APRU Telephone Telepathy Experiments

The Anomalistic Psychology Research Unit (APRU) at Goldsmiths, University of London is currently engaged in a collaborative research project with Dr Rupert Sheldrake investigating the phenomenon of "telephone telepathy". This is the fairly common experience of feeling that you know who is calling you on the telephone before you answer it - even on occasions when you had no particular reason to expect a call from that person. Obviously, skeptics and believers in the paranormal have different explanations for what is going on in such situations, but Rupert Sheldrake claims to have demonstrated that a genuinely paranormal phenomenon may be in operation here. The only way to find out is to carry out well controlled empirical studies and that is what researchers at the APRU are doing.

They are looking for volunteers to act as participants in this experiment, people who feel that telepathy is possible in relation to phone calls - knowing who is ringing before they answer the phone. Each volunteer is asked to find 4 people who this might happen with. The test itself should take less than an hour and a half. During this period, the volunteer will be in one building, being filmed on videotape, and the four callers will be in another building. They will be selected at random by the throw of a dice for a series of ten trials. The person who is selected to make the call will also be filmed on video while calling the participant.

These videos are for research purposes only, and will not be shown in public unless those involved give their permission. All those who take part will remain anonymous in any publications or reports about this work. The APRU has limited funding for this project but they are offering a payment of £50 total to each group of people who take part, that is to say the volunteer and his/her four callers. They can also cover some travel costs, and can provide more details if requested.

Note that the APRU only wants people who genuinely believe that they often have this experience to take part as the "receivers" in this study. Obtaining null findings from a bunch of skeptics wouldn't really prove anything...

If you might be interested in taking part (or know someone who might be), further details can be found at http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru/telephone-telepathy.php

You can sign up for this and other projects at http://www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/apru/participate-research.php

Review of The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations

Spending a quiet winter afternoon with the written memoirs of an investigator of parapsychological phenomena can be a real treat. Over the past few years, I've read and reviewed several books in this genre, which when written well, can provide the public with a behind-the-scenes look at the real work of parapsychologists. Stephen E. Braude's The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations[Photo] is a recent release that I eagerly awaited, not just because it was the latest addition to the genre of memoirs in this field, but because throughout his career Braude has provided much scholarship on the nonexperimental evidence for psi. This latest book, which recounts five cases he has investigated over the last 30 years, was written with the goal of presenting "the appearance - and sometimes only the appearance - of psychic or paranormal events in everyday life" (p. xii). Simultaneously, The Gold Leaf Lady presents the everyday challenges of a scholar who dares to take seriously areas of research that are scorned by much of academia.

Stephen E. Braude is a professor of philosophy at the University of Maryland Baltimore County and past president of the Parapsychological Association. I had the pleasure of meeting him while a student at the Rhine Research Center in the summer of 2001, where he gave several guest lectures and a luncheon presentation during his brief stay in Durham. I remember Professor Braude as one of the most dynamic lecturers of that summer. During one of his presentations at the Rhine, he shared a video from his own case material containing some rather bizarre footage. I can still visualize it: a melancholy woman, stiff, uncomfortable and seated quietly with a camera trained on her. She keeps rubbing her eye and looking at her finger. A tiny speck of gold foil becomes visible near her eye. She rubs it again and the golden speck grows to the size of about a quarter inch square.

As parapsychology students at the Rhine Research Center, we were learning a variety of methods to investigate extra-sensory perception, psychokinesis on a microcosmic scale, and even a thing or two about haunting investigations. But a woman who spontaneously breaks out in gold (actually brass) foil? How does one even begin to study such a thing?

