLD activation was found preceding emotional stimuli: single-subject erotic vs neutral td=2.89 (df=39, p<0.01, 0.203% BOLD difference); pooled female erotic td=1.75, violent td=1.99 (p<0.05); pooled male erotic td=2.10 (p<0.05). Females showed anticipation before both erotic and violent stimuli; males only before erotic. Amygdala region responded to emotional but not calm stimuli. Authors conclude results are exploratory and require replication with pre-specified ROI procedures.
Related Papers
Extends
Companion
- Electrocortical Activity Prior to Unpredictable Stimuli in Meditators and Non-Meditators — Radin, Dean I (2011)
- Replicable Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Evidence of Correlated Brain Signals Between Physically and Sensory Isolated Subjects — Richards, Todd L (2005)
- Electrodermal Presentiments of Future Emotions — Radin, Dean I (2004)
- Toward Understanding the Placebo Effect: Investigating a Possible Retrocausal Factor — Radin, Dean (2007)
Cites
Cited By
- Predictive Physiological Anticipation Preceding Seemingly Unpredictable Stimuli: A Meta-Analysis — Mossbridge, Julia (2012)
- Predicting the Unpredictable: Critical Analysis and Practical Implications of Predictive Anticipatory Activity — Mossbridge, Julia A (2014)
- We Did See This Coming: Response to 'We Should Have Seen This Coming' by D. Sam Schwarzkopf — Mossbridge, Julia A (2015)
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📋 Cite this paper
Bierman, Dick J, Scholte, H. Steven (2002). A fMRI Brain Imaging Study of Presentiment. Journal of International Society of Life Information Science.
@article{bierman_2002_fmri_presentiment,
title = {A fMRI Brain Imaging Study of Presentiment},
author = {Bierman, Dick J and Scholte, H. Steven},
year = {2002},
journal = {Journal of International Society of Life Information Science},
}