And no, you don't have a 6th sense.

You're just going to crush all my hopes

and dreams like that, huh?

Yeah, well, if you had a 6th sense,

you'd know that I secretly love to crush hopes and dreams.

You don't need ESP to see that.

Hey, everyone.

Lacy and Anthony here.

You've heard of ESP, right?

It stands for extrasensory perception,

and refers to the ability to pick up things with your mind.

As opposed to your ears, eyes, nose, mouth and skin, which

obviously have nothing to do with the mind, I guess.

Clearly, clearly.

ESP is, in a nutshell, knowing something

that isn't immediately obvious.

For instance, you're sitting next to a dude on a train

and you sense that he's been in a car accident.

Or that he murdered someone.

Right.

Or murder detection, which is a very useful ESP skill.

Despite the fact that more than one in three Americans

believes in it, a year-long study published in Plus One

this week is ruling out the possibility of a 6th sense.

In the study they found that it's true,

people who claim to have ESP are picking up on something.

But it's not because they're psychic.

Right.

It's because, for instance in the case of the murdery jerk

on the train, you might have subconsciously

noticed a fleck of blood on his jacket.

We're intuitively processing what we're seeing,

and our mind draws some conclusions.

The catch is that we don't consciously

realize that our sense is peaked because of the blood, which

leads some people to attribute it to psychic ability.

Other examples might be registering

scars on someone's face and knowing

that something bad probably happened,

or registering that your kids are really quiet, so they're

up to no good, or picking up on subtle communication cues

and predicting that a couple is about to break up.

The brain does a lot of tricksy things.

The more of these paranormal studies that come out,

the more I realize I can't trust my own brain.

It's a little frightening.

How did they go about the study?

Well, it all started with a student

who claimed to have a 6th sense.

The lead scientist wanted to figure out what was going on.

The team showed student participants an image,

gave a one-second pause, and then showed another image.

And sometimes, the second image was the same.

Other times, it had a very subtle change.

And when the image changed, the students

had no idea what change, they just

knew that something more was there.

Amongst those students who picked up on the change

that they couldn't explain, some said

it was because of their 6th sense.

So essentially, the researchers found

that what people are calling the 6th sense

is information that we aren't consciously aware of,

or can't verbalize.

This happens because the brain is always

taking sensory metrics, visual cues, [INAUDIBLE]

cues, faint sounds in the distance.

They're constantly being registered

in what is essentially a giant, constantly

running database in your brain.

And only when the information is of immediate concern or focus

do we really draw on all that sensory information

that we're subconsciously receiving from our environment.

I love the way the researchers describe this, by the way,

like an abstract painting.

You looked at it and you're not really sure what you're seeing,

and yet you get some sense of what the painting is about.

It's like magic.

Except it's not magic, it's science.

It's science magic.

No, it's just science.

Thanks for joining us for D News, everyone.

What psychic skill do you wish you possess?

Oh, I like the one where you can start fires.

And I also like the one when you turn invisible,

because then you start the fire and no one knows.

OK.

So tell us about it in the comments.

And if the studio hasn't burned down by then,

we will be back with more science updates.

And if it does burn down, you won't know who did it.

Yeah, we're gonna know who did it.