The first chapter of The Gold Leaf Lady is devoted to the successes and failures of studying Katie, who appeared to have other strange abilities in addition to her rather burdensome affliction. Following a chapter outlining a history of physical mediumship, Braude recounts his exasperating attempts to study the alleged psychokinetic superstar Joe Nuzum. Later, readers are introduced to Dennis Lee, a subject in California who seemed to produce observable psychokinetic effects in more informal settings, but whose formal testing was difficult to complete. Next Braude discusses K.R., a police officer in Annapolis, who believed he could transfer images from photographs onto other objects, a case that become a cautionary tale about how even presumably trained observers can be the victim of self-deception. Then Braude devotes another chapter to his own investigation of the paranormal photography of Ted Serios. The final two chapters of the book describe Braude's own apparent encounters with the paranormal. Here he takes a look at Carl Jung's concept of synchronicity and explains in terms of a refined and dramatic form of psychokinesis. Then he discusses the activities of his wife Gina, an academic and clinical psychologist who is also a successful astrologer.

Those who have read Braude's previous books, The Limits of Influence: Psychokinesis and the Philosophy of Science or Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life After Death will not be surprised at his conclusion that after examining the best evidence "we're left with the reality of at least some of the phenomena reported throughout the history of parapsychology" (p.177). However, The Gold Leaf Lady and Other Parapsychological Investigations differs from his previous works by demonstrating just how difficult it is to obtain the best evidence. Those who research parapsychological topics face a variety of challenges - personally, professionally, politically, and financially. How Braude navigates these challenges becomes part of the case material, providing the public and would-be researchers with a closer look at how a university professor goes about investigating the most extraordinary of claims.

Annalisa Ventola

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.

Stephen E. Braude in the News

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published a piece on philosopher and PA member Stephen E. Braude. The Chronicle charges a small fee for reading the article, but Jacob at Mind-Energy.net provides a nice summary and a link where the article can be accessed for free for a limited time.

New Survey Study

A new survey is being conducted by Drs. Carlos S. Alvarado and Nancy L. Zingrone. They would like to invite everyone to take part. The study focuses on a variety of experiences folks may have had in their daily lives. Your answers, whether they are positive or negative, will help them to understand these experiences better. To take the survey go to the following website: http://www.studyofhumanexperiences.org.

Newly Launched PA Site and Reduction in Student Fees

Applying for membership in the Parapsychological Association has just gotten easier with their recently launched members-only site. Interested individuals can now apply online for student, affiliate, associate, or full member status. Membership benefits now include online access to their Club Express site, which includes a membership directory, PA newsletters, discussion forums, and convention proceedings, as well as an electronic library of selected articles. PA members and affiliates also enjoy substantial discounts on registration for the annual convention, subscriptions to the Journal of Parapsychology, and subscription access to the Library of Exploratory Science.

Additionally, the PA has announced a reduction in the annual Student Affiliate membership fee from $50.00 per year to $25.00 (USD) per year. They have also created a discussion forum dedicated to students at their members-only site. This one-of-a-kind discussion area provides a place for PA student affiliates to network and discuss psi-related issues and questions. To become a student affiliate of the PA and participate in the student discussion forums, you must have an interest in the scientific and scholarly advancement of parapsychology and be attending an accredited college or university.

A Possible Brain Area for OBE's?

Recently there has been a notable increase in the number of research articles relating to the study of out-of-body experiences (OBEs) that have been published in the mainstream literature. Most of these articles have focused on the search for the areas of the brain that may be associated with one common feature of the OBE – seeing one’s own body from a distance. The latest contribution to this search comes from a team of neurosurgeons led by Dr. Dirk De Ridder from the University Hospital of Antwerp, Belgium, and their findings are reported in a case study that was just published in the November 1 issue of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine (De Ridder et al., 2007). Their report appears to build upon earlier brain studies related to the artificial induction of features often associated with OBEs.

