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Vancouver Sun - Story - canada.com network:
"For the many who sometimes walk into a room and feel that something is not quite right, the answer may lie in a sub-system of our visual experience, says Ronald Rensink, University of B.C. associate professor in psychology and computer science.

'Basically visual perception then is two parts. It's got the sort of pictures we all know and love, and then we've got this other thing, this feeling, this using the force, this sensing stream, and they work in parallel, I think. They both operate at the same time,' he said.

While you may not see anything, Rensink says the 'sixth sense' or as he calls it, 'mindsight,' is basically another kind of vision where people can sense a change and have a visual experience of it.

He explains that 'mindsight' differs from our usual concept of psychic phenomena because people have to keep their eyes open to employ this mode of visual perception.

'The point of this is that these kinds of feelings are often correct.

People should really pay attention if they feel something's not right. It's probably because part of their brain, or that part of their perceptual system, is telling them something that's actually useful,' said Rensink, whose findings appear in the January issue of Psychological Science."

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