Human being's 'sixth sense' for danger, long dismissed by some scientists as myth, actually exists in a part of the brain that also handles conflict resolution, according to a recent report in the journal Science. The brain region - known as the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) - actually raises the alarm about danger that fail to penetrate the consciene mind, said Joshua Brown of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, in an interview. The ACC is located near the top of the frontal lobes and along the walls that divide the left and rigth brains. Brown used a computer programme that required health young people to respond to activity on the monitor, and measured their brain activity at 2.5 second intervals with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). The experiments showed that "our brains are better at picking up subtle warning signs than we previously thought", Brown said. "In the past, we found activity in the ACC when people had to make a difficult decision...or after they made a mistake," Brown said. But now the region can "actually learn to recognise when you might make a mistake...it learns to warn you in advance when our behaviour might lead to a negative outcome". The ACC is closely associated with some serious mental problems, including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Brown said the same neurotransmitter involved in drug addiction and Parkinson's disease - dopamine - also appears "to play a key role in training the ACC to recognise when to send the early warning signal".

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