The history of such studies dates back to the early 1940s, when Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield was able to induce OBE-like sensations in a female epileptic patient by electrically stimulating the right side of her brain in the area around the superior temporal gyrus, a fold along the upper surface of the temporal lobe across the way from the parietal lobe (Penfield & Erickson, 1941). The patient had the feeling of floating away and stated, “I have a queer sensation as if I am not here…As though I were half here and half not here.” Penfield’s work was rediscovered in late 2002 when Dr. Olaf Blanke and his associates at the University Hospital of Geneva, Switzerland, were able to induce similar floating sensations in a female patient being treated for complex partial epilepsy. Electrodes had been implanted into the right side of the patient’s brain around the angular gyrus, an area located at the boundary between the temporal and parietal lobes, to measure her seizures. When she was given mild electrical stimulation in this area via the electrodes, the patient reported instant feelings of “lightness” and “floating” close to the ceiling, and stated, “I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk” (Blanke et al., 2002). Blanke and his associates were able to further explore OBEs, as well as the similar experience of autoscopy [1], in this patient and four other neurologic patients in a later study, finding that the patients’ experiences may be associated with damage or impairment in the area surrounding the temporal-parietal lobe junction (Blanke et al., 2004). The area around the temporal-parietal junction appears to be involved in the culling together and processing of sensory information relating to the perception and spatial orientation of one’s own body [2], and Blanke and his associates theorize that OBE-like perceptual illusions may arise from functional disruption as a result of the brain damage or impairment in this area (Blanke et al., 2004, 2005; Blanke & Mohr, 2005).

The latest case study by De Ridder et al. (2007) conceptually reproduces the work of Blanke and his associates. The study involves a 63-year-old male patient being treated for tinnitus [3] by way of electrodes implanted in the area over the temporal-parietal junction. When the right side of his brain was electrically stimulated through the electrodes, the patient experienced a sensation that gave him the impression that his self had separated from his body, moving to a location just behind and to the left of his body. He did not, however, report taking the perspective of his separated “out-of-body” self (i.e., he was still seeing his surroundings from within his own body), nor did he report seeing an image of his own body. On average, the patient’s sensation of leaving the body lasted about 17 seconds, and no changes in his state of consciousness occurred during them. Brain scans using positron-emission tomography (PET) revealed widespread activity in the area around the temporal-parietal junction, near the angular gyrus.

Although the study by De Ridder et al. does provide useful supplementary data on the function of the temporal-parietal junction, I personally think that labeling the patient’s induced sensation as an OBE is something of a misnomer. As noted, the patient did not perceive his surroundings from outside his body, nor did he report seeing his own body, suggesting that his sensations did not take on the classic structure of an OBE. The patient’s separated self was always stationary, and could not be moved voluntarily, whereas people often report being able to move about freely in their out-of-body form in natural OBEs.

Similar arguments can be made about the induced OBE-like sensation in Blanke et al.’s epileptic patients. A close look at their experiences reveals illusory features (e.g., perceiving distortions of the body and shadowy figures) that are not commonly found in natural OBEs and are more suggestive of hallucinations. Thus, the features of naturally occurring OBEs in healthy people and the OBE-like experiences in these epileptic patients can be considered different, and may not be easily comparable. Some attempt has recently been made to artificially induce similar OBE-like perceptions of the body in healthy people, although this has been through the use of virtual reality (Ehrsson, 2007; Lenggenhager et al., 2007), which again does not allow for direct comparisons. Perhaps most central of all, the findings of Blanke et al. and De Ridder et al. still cannot adequately account for ESP-related OBEs in which individuals describe people and events at a distance that are later verified as accurate (Alvarado, 2000, pp. 199 – 200; Tart, 1998), nor can they account for the successful results of studies where some aspect of the OBE was “detected” using physical and animal detectors (Morris et al., 1978; Osis & McCormick, 1980). In the case of Blanke et al., the EEG findings of Tart (1998) and others (Alvarado, 2000, pp. 189 – 190) have yet to be incorporated into their theoretical considerations as to their possible role [4]. In short, while these recent mainstream studies go a way in advancing our knowledge about brain areas involved in body perception, they still have miles to go in adequately explaining complex OBEs.

- Bryan Williams

Notes

[1] Autoscopy is a neurological phenomenon in which an individual reports seeing an illusory duplicate image of their own body in physical space. It has also been traditionally known as the doppelgänger, or “double,” experience. It is distinguished from the OBE in that the individual still perceives their surroundings from a perspective within their own body (whereas the individual perceives things from a perspective somewhere outside their body in the OBE).

