SOUL + BODY: Finding the Hidden Reasoning of Intuition

Here's a classic, true story to keep in mind when considering intuition: a Formula One race-car driver was nearing a blind, hairpin bend when he braked sharply . . . avoiding a pileup of cars. When asked what had made him stop, the driver couldn't explain his spontaneous decision. But when psychologists showed him a video of the incident, here's what he saw: The crowd, which would have normally been cheering him on, wasn't looking at his car but in the other direction in a static, frozen way. Though he had not processed this on a conscious level, his subconscious mind had signaled alarm with a "gut reaction."
Now a team of researchers from the Centre of Organisational Strategy, Learning and Change at Leeds University Business School, UK, has begun to study such well-documented "gut feelings" and finds that they are the result of how the brain stores, processes, and retrieves information on a subconscious level. Such intuition, they say, is the brain drawing on past experiences and external cues almost simultaneously. Non-conscious thought processes are not intrinsically "better" than conscious ones, but intuition can beat deliberate analysis when a swift decision is required.
This research doesn't disprove (or prove) the possibility of premonitions. Rather, it suggests how difficult it is to determine what a psychic experience might be. Our brains know much more that we know.
Monika Rice