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Letter to the Editor: "Developing Intuition: Neural Correlates of Cognitive-Skill Learning in Caudate Nucleus" by Wan et al (2012). J. Neurosci., 32(48), 17492-17501.
Submit responseThese experiments identified the Neural Correlates of Cognitive-Skill Learning. However it is debatable whether intuition was developed. It is also unclear why only males were considered, as females are presumably more intuitive.
The main objective of this letter is exploring the assumed definition of intuition within the context of ancient metaphysical circles and as evidenced through history (Eisenbud, 1981; Marquardt, 2002; Baude, 2007).
Life is about making decisions to act upon. As such it relies on one basic task: making predictions at conscious, subconscious and unconscious levels; non-stop. The predictions success depends on the level of knowledge and the proficiency to generate it. Predictions are basically about producing knowledge of anything anywhere, including current, past or future events, conditions, places, objects, equations and solutions, etc.
How predictions are made is what distinguishes intuition from rational thinking (Mega et al, 2015). Intuition can be considered both:
1-Noun i.e., intuitive knowledge or intuitive decision
2-Verb i.e., the process that delivers intuitive knowledge and intuitive decisions
Ultimately, intuitive knowledge, intuitive decisions or even rational knowledge are all basically knowledge, the difference being just how it is obtained. In those terms, it would be expected that intuition will have its own neural correlate, regardless of the type of knowledge generated. On the other hand, intuitive knowledge, or ultimately knowledge as explained above, may be "...domain specific...", which may explain why Wan et al (2009) and Mega et al (2015) found the neural correlates in different brain areas. Therefore, what they found may not necessarily be the neural correlates of intuition.
Intuition is assumed non-conscious, automatic and quick (Wan et al, 2009; Mega et al, 2015). Nevertheless, there is still no consensus about what exactly intuition is (Glockner and Witteman, 2010) or its neural basis. As rational thinking can also be quick, the adjective "spontaneous" may be better suited to define intuition, as it implies no time (to deliberate). In the mini-shogi experiments, what "...the short presentation time (2 s) and brief response window (3 s)..." achieved was "...minimizing the contribution of conscious search..." but not eliminating it altogether, putting thus into question whether intuition was developed. What probably happened by optimizing the "...presentation time..." and the "...response window..." was that the psychological function engaged in the process of learning simply became more proficient. Activating intuition could perhaps be achieved by minimizing the presentation times to the level that the individual has no conscious recollection of what was observed.
As referred to by Mega et al (2015) "...intuition is a psychological function that apprehends the totality of a given situation and synthesizes isolated bits of data and experiences related to the situational demands to reach a decision...". From this definition, which is similar to that assumed by Wan et al (2009), intuition seems a Psychological Processing Unit, analogous to rational thinking, but in the threshold of consciousness. It is like having a finite database and through various psychological functions new data associations are produced. Therefore, memory and operations are local, like having a Closed or Isolated System (thermodynamics). Intuition is certainly an ability that most people have but undeveloped. This is another reason why it is debatable that randomly chosen individuals (Mega et al, 2015; Wan et al, 2009) had their intuition activated.
From a different perspective, intuition is also a non-conscious process but seems to do with knowledge spontaneously loaded into memory and/or into awareness. Where knowledge came from is yet to be ascertained. Regardless of its source, ancient masters e.g. Lao-Tse, Plato, Empedocles, etc. (Hubral, 2014a,b,c) and modern empiricists affirm that the seat of intuition is not the brain but associated to the heart, although knowledge is ultimately made conscious in the brain. This heart-brain coupling has been observed in laboratory experiments based on EEG and ECG analysis (McCreaty et al, 2004a,b).
From this other perspective, telepathy, precognition, etc. are examples of intuition observed experimentally (Eisenbud, 1981; Marquardt, 2002; Braude, 2007). Einstein himself witnessed and endorsed telepathy experiments (Sinclair, 1930). Precognition is perhaps the most intriguing (Eisenbud, 1981; Marquardt, 2002) as it involves knowledge of future events that some individuals are spontaneously aware of without having any means of knowing i.e., knowledge that was not originally in memory or arrived at via an automated subconscious or non-conscious psychological function (Mega et al, 2015), although this foreknowledge must be ultimately related to memory.
It is speculated that intuition may be related to a non-local field, as opposed to rational knowledge that is local i.e., in memory, books, databases, etc. This non-locality is more evident in the case of precognition as several individuals from different geographical locations and having no connection among them or to the event, are spontaneously aware of the future event (Marquardt, 2002). This could mean that time may be distributed among multiple worlds (Everett, 1957; Hall et al, 2014) or that non-locality refers to a field of probabilities. Thus, it appears that intuition is more like an Open System (thermodynamics) where it has external interactions in the form of information, energy, matter, etc. into or out of the system boundary (Khalil, 1995).
Therefore, given the arguments above it is unlikely that intuition has been activated in Wan et al (2009) or in Mega et al (2015). Identifying the neural basis of intuition, as originally defined in ancient metaphysical circles, would require individuals to prove their intuitional abilities by providing knowledge they have no way of knowing: not derived from memory or from an automated subconscious or non-conscious "...psychological function...".
REFERENCES
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Mega LF, Gigerenzer G. and Volz, K.G. (2015) Do intuitive and deliberate judgments rely on two distinct neural systems? A case study in face processing. Front. Hum. Neurosci. 9:456. doi: 10.3389/fnhum.2015.00456
Khatri, N., & Ng, H. A. (2000). The role of intuition in strategic decision making. Human Relations: Studies Towards the Integration of the Social Sciences, 53, 57-86.
McCraty, R., Atkinson, M. and Bradley, R.T. (2004a). Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 1. The Surprising Role of the Heart. J. Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 10(1): 133-143.
McCraty, R., Atkinson, M. and Bradley, R.T. (2004b). Electrophysiological Evidence of Intuition: Part 2. A System-Wide Process? J. Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 10(2): 325-336
Sinclair, U. (1930). Mental Radio. Charles C. Thomas Publishers, pp. 269. Preface by Albert Einstein in the German edition.
Volz, K. G. and Zander, T. (2014). Primed for intuition? Neuroscience of decision making, DOI:10.2478/ndm-2014-001?NDM?26-34
Wan X., Takano D., Asamizuya T., Suzuki C., Ueno K., Cheng K., Ito T., and Tanaka K. ((2012). Developing intuition: neural correlates of cognitive-skill learning in caudate nucleus, J. Neurosci., 32(48), 17492- 17501.
Conflict of Interest:
None declared
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