[2] This would be consistent with the area’s proximity to the somatosensory cortex, located in the parietal lobe, which processes incoming sensory information from the body’s sensory organs.

[3] Tinnitus is a chronic hearing condition in which noises such as buzzing or ringing are frequently heard in the ear, which in this patient’s case may be caused by an abnormality in the auditory nerve and/or its brain connections.

[4] These EEG studies, conducted with relaxed or sleeping individuals, have found that OBEs tend to be associated with brain wave patterns in the alpha wave range with no rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, suggesting that they occur during a relaxed, sensory-reduced state; and that they are not dream-related.

References

Alvarado, C. S. (2000). Out-of-body experiences. In E. Cardeña, S. J. Lynn, & S. Krippner (Eds.) Varieties of Anomalous Experience: Examining the Scientific Evidence (pp. 183 – 218). Washington, D.C.: American Psychological Association, Inc.

Blanke, O., Landis, T., Spinelli, L., & Seeck, M. (2004). Out-of-body experience and autoscopy of neurological origin. Brain 127(2), March. pp. 243 – 258.

Blanke, O., & Mohr, C. (2005). Out-of-body experience, heautoscopy, and autoscopic hallucination of neurological origin: Implications for neurocognitive mechanisms of corporeal awareness and self consciousness. Brain Research Reviews 50(1), December 1. pp. 184 – 199.

Blanke, O., Mohr, C., Michel, C. M., Pascual-Leone, A., Brugger, P., Seeck, M., Landis, T., & Thut, G. (2005). Linking out-of-body experience and self processing to mental own-body imagery at the temporoparietal junction. Journal of Neuroscience 25(3), January 19. pp. 550 – 557.

Blanke, O., Ortigue, S., Landis, T., & Seeck, M. (2002). Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions. Nature 419(6904), September 19. pp. 269 – 270.

De Ridder, D., Van Laere, K., Dupont, P., Menovsky, T., & Van de Heyning, P. (2007). Visualizing out-of-body experience in the brain. New England Journal of Medicine 357(18), November 1. pp. 1829 – 1833.

Ehrsson, H. H. (2007). The experimental induction of out-of-body experiences. Science 317(5841), August 24. p. 1048.

Lenggenhager, B., Tadi, T., Metzinger, T., & Blanke, O. (2007). Video ergo sum: Manipulating bodily self-consciousness. Science 317(5841), August 24. pp. 1096 – 1099.

Morris, R. L., Harary, S. B., Janis, J., Hartwell, J., & Roll, W. G. (1978). Studies of communication during out-of-body experiences. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 72(1), January. pp. 1 – 21.

Osis, K., & McCormick, D. (1980). Kinetic effects at the ostensible location of an out-of-body projection during perceptual testing. Journal of the American Society for Psychical Research 74(3), July. pp. 319 – 329.

Penfield, W., & Erickson, T. C. (1941). Epilepsy and Cerebral Localization. Springfield, IL: Charles C. Thomas.

Tart, C. T. (1998). Six studies of out-of-body experiences. Journal of Near-Death Studies 17(2), Winter. pp. 73 – 99.

The Return of the Trickster

AfterLifeFM is back in action, presenting an interview with George P. Hansen, parapsychologist, blogger, and author of The Trickster and the Paranormal. The interview features a guest appearance by yours truly, as well as a reprise of the Annalisa Polka. George is a very interesting fellow and a good speaker with a unique perspective, so be sure to listen in.

Language and Anomalous Experiences: Dr. Robin Wooffitt

In the September 2007 issue of the British Journal of Social Psychology, a paper reporting findings from a conversational analytic study of experimenter-participant interactions in parapsychology experiments was presented by Dr. Robin Wooffitt, a senior lecturer in the sociology department at the University of York. In the paper, Dr. Wooffitt discusses how the ways in which experimenters acknowledge participants utterances may be significant for the trajectory of an experimental session.

