19.09.23 - Felicity Meakins

Like many First Nations languages, Gurindji expresses spatial relations according to cardinal directions, for example “put the flour north of the vegemite” or “there’s a fly on your west shoulder”. This attention to geocentric cues has cognitive effects that show that Gurindji people have an extraordinary mental map of the world anchored in the trajectory of the sun, but which is constantly in operation regardless of the time of day. One question is whether this unique attention to geocentric cues is reflected neurologically, i.e. whether Gurindji people have a hard-wired magneto-reception ability. Human neurophysiology has been shown to contain a geomagnetic sensory system. Small rotations in the magnetic field triggered drops in the brain’s EEG alpha-wave power. However, no participants were consciously aware of these magnetic field shifts. All participants tested spoke English, which uses a left/right system, with cardinal terms marginal in everyday speech. In this talk I report on results from recent collaborative work with Caltech and Karungkarni Art showing that some members of the Gurindji community are consciously aware of the geomagnetic field, a first in human behavioural and sensory research.