The little voice in your head that tells you about a situation or person is actually your gut feeling talking. And, every one of you might have experienced it sometime or the other. Though, till now we had no possible explanations for these weird feelings, scientists might have finally found out how it happens.
According to Prof Digby Tantum, Clinical Professor of Psychotherapy at the University of Sheffield, humans brains are interconnected through something like 'wi-fi' which allows us to get far more information about people than we are aware of.
We may think that language plays the most important role in the communication but Prof Tantum believes it plays a small part; it's the brain which does the hard work of picking up tiny 'micro-signals' that communicate what a person is thinking.
This explains the whole idea of 'gut feeling' or intuition people have about a person or situation.
"We can know directly about other people's emotions and what they are paying attention to. It is based on the direct connection between our brains and other people's and between their brain and ours. I call this the interbrain." Sunday Telegraph quoted Prof Tatum as saying.
His theory explains why it's difficult to maintain eye contact in a busy public transport – there are too many people; the brain is filled with too much subliminal information.
He also believes that the brain communications may happen as an 'inadvertent leak' and maybe it's linked to smell.
Prof Tantum said: "The area of the brain that is closest to the nose is the orbitofrontal cortex. It might be there because so many of our most basic connections to other people are via smell."
However, people with autism have little or no interbrain connection, he says.
"They are often able to pick up or learn what expressions mean and yet that doesn't seem to solve the problem of that lack of human connection," Prof Tantum explained.
Apart from these, he also explained various human behaviours through interbrain by saying that it is the reason why people are drawn to religions or they feel the need to come together in huge crowds at concerts or matches.
Prof Tantum said: "The experience of transcendence is one and this might be the root of spirituality and indeed what many people would consider the meaning of life."
"Being in crowd mode may also make us experience what it would be like to transcend out perspective, our time, our place and our capacity, to feel for a moment, like a driving being," he added.
He has written about his findings in a new book -- The Interbrain, published by Jessica Kinglsey Publishers.