Dr. Wooffitt used recorded sessions from double-blind ganzfeld experiments conducted in the mid 1990's at the Koeslter Parapsychology Unit (University of Edinburgh) as the material for his analysis. Shortly after the study appeared in print, the BPS Research Digest released a summary at their blog, suggesting that Dr. Wooffitt had uncovered a flaw in the ganzfeld. This summary spread through the internet like wildfire. Soon the blogs Mind Hacks and Science and Consciousness Review were also reporting on the study, suggesting that Dr. Wooffitt had provided an analysis that had explained away the positive results of those ganzfeld experiments. Anybody who does a close reading of the paper (or even the abstract) can see that this is not the case.

Because Dr. Wooffitt's research had been severely misrepresented by these and other sites, I contacted him and invited to discuss his research and its goals here at Public Parapsychology. The following was his response:

"There seems to be some confusion about the purpose and results of my on-going research on verbal interaction in ganzfeld parapsychology experiments. This is due to a misleading summary on the website of the British Psychological Society of an article I published in one of the Society's journals (Wooffitt, R. (2007) ‘Interaction and laboratory experience: observations from parapsychological data.’ British Journal of Social Psychology. 46(3) 477-501). This summary was written without my knowledge and with no input from me. It gave the impression that the analysis presented in the paper stands as sceptical critique of the ganzfeld. When Annalisa drew my attention to the website summary I contacted the BPS immediately and asked for it to be withdrawn and rewritten, which it was. However, Annalisa has kindly allowed me to provide a brief account of the history and goals of the research in case there is any lingering misunderstanding.

My research concerns, broadly, the relationship between language and anomalous experiences. For example my PhD (part funded by the Society for Psychical Research) was a study of how people describe spontaneous experiences. Round about 2000, I became interested in interaction in parapsychology laboratories. I was able to spend 2001-2 as a Visiting Fellow in the Koestler Parapsychology Unit at the University of Edinburgh. The then head of the Unit, Professor Bob Morris, kindly provided access to some of the KPU ganzfeld data, and, with support from the Bial Foundation, I have been working on these data since (in amongst other projects).

The goal of the research is to identify the tacit communicative skills which participants - experimenters and subjects - use in the ganzfeld. The research is agnostic as to the existence of psi; but it may identify features of experimenter-subject interaction which could be of direct benefit for parapsychologists. So, this kind of linguistic analysis can add to our knowledge of the experimenter effect, in that it can provide technical analysis of the way the relationship between subject and experimenter develops over the course of a ganzfeld trial. It can identify different interactional styles in experimenters, which may in turn influence the way the experiment progresses. It may be possible, eventually, to see if particular interactional practices correlate with successful or unsuccessful ganzfeld trials.

When I publish the findings from this research in social science journals, it is important to address concerns that are relevant to their audiences (otherwise they wouldn't get published). The main focus of the paper that was summarised so badly, for example, used the parapsychology data to explore broader aspects of the interpersonal dynamics of laboratory practice, an issue that is important in social psychology. But when I publish in mainstream social science journals, I try to include a review of the efforts of parapsychologists and the results of their work. This way, academic audiences who have no knowledge of parapsychology are at least exposed to what I hope are balanced accounts of serious scientific investigation into anomalous experiences."

Anyone interested in this work can consult the article in the British Journal of Social Psychology, or any of the following:

Allistone, S. and Wooffitt, R. (2007) ‘Negotiating consciousness: parapsychology and the social organisation of reports of mental states’ in A. Hepburn and S. Wiggins (eds.) Discursive Research in Practice: New Approaches to Psychology and Interaction. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 70-87.

Wooffitt, R. (2005) ‘Language and the study of parapsychological phenomena’ in M. A. Thalbourne and L. Storm (eds.) Parapsychology in the 21st Century : Essays on the Future of Psychical Research. North Carolina and London: McFarland, 305-336.

Wooffitt, R., and Allistone, S. (2005) ‘Towards a discursive parapsychology: language and the laboratory study of anomalous communication.’ Theory and Psychology 15:3, 325-355.

