The next time you find yourself saying, "I've got a gut feeling...", you probably should go with that intuition. Because brain-reading experts at Northwestern University suggest that this is just your mind at work, helping you solve all sorts of problems faced in everyday life.

Researchers behind the study say that it offers precise electrophysiological evidence that such decisions may sometimes not be guesswork after all.

They have revealed that guesses made by the participants during the study turned out to be as accurate or more accurate than when they thought they consciously remembered.

"We may actually know more than we think we know in everyday situations, too," Nature magazine quoted Ken Paller, professor of psychology at Northwestern, as saying.

"Unconscious memory may come into play, for example, in recognizing the face of a perpetrator of a crime or the correct answer on a test. Or the choice from a horde of consumer products may be driven by memories that are quite alive on an unconscious level," the researcher added.

According to Paller, the study links lucky guesses to valid memories, and suggests that people need to be more receptive to multiple types of knowledge.

In their study report, the researchers have revealed that during the first part of the memory test, the participants were shown a series of colourful kaleidoscope images that flashed on a computer screen. Half of the images were viewed with full attention as participants tried to memorize them.