Early in our education, our teachers asked us to name “the five senses.”  Dutifully we responded with the words tasting, seeing, hearing touching, and smelling.  As if these aren’t enough, a strong “sixth sense,” is being discussed among several disciplines including psychology, medical science, religion, and even movie-making.

When we hear the words “the sixth sense,” “listening with a third ear,” “intuiting,” or the “subconscious,” we react in different ways.  Our responses include interest, intrigue, fear, rejection, investigation, and flat denial of these or anything else that can’t be proven in hard wired scientific research. 

However, in caring for our mother, our family experienced phenomena that caused us to give attention to the place of intuition and/or the subconscious in our response to her. 

In our book, my sister and I reference an article by Marianne Szegedy-Maszak in a 2005 issue of US News and World Report.  She reminded us again that neural codes trigger all brain activity outside conscious awareness.  This amounts to 95% of our brain activity!  Think of this.  We do not begin to understand how this subconscious activity (95%) and conscious awareness (5%) interact to produce behavior.  Imagine how this process is garbled in the mind of an Alzheimer’s patient. 

For example, in a previous article I referred to a concept offered by Daniel Gilbert and Randy Buckner titled “Time Travel in the Brain.”  A healthy brain can call up past experiences at will and integrate the meanings with current experience.  An unhealthy brain, powered 95% by the subconscious, may not be able to recall the right script, or any script at all. Even if a past narrative is recalled, all the processes needed to integrate it into current experience are probably nonexistent.  But sometimes such neural codes may be stronger than we imagine.  We recognize this outcome as “intuitive.”

My point is that caregivers can’t ever be sure what the loved one understands, or how their “neural codes” kick off responses.  Mother had been in my home for a while, and I planned to take her home the next day.  I hadn’t told her about the trip before she went to bed for the night.  After she fell asleep I packed her clothes but left undisturbed the things she needed when she awoke.  Imagine my shock when the next morning – two hours earlier than she usually awoke – I saw her standing in the family room door clutching her pillow, her lifelike cat, and a box of Kleenex. I could not recall a single cue I had given that we were going on a trip.  But she knew something was different.  In the absence of other communication skills, her “sixth sense” had decoded my behaviors.*

You may be saying by now, “I am not asking ‘why’ about my loved one’s behavior; I just want to know what to do.”  I understand.  But there are two types of unpredictable responses you can expect which are linked to the loved one’s subconscious, or sixth sense.  One is convoluted, a cocktail of words/actions that are produced by memories below the surface of awareness.  They are jumbled and nonsensical to you, because parts are left out or added as the diseased brain “travels in time.”  The other is a surprising moment of awareness, illuminated by a neural code that brings meaning and insight to a fleeting experience. 

Knowing this can help us remember that our loved one brings his/her reality to the moment.  If he/she shows sudden anger toward you, you can rarely understand why.  But you can recognize that a vicious disease has robbed him/her of an astounding process of recalling memories and integrating them with today’s reality.  Don’t take the anger personally.  On the other hand, there will be times when you are amazed by the “intuitive” response by your loved one, a mysterious knowing you did not think the person was capable of. He/she has picked up cues you did not know you left behind.

The message to the caregiver is to treat your loved one as you know him/her.  When the loved one’s behavior veers, keep your responses steady, on course, and caring.  Take action as needed, but in keeping with the loving nature of who you are, and who your loved one was.

*Please Take Me Home Before Dark by Billie Pate and Mary Pate Yarnell (Available from Insight Books at www.InSightBooks.com)