Wooffitt, R. (2003) ‘Conversation analysis and parapsychology: experimenter-subject interaction in ganzfeld experiments.’ Journal of Parapsychology. 67: 299-324.

Interview George P. Hansen

This week, Marcel Cairo will be interviewing author, parapsychologist and magician George P. Hansen on his podcast AfterlifeFM. The show will be recorded this weekend, but broadcasted next week. AfterlifeFM is typically a live call-in show, but because of a scheduling conflict, this week is an exception. Therefore Marcel has set up at toll free number (1-877-372-5367) where people can record their questions for George.

From Tricksterbook.com:

George P. Hansen was professionally employed in parapsychology laboratories for eight years—three at the Rhine Research Center in Durham, North Carolina, and five at Psychophysical Research Laboratories in Princeton, New Jersey. His experiments included remote viewing, card guessing, ganzfeld, electronic random number generators, séance phenomena, and ghosts. He has been active in a number of psychic, UFO, and New Age organizations, and he helped found a skeptics group.

His papers in scientific journals cover mathematical statistics, fraud and deception, the skeptics movement, conjurors in parapsychology, and exposés of hoaxes. He is a member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

George has also published a book called The Trickster and the Paranormal, and he has recently entered the world of blogging, sharing his insights at The Paranormal Trickster Blog.

Some of you may remember Marcel's interview with me back in July (my first interview ever!). Now he's giving the public an opportunity to interview a true authority in the field of parapsychology, so call in with whichever question might be on your mind.

Again, the number is 1-877-372-5367. In case you flub your question, you can hit the pound sign and start over. All submissions should be received by Saturday night.

Haunting Primer PDF

Our three-part series on magnetic fields and haunting phenomena was very popular here at Public Parapsychology. In the series, we discussed the current scientific literature on geomagnetism, electromagnetism, and the relationship of these magnetic fields to haunting experiences. The discussion was followed by some tips on measuring magnetic fields and a valuable list of references for the interested researcher. The series has been combined into a single, downloadable pdf for ease of sharing and printing. We hope that this primer will be a useful guide to those undertaking their own investigations, and welcome your comments and suggestions for future articles.

Download:
Magnetic Fields and Haunting Phenomena: A Basic Primer for Paranormal Enthusiasts

A Brain Response to a Future Event?

Whenever we suddenly encounter something that frightens or startles us, our body has a tendency to "jump" in response. Over the past decade, a considerable amount of evidence has been gathered to suggest that, on a very subtle and unconscious level, our body’s autonomic nervous system may also "jump" in response to frightening or startling stimuli. However, it does so even before our body encounters such stimuli. This evidence comes from various experiments designed to explore the possible physiological signatures of a precognition-related experience that has come to be known as presentiment or pre-stimulus response.

The first presentiment studies were conducted by Dr. Dean Radin (1997, 2004) of the Institute of Noetic Sciences in California. He had his subjects view both affective and neutral pictures being randomly displayed on a computer screen while the electrical activity in the nerve cells of the subjects’ skin was being measured. Affective pictures contain images that draw out a particularly strong emotional reaction in us, whether it is fear or shock (e.g., fatal accidents, murder victims, & threatening animals), or arousal (e.g., erotic images). Neutral pictures are just the opposite - images that tend not to stir our emotions (e.g., landscapes, household items, & fruit). The results of Radin’s studies indicated that the subjects had shown significantly larger changes in skin electrical activity in the moments just before they were shown an affective picture as compared to changes in their activity just before seeing a neutral picture. This suggests that the nervous systems of the subjects were producing an emotional "jump" response to the affective picture before they had even seen it. In other words, it seems to be an emotional response in anticipation of a future event. Follow-up studies suggested that violently-themed affective pictures tend to elicit the strongest presentiment response, and that the response can be stronger when the affective picture is shown for a shorter time (Bierman & Radin, 1997, 1999). A few other independent studies have tried other startling stimuli, such as blasting alarm sounