Evidence for a Human Geomagnetic Sense

Maybe those of us w/o a sense of direction lack this ability?  Although at least part of my problem is poor visual memory of details.

https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/evidence-human-geomagnetic-sense

March 18, 2019 

Many humans are able to unconsciously detect changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields, according to scientists at Caltech and the University of Tokyo.

The study, led by geoscientist Joseph Kirschvink (BS, MS '75) and neuroscientist Shin Shimojo at Caltech as well as neuroengineer Ayu Matani at the University of Tokyo, offers experimental evidence that human brain waves respond to controlled changes in Earth-strength magnetic fields. Kirschvink and Shimojo say this is the first concrete evidence of a new human sense: magnetoreception. Their findings were published by the journal eNeuro on March 18.


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"Aristotle described the five basic senses as including vision, hearing, taste, smell, and touch," says Kirschvink, co-corresponding author of the eNeuro study and Nico and Marilyn Van Wingen Professor of Geobiology. "However, he did not consider gravity, temperature, pain, balance, and several other internal stimuli that we now know are part of the human nervous system. Our animal ancestry argues that geomagnetic field sensors should also be there representing not the sixth sense but perhaps the 10th or 11th human sense to be discovered."

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The experiments showed that, in some participants, alpha power began to drop from baseline levels immediately after magnetic stimulation, decreasing by as much as 60 percent over several hundred milliseconds, then recovering to baseline a few seconds after the stimulus.

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