Guest Blog: Using Brain Imaging as a Direct Test for Psi

Despite impressive statistical evidence, there are still a number of skeptics and critics of parapsychology who say that they still do not find the case for psi phenomena convincing largely because there is still no developed theory that relates psi to human brain functioning. As a case in point, professional skeptic Michael Shermer (2003) once wrote in his monthly op-ed column in Scientific American that, with respect to telepathy, “Until psi proponents can elucidate how thoughts generated by neurons in the sender’s brain can pass through the skull and into the brain of the receiver, skepticism [that psi exists] is the appropriate response…” (p. 32). While it seems that the mechanism may be a bit more complex than the simple picture Shermer paints of it, he does at least have a fair point in that the search for the neuropsychological correlates of psi should be an important focus for parapsychology if it looks to ever achieve wide mainstream acceptance.

Over the years, the search has largely been limited to using scalp electrodes connected to an electroencephalograph (EEG) in order to look for any brain wave patterns that might be associated with psi functioning (Ehrenwald, 1977). However, with the advent of brain imaging technology, there is the promise of peering through the skull to get a possible glimpse of the brain areas that might be involved. This promise is apparently what spurred the design of a new study just published in the latest issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience (Moulton & Kosslyn, 2008), which focused on the attempt to test for ESP using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The study actually represents an attempt by mainstream researchers to experimentally reproduce psi effects, and was conducted by Samuel Moulton, a graduate student in the psychology department of prestigious Harvard University, along with Stephen Kosslyn, the prominent psychologist best known for his brain studies on mental imagery and visual perception (e.g., Ganis et al., 2004).

The premise for the study was based in part on a series of studies by Norman Don, Bruce McDonough, and Charles Warren of the University of Illinois at Chicago, in which they recorded the event-related brain wave potentials (ERPs) [1] of participants engaged in a precognition test disguised as a gambling task (Warren et al., 1992; Don et al., 1998; McDonough et al., 2002). They found that, in cases where they had correctly selected the precognition target, the participants’ ERPs were significantly different in wave structure from the ERPs associated with incorrect selections, suggesting that, on a brain wave level, the participants were sub-consciously “responding” more distinctly to the correct ESP target. Moulton and Kosslyn predicted that the brain as a whole might act similarly, the result of which might be detectable using MRI.

To test this, they gathered 19 pairs of people who were emotionally or biologically related [2] for a telepathy-type test, with one being the sender and the other being the receiver. The receiver’s head was placed into the MRI scanner and they were shown (by way of a mirror) two pictures during each test trial, one of which had been randomly selected as the ESP target. They selected which of the two they thought was the target by a button press and were given feedback (with a 50/50 chance of being right) a few seconds after, all while being scanned by the MRI. In another room, the sender viewed the actual target pictures for each trial, attempting to “send” their contents to the receiver.

The overall results indicated that the receivers had correctly chosen the ESP target about 50% of the time, exactly at the level expected by chance alone, thus indicating no evidence of ESP. As a group, the receivers’ MRI scans also did not reveal any difference in brain activity between correct and incorrect trials, although at least one participant had shown less activity in several brain areas (with most reduction being in the temporal lobe) during correct trials as compared to incorrect trials. Given that this participant was the only one to show this reduction, as well as the scanning artifacts that can potentially occur in MRI, it is difficult to tell whether this result was meaningful or not. In all, Moulton and Kosslyn conclude that their study constitutes strong evidence against ESP.

Although the study was innovative and thus seemed promising, there were a few issues about psi that may account for the reason no clear brain correlates were found. Moulton and Kosslyn seemed to assume from the outset that ESP is fundamentally different from normal sensory perception, in that it should evoke neural patterns distinct from those for sensory perception (p. 183). This does not seem to fit well with what ESP may be trying to tell us when looked at up close. Unlike normal sensory perception, ESP has no characteristic experience to call its own; there is nothing in the ESP experience that clearly tells us that any (sensory) part of the experience is a feature of ESP only. Instead, ESP is multi-sensory, and seems to incorporate the same sensory modes that we use in normal perception, only in the absence of stimuli (e.g., people say that they see or hear things during an ESP experience, just as they would in normal perception). In other words, ESP appears to be sensory perception in borrowed garb. If ESP really does “borrow” the sensory modes of ordinary perception, then we might expect the same brain areas active in ordinary perception to be active in ESP. This possibility may be indicated by the results of two MRI studies focusing on the telepathy-related phenomenon of sensory stimulation at a distance (Richards et al., 2005; Standish et al., 2003). In the studies, a sender was presented with an intense stimulus (a bright flash) in one room, which was expected to activate the main visual regions in the occipital cortex in the back of the brain. In the MRI room, the receiver in the scanner had shown activation of that same visual region at the same time that the sender saw the flash, despite the fact that the sender’s main visual pathway was blocked (their eyes were covered by opaque goggles). Since the stimuli in Moulton and Kosslyn’s study were pictures, we might also expect the visual regions to be active. A look at the MRI images published in their report indicates that they were, both in the psi and non-psi conditions. If the above view has any merit, then it may have been the case that the psi-related activity was simply “masked” by its shared functional regions with visual perception (this also assuming that some degree of ESP was present in their data despite being statistically undetectable; recall that the results on the ESP test were at chance). Also, it is possible that the psi signal is so weak that it is barely indistinguishable from the wide degree of noise that may be present in MRI scanning, again assuming that there was any ESP at all. Given the chance results, we can hardly expect a brain correlate to be visually apparent if there was no evidence for ESP in the study. For these reasons, using brain imaging itself as a direct test for psi may not be a good choice use of the technology.

Furthermore, to really seek out the possible brain correlates of psi, we may have to instead turn to those who have them more often than ordinary people (psychics), and see how their brains may differ (if they do at all) from ordinary people. Some preliminary results seem to suggest very slight structural differences (Persinger et al., 2002; Roll et al., 2002), but this work needs to be followed up on in order to give clearer answers. As much as I admire Kosslyn, it seems that any studies he does in this area will need to take a bit more careful consideration of their underlying assumptions.

- Bryan Williams

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Bryan Williams is a Native American student at the University of New Mexico, where his undergraduate studies have focused on physiological psychology and physics. He is a student affiliate of the Parapsychological Association, a student member of the Society for Scientific Exploration, and a co-moderator of the Psi Society, a Yahoo electronic discussion group for the general public that is devoted to parapsychology. He has been an active contributor to the Global Consciousness Project since 2001, and was the recipient of the Charles T. and Judith A. Tart Student Incentive Award for Parapsychological Research from the Parapsychology Foundation in 2003. As of August 2007, he is the author of seven articles (two co-authored with William G. Roll) that have appeared in the Proceedings of the Parapsychological Association Convention. His native ancestry lies with the Laguna Pueblo in western New Mexico, and the tribe’s long-held beliefs in survival and the concept of spirits is one of the things that spurred his interest in parapsychology.

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Notes

[1] Event-related potentials are tiny changes in electrical voltage detectable along the surface of the scalp, which are usually the result of sensory stimulation.

[2] This is based on findings suggesting that psi experiences tend to be more common among people who are emotionally close or are members of the same family (e.g., Broughton & Alexander, 1997).

References:

Broughton, R. S., & Alexander, C. H. (1997). Autoganzfeld II: An attempted replication of the PRL ganzfeld research. Journal of Parapsychology, 61, 209 – 226.

Don, N. S., McDonough, B. E., & Warren, C. A. (1998). Event-related brain potential (ERP) indicators of unconscious psi: A replication using subjects unselected for psi. Journal of Parapsychology, 62, 127 – 145.

Ehrenwald, J. (1977). Psi phenomena and brain research. In B. B. Wolman (Ed.) Handbook of Parapsychology (pp. 716 – 729). New York: Van Nostrand Reinhold.

Ganis, G., Thompson, W. L., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2004). Brain areas underlying visual mental imagery and visual perception: An fMRI study. Cognitive Brain Research, 20, 226 – 241.

McDonough, B. E., Don, N. S., & Warren, C. A. (2002). Differential event-related potentials to targets and decoys in a guessing task. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 16, 187 – 206.

Moulton, S. T., & Kosslyn, S. M. (2008). Using neuroimaging to resolve the psi debate. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 20, 182 – 192.

Persinger, M. A., Roll, W. G., Tiller, S. G., Koren, S. A., & Cook, C. M. (2002). Remote viewing with the artist Ingo Swann: Neuropsychological profile, electroencephalographic correlates, magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), and possible mechanisms. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 94, 927 – 949.

Richards, T. L., Kozak, L., Johnson, L. C., & Standish, L. J. (2005). Replicable functional magnetic resonance imaging evidence of correlated brain signals between physically and sensory isolated subjects. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 11, 955 – 763.

Roll, W. G., Persinger, M. A., Webster, D. L., Tiller, S. G., & Cook, C. M. (2002). Neurobehavioral and neurometabolic (SPECT) correlates of paranormal information: Involvement of the right hemisphere and its sensitivity to weak complex magnetic fields. International Journal of Neuroscience, 112, 197 – 224.

Shermer, M. (2003). Psychic drift. Scientific American, 288, 32.

Standish, L. J., Johnson, L. C., Kozak, L., & Richards, T. (2003). Evidence of correlated functional magnetic resonance imaging signals between distant human brains. Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine, 9, 128, 122 – 125.

Warren, C. A., McDonough, B. E., & Don, N. S. (1992). Event-related brain potential changes in a psi task. Journal of Parapsychology, 56, 1 – 30.

Editorial: OBE's induced in the lab?

Several days ago, the University College London reported on a study recently published in Science, in which neuroscientist Dr Henrik Ehrsson claims to have induced out-of-body experiences in volunteers in his lab. If you read the article, you might see that this is a clever study that provides great insight into our bodily perceptions and sense of self. But have these scientists really induced the same sort of out-of-body experiences that have been studied by parapsychologists for decades? Poking around the Internet for the blogsphere's reaction, it looks like I'm not alone when I say 'no'. Commentaries at The Daily Grail and Mind Hacks illuminate the issue, as well as providing excellent additional links.

I don't know if we could iron out a 'classic' symptomology of OBE's, but the most central elements of these experiences include a loss of bodily sensation and the image of being disembodied. The experimenters at the UCL neuroscience lab provided volunteers with this image of disembodiment; they did not induce it. And the manipulation of stroking volunteers' chest and back areas suggest that participants still experienced bodily sensations during the sessions. While the participants did experience the sensation of being out of their bodies, calling this an induction of the out-body-experience, the same experience that according to the press release "has been much discussed in theology, philosophy and psychology," is an overgeneralization.

It remains to be seen if the research at UCL can help provide an explanatory model for spontaneous OBE's. In the meantime, if there is any sort of application for this particular study, we would be more likely see it in the next release of the Nintendo Wii before theologists, philosophers, and psychologists start rewriting their textbooks. This is, of course, just my opinion on the topic, but PPB readers are welcome to chime in with their own...

General Update

Spring seems to be the season for deadlines because I've had more than a couple come up over the last few weeks, both personal and professional. On March 29th, I submitted my second installment of book reviews of the D. Scott Rogo collection to the Journal of Scientific Exploration. Then yesterday was the deadline to submit papers to the annual conference of the Parapsychological Association, to which a coauthor and I submitted a research brief. And as I type this, I am procrastinating on getting my taxes done!

There have been ups and downs over the last few weeks, as well as a good bit of excitement as far as Public Parapsychology is concerned. In February, I received a grant that made it possible to get memberships to the top professional organizations in the field, which means that I'm now getting most of the major parapsychology journals delivered to my door. That makes it much, much easier to keep up on the field. Of course, having a stack of current parapsychology journals on my dresser means that there are lots of great articles to present to the public on this site, including a collaborative study of my own! I'd better get to work.

I was also able to purchase a domain name (www.publicparapsychology.org) and P.O. box for Public Parapsychology. It's not time to update your bookmarks yet because I'm still using Blogger to update the site, but at least I now have a place to handle my site email and store files as necessary. And you can send me mail now! I like getting mail, so send me some. Go ahead, you know you want to....

Public Parapsychology
P.O. Box 24173
Columbus, OH 43224

Last but not least, I am looking for other researchers/students in the field of parapsychology who are interested in guest blogging for the site. The field of parapsychology might be pretty tiny, but it is still too much for one person to digest, so email me if you've got some background in the field and you're interested in writing editorials, reviews, or articles for Public Parapsychology.

Editorial: Parapsychology and Anomalistic Psychology...What's the Difference?

If we break down the term 'parapsychology' into its Greek roots, para means "beside or beyond," psyche means "soul or mind," and logos means "rational discussion." Literally, any rational discussion of phenomena beyond our current understanding of the mind could be termed parapsychology, but in practice scholars use different terms for different kinds of research. Nowadays, there are a variety of fields that engage in the rational discussion of such phenomena. In addition to parapsychology, there's transpersonal psychology, consciousness studies, and anomalistic psychology. On top of that, there are some people studying parapsychological topics who don't care for the term 'parapsychology' and call themselves 'psi researchers', just plain 'psychologists' or something else entirely.

When I first launched Public Parapsychology, I stated that it was "a web log devoted to advancing public scholarship in the field of parapsychology." But after a few weeks, I realized that the majority of my own research was more aptly described by the term 'anomalistic psychology' and so I began making a distinction in my posts. However, there seems to be some confusion about what anomalistic psychologists do, and how it differs from parapsychology, so a short discussion is in order.

In simplest terms, parapsychology is the scientific and scholarly study of certain unusual events associated with human experience. Anomalistic psychology is the scientific and scholarly study of unusual beliefs or experiences.

Anomalistic psychologists attempt to explain paranormal beliefs and paranormal experiences in terms of known psychological and physical factors. Such research is directed towards understanding the bizarre experiences that many people have without assuming that there is anything paranormal involved. In my opinion, the best kind of research in anomalistic psychology also avoids assuming that there is not anything paranormal involved. In such research, the reality of psi has little or no direct relevance to hypotheses under study.

Ideally, all scientists would be objective and agnostic when it comes to matters of faith, but there are unstated assumptions and biases behind all modes of scientific inquiry. Some might take the separation between anomalistic psychology and parapsychology to imply that parapsychologists are believers in the paranormal or anomalistic psychologists are non-believers, but this simplistic outlook is not the case. Parapsychologists and anomalistic psychologists come from all walks of life and some individuals (myself included) engage in both kinds of research concurrently.

In the current academic climate, open-minded inquiries into unusual events are more controversial than inquiries into the experiences associated with those events. Therefore, research that looks at unusual beliefs or experiences tends to enjoy more institutional support and has an easier time getting published in mainstream journals. However, the fact that anomalistic psychology has more mainstream appeal does not make it a better or more rigorous science than parapsychology (or vice-versa). I see parapsychology and anomalistic psychology as partners chipping away at the same problem from different angles, therefore both approaches will get equal treatment at the Public Parapsychology Blog.

For more information, see "What is Parapsychology?" at the website of the Parapsychological Association or "What is Anomalistic Psychology?" at the website of the Anomalistic Psychology Unit, Goldsmiths College, University of London. For a recent example of parapsychological research, see my research summary of The Effects of Traditional Zulu Healing on a Random Number Generator. For an example of a recent anomalistic psychology study, see the summary on Self-Concept and Body Investment in Out of Body Experients.

Editorial: Stepping Out

The Public Parapsychology Blog is just few months old, but seems to be growing steadily. Thanks to the attention of a few established web sites such as anomalist.com, survivalafterdeath.org, and paranormal.about.com as well as a number of links from fellow bloggers, this site has quickly gained a small, but dedicated audience. I've received a number of kind emails from individuals of a variety of backgrounds, who all seem to agree that a site such as the PPB was long overdue.

Over the holiday break, I had planned to write a couple of posts using more of a personal tone, but like most people who attempt to have a vacation agenda, I didn't get around to it. With the exception of my inaugural post, What is 'Public Scholarship'?, this blog has been acting as more of a news source than anything else. Though I appreciate all of the links from news sites, I feel as though I should step out from behind the curtain to remind people that I am not a journalist, and I (by my own stringent standards) barely qualify as a parapsychologist either. Still, so many important things transpire in the field without much attention, so I'm happy that the PPB can provide a vehicle for such discussion, no matter my qualifications.

In more personal news, my first technical paper is coming out in the next issue of the Journal of Scientific Exploration. My colleagues and I investigated an allegedly haunted house as well as the thoroughly unhaunted next door neighbor's house. Remaining experimentally blind as to which house was which, we duplicated our efforts over both the target and control houses, and ended up finding a couple measurable differences between the two. It took us several years to get this study completed, so we're very excited to finally see it in print.

Currently, myself and a coauthor are working an online replication of just one segment of that study, dealing with the photographs taken at those sites. The study is being funded by the Parapsychological Association, and we're hoping that we'll have something to report by the annual conference this August.

Last week, I submitted a review of D. Scott Rogo's A Casebook of Otherworldly Music and A Psychic Study of the Music of the Spheres, which were re-released by Anomalist Books in 2005. That review should be coming out in an issue of the JSE in a few months. Now I'm preparing another review of the remaining books in that series, which might appear in print in six months or so, so long as I meet the next deadline.

That's the funny thing about academia. It takes months to get anything done. Every word of every sentence is considered, edited, taken apart, restructured and taken apart again. It's such a stark comparison to the world of blogging, where all one has to do is dribble out a few words and then press the 'publish' button. It's interesting to have a foot in each realm. Each has its advantages and disadvantages, so I wouldn't want to have to choose between one or the other. It's interesting to be both a researcher in the field of parapsychology as well as a commentator on it, to be both an insider and an outsider. But perhaps it's because of some aspect of my personality that I find myself fairly comfortable in such liminal situations.

But still, the question of when and how often I should use a personal tone in my own blog remains unanswered. Instead I spent the holiday break fleshing out the 'Explore' box to the right of these posts. Now the PPB has up-to-date links to all of the research centers, organizations, and journals in the field, as well as a bookstore (containing books that I have read and can recommend as well as books that I would like to read) and an events calendar, which I will try to update with important events as I become aware of them. Not a bad way to start the year...

Over the break, I also decided on a simple motto for this blog:

Explore. Support. Participate.

Believe it or not, the acronym formed by this motto was purely coincidental. No matter how I choose to administer Public Parapsychology, it will be a place where the general public can come to explore, support, and participate in parapsychological research. It probably shouldn't matter too much whether I accomplish this aim using a first, second, or third person narrative.

What is 'Public Scholarship'?

After a couple of evenings of tweaking this new blog, I proudly presented the template to a friend for his feedback. The first thing out of his mouth was, "why do you call it 'Public Parapsychology'?"

I pointed to the adjacent box containing my declaration that this blog was dedicated to advancing public scholarship in the field of parapsychology. I figured that was enough clear things up.

"But, what is 'public scholarship'?" he asked.

I paused. It seemed obvious to me, but I couldn't define it. After babbling incoherently for a minute or two, I gave up and said "well, an academic would understand what I was talking about..."

He laughed. "Doesn't that defeat the point?"

So, I scoured the internet for a good definition of 'public scholarship', and found that the term is so potentially confusing that universities have had to form committees just agree on just what they mean by this concept.

At their web page, the Public Scholarship Committee at the University of Minnesota states the following:

At the level of the institution, public scholarship means optimizing the extent to which University research informs and is informed by the public good, maximizes the generation and transfer of knowledge and technology, educates the public about what research the University does, and listens to the public about what research needs to be done.

The Department of Communication at the University of Washington also offers a statement on public scholarship:

Scholarship and citizenship go hand in hand. Although scholars in higher education ultimately work on behalf of their communities, their nations and the world, much of their scholarship stays within the traditional research process, subject to peer review and publication in discipline-based journals and books, although available for review and application by persons and institutions outside of the academy. Scholars also directly engage the world beyond the academy, drawing on scholarship developed in the rigor of disciplinary tradition. Productive efforts of this kind, herein called public scholarship, may take many forms, such as popularization of research-based ideas in a variety of media and formats, facilitation of deliberation about such social values as equality, justice and freedom, and explanation or appreciation of texts, concepts, values or events. Such efforts can promote constructive dialogue with and among students, citizens, diverse communities, and political and cultural leaders.

What does this mean for parapsychologists?

Every day, there is quality research being carried out on ESP, telepathy, precognition, psychokinesis, and other assorted parapsychological phenomena at universities and private laboratories around the world. These phenomena have fascinated mankind for ages, but so little of the research findings have been presented to the public in a responsible way. It seems that as the methodologies employed by parapsychologists become more refined, the wider becomes the chasm between the researcher and the public that he or she serves.

My particular area of research these days has to do with hauntings. Everybody likes a good ghost story, right? But sometimes when I try to describe my particular approach to this fascinating subject, I find it difficult to connect with my audience. It has almost gotten to the point where I don't discuss my research interests at all. There has to be some sort of middle ground between telling a good ghost story, and discussing the intricacies behind the scientific study in a a way that confuses readers or makes them sleepy. Honestly, I have yet to find it. For me, starting this blog is the beginning of the search for that middle ground.

I wish I could say that I'm an expert parapsychologist, but I'm something of a fledgling in the field. And as much as I would like to maintain a blog about parapsychological research that is comprehensive and objective, time restraints will prevent me from being comprehensive...and I don't believe in objectivity.

That being said, I welcome you to Public Parapsychology.