Trial reportPloS one2019
Blue light-dependent human magnetoreception in geomagnetic food orientation.
Trial report in PloS one, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Cited by 6 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Biological and health-related effects of weak static magnetic fields (≤ 1 mT) in humans and vertebrates: A systematic review.PloS one · 2020Pooled it
- Magnetic sense-dependent probabilistic decision-making in humans.Frontiers in neuroscience · 2025Article
- A Transmissive Theory of Brain Function: Implications for Health, Disease, and Consciousness.NeuroSci · 2022Article
- Human magnetic sense is mediated by a light and magnetic field resonance-dependent mechanism.Scientific reports · 2022Article
- Cryptochromes in Mammals and Birds: Clock or Magnetic Compass?Physiology (Bethesda, Md.) · 2021Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The Earth's geomagnetic field (GMF) is known to influence magnetoreceptive creatures, from bacteria to mammals as a sensory cue or a physiological modulator, despite it is largely thought that humans cannot sense the GMF. Here, we show that humans sense the GMF to orient their direction toward food in a self-rotatory chair experiment. Starved men, but not women, significantly oriented toward the ambient/modulated magnetic north or east, directions which had been previously food-associated, without any other helpful cues, including sight and sound. The orientation was reproduced under blue light but was abolished under a blindfold or a longer wavelength light (> 500 nm), indicating that blue light is necessary for magnetic orientation. Importantly, inversion of the vertical component of the GMF resulted in orientation toward the magnetic south and blood glucose levels resulting from food appeared to act as a motivator for sensing a magnetic field direction. The results demonstrate that male humans sense GMF in a blue light-dependent manner and suggest that the geomagnetic orientations are mediated by an inclination compass.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.