Do human beings have a magnetic sense? Biologists know other animals do. They think it helps creatures including bees, turtles and birds navigate through the world.

人类有磁感吗?生物学家知道其他动物有。他们认为这有助于蜜蜂、乌龟和鸟类等生物在世界迁徙。

Scientists have tried to investigate whether humans belong on the list of magnetically sensitive organisms. For decades, there’s been a back-and-forth between positive reports and failures to demonstrate the trait in people, with seemingly endless controversy.

科学家们试图调查人类是否属于磁敏感生物。几十年来，在正面报道和未能在人们身上体现出这种特质之间，一直存在着一种反反复复的关系，争议似乎永无止境。

Over the past 50 years or so, scientists have shown that hundreds of organisms in nearly all branches of the bacterial, protist and animal kingdoms have the ability to detect and respond to this geomagnetic field. In some animals – such as honey bees – the geomagnetic behavioral responses are as strong as the responses to light, odor or touch.

在过去50年左右的时间里，科学家们已经证明，在细菌、原生生物和动物王国的几乎所有分支中，都有数百种生物体有能力探测到这种地磁场，并对其做出反应。在某些动物中，如蜜蜂，地磁行为反应与对光、气味或触摸的反应一样强烈。

Biologists have identified strong responses in vertebrates ranging from fish, amphibians, reptiles, numerous birds and a diverse variety of mammals including whales, rodents, bats, cows and dogs – the last of which can be trained to find a hidden bar magnet. In all of these cases, the animals are using the geomagnetic field as components of their homing and navigation abilities, along with other cues like sight, smell and hearing.

生物学家已经在脊椎动物身上发现了强烈的反应，包括鱼类、两栖动物、爬行动物、许多鸟类，以及各种各样的哺乳动物，包括鲸鱼、啮齿动物、蝙蝠、奶牛和狗——最后一种动物可以通过训练来寻找隐藏的条形磁铁。在所有这些情况下，这些动物都在利用地磁场作为它们的归航和导航能力的组成部分，同时也利用视觉、嗅觉和听觉等其他线索。

In normal life, when someone rotates their head – say, nodding up and down or turning the head from left to right – the direction of the geomagnetic field (which remains constant in space) will shift relative to their skull. This is no surprise to the subject’s brain, as it directed the muscles to move the head in the appropriate fashion in the first place.

In our experimental chamber, we can move the magnetic field silently relative to the brain, but without the brain having initiated any signal to move the head.

在正常的生活中，当一个人转动他的头部时——比如，上下点头或者从左到右转动头部——地磁场的方向(在空间中保持不变)将相对于他的头骨发生改变。这对受试者的大脑来说并不奇怪，因为它首先引导肌肉以适当的方式移动头部。

在我们的实验室内，我们可以相对于大脑无声地移动磁场，但大脑没有发出任何移动头部的信号。

This is comparable to situations when your head or trunk is passively rotated by somebody else, or when you’re a passenger in a vehicle which rotates. In those cases, though, your body will still register vestibular signals about its position in space, along with the magnetic field changes – in contrast, our experimental stimulation was only a magnetic field shift. When we shifted the magnetic field in the chamber, our participants did not experience any obvious feelings.

这与你的头部或身体被动地被别人转动，或者你是一辆旋转汽车里的乘客时的情况类似。然而，在这些情况下，你的身体仍然会随着磁场的变化，记录下前庭在空间中位置的信号——相比之下，我们的实验刺激只是磁场的变化。当我们改变房间里的磁场时，我们的参与者没有任何明显的感觉。

The EEG data, on the other hand, revealed that certain magnetic field rotations could trigger strong and reproducible brain responses. One EEG pattern known from existing research, called alpha-ERD (event-related desynchronization), typically shows up when a person suddenly detects and processes a sensory stimulus. The brains were “concerned” with the unexpected change in the magnetic field direction, and this triggered the alpha-wave reduction. That we saw such alpha-ERD patterns in response to simple magnetic rotations is powerful evidence for human magnetoreception.

另一方面，脑电图数据显示，特定的磁场旋转可以触发强烈的、可重复的大脑反应。

现有研究中已知的一种脑电图模式称为阿尔法-ERD(事件相关的去同步化)，通常出现在一个人突然发现并处理一种感官刺激时。大脑“关注”磁场方向的意外变化，这触发了阿尔法波的减弱。我们在简单的磁旋转反应中看到了这种阿尔法是—ERD模式，这是人类磁接收的有力证据。

Moreover, our series of experiments show that the receptor mechanism – the biological magnetometer in human beings – is not electrical induction, and can tell north from south. This latter feature rules out completely the so-called “quantum compass” or “cryptochrome” mechanism which is popular these days in the animal literature on magnetoreception. Our results are consistent only with functional magnetoreceptor cells based on the biological magnetite hypothesis. Note that a magnetite-based system can also explain all of the behavioral effects in birds that promoted the rise of the quantum compass hypothesis.

此外，我们的一系列实验表明，受体机制——人体的生物磁力仪——不是电磁感应，可以区分南北。后一种特性完全排除了所谓的“量子罗盘”或“隐花色素”机制，这种机制目前在有关磁接收的动物文献中很流行。我们的结果仅与基于生物磁铁矿假说的功能性磁受体细胞相一致。请注意，一个基于磁铁矿的系统也可以解释鸟类的所有行为效应，它们促进了量子罗盘假说的兴起。

A human response to Earth-strength magnetic fields might seem surprising. But given the evidence for magnetic sensation in our animal ancestors, it might be more surprising if humans had completely lost every last piece of the system. Thus far, we’ve found evidence that people have working magnetic sensors sending signals to the brain – a previously unknown sensory ability in the subconscious human mind. The full extent of our magnetic inheritance remains to be discovered.

人类对地球磁场的反应似乎令人惊讶。但是，考虑到我们的动物祖先有磁感应的证据，如果人类已经完全失去了系统的每一部分，这可能会更令人惊讶。到目前为止，我们已经发现有证据表明，人们使用磁性传感器向大脑发送信号，这是人类潜意识中一种以前未知的感觉能力。我们磁性遗传的全部内容仍有待发现。

评论翻译

原创翻译：龙腾网 翻译：土拨鼠之日 转载请注明出处

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Wolfgang

I could be in a room full of compasses and couldn’t find north, my wife could be floating in the ocean in the middle of the day with the sun directly above and point accurately to north. I never understood how she was able to do that, or how I wasn’t, now I know. Very interesting article. I, too, am from Pasadena.

我可能在一个满是指南针的房间里找不着北，我的妻子可能正午漂浮在大海上，太阳于正上方直射，她能准确地指向北方。我一直不明白她是怎么做到的，或者我为啥不能，现在我知道了。很有趣的文章。我也是帕萨迪纳人。

wilson（回复楼上）

I find it endlessly fascinating that people tend to go from work using statistical distributions, which may be valid, to suggest validity of single events of personal anecdote, which is not valid. Even trained pharmacists can ask “does it work” for preventive medicines when the proper answer in that case is “I would not know (but it works statistically)”.

我发现人们工作中倾向于使用统计分布（这可能是有效的）来暗示个人轶事的单一事件的有效性（这是无效的），这一点令人无限着迷。即使是训练有素的药剂师也会问预防性药物“有效吗”，而在这种情况下，正确的答案是“我不知道（但它在统计上有效）”。

Shakeel Ahmed

What an awesome article. I’ve got to say, you guys really know how to put out killer content. Thanks so much. I’m really enjoying it.

多棒的文章啊。我要说的是，你们真的知道如何发布杀手级的内容。非常感谢，我真的很喜欢。

There is a feeling~a strong sense of comfort and belonging when I do this.

Another thing I enjoy is random road trips without a map.I realize that there are road signs however, several times I have driven from the midwest to the west coast by just getting into my car and saying, “Let’s go”.This is different from my wandering in the woods butt, I still never get that “lost feeling” that I’ve heard others say they fear.

当我这样做的时候，有一种强烈的舒适感和归属感。我喜欢的另一件事是没有地图的公路随意旅行。我意识到有一些路标，但是有好几次我从中西部开车到西海岸，只是上车说，“走吧”。这和我在树林里闲逛的感觉不同，我从来没有感受到别人说的那种“失落感”，我听到别人说他们害怕。

Janice Ann Reynolds

logged in via Google

The invention of the compass helped those who had a less keen sense of direction; decreased reliance on natural instincts perhaps weakened our innate abilities.

指南针的发明帮助了那些方向感不那么敏锐的人；减少对自然本能的依赖可能削弱了我们天生的能力。

Tim Gahan

logged in via Google

The series of questions posed in the next to last paragraph seem like they would be the basis of typical Control Questions for a study regarding magnetoreception…Do the weak and strong brain responses reflect some kind of individual differences in navigational ability? Can those with weaker brain responses benefit from some kind of training? Can those with strong brain responses be trained to actually feel the magnetic field?

在下一段中提出的一系列问题似乎是典型控制问题的基础，这些问题是关于磁受作用……“大脑微弱和强烈的反应是否反映了某种个体在导航能力上的差异？大脑反应较弱的人能从某种训练中获益吗？那些大脑反应强烈的人能被训练去真正感受磁场吗？”

Ewan Blanch（回复楼上）

I’m not sure what you mean by “Control Questions”? Those are research questions.Thasample size appears to be 34 as stated in the article. Since the test subjects were all seated in a closed room the concept of ‘getting lost’ does not appear to be meaningful.

我不知道你所说的“控制问题”是什么意思？这些都是研究问题。如本文所述，样本量似乎为34。由于受试者都坐在一个封闭的房间里，“迷路”的概念似乎没有意义。

Torbjrn Larsson

logged in via Google

As the article suggest, the field is very weak on experimental procedure. In this work the extraction of a signal from data that mainly constitutes a known artifact and training on classified data instead of doing a double blind experiment is not really convincing to outsiders. (Kudos though for considering repetition in the extensive search for data labels that correlate with experimental conditions. This is too seldomdone in searches targeted on expected results).

Bacterial magnetite cells ate spontaneously ordered to a useful sensory mechanism, but IIRC the magnetite seen in animals are not - I am not sure they.share the proteins bacteria use.

正如本文所指出的，该领域在实验程序方面非常薄弱。在这项工作中，从主要构成已知伪影的数据中提取信号，并对分类数据进行训练，而不是进行双盲实验，对于外界来说并不是很有说服力。(尽管如此，在广泛搜索与实验条件相关的数据标签时考虑到了重复性，这还是值得称赞的。在以预期结果为目标的搜索中，这种情况很少发生)

细菌的磁铁矿细胞自发地被排列成一种有用的感官机制，但在动物身上看到的磁铁矿却不是——我不确定他们是否共享细菌使用的蛋白质。

Ewan Blanch（回复楼上）

They are not “magnetite cells”, they are magnetite particles expressed by and found in cells. Most proteins are well conserved throughout biological systems, within a certain limit of sequence and structural homology (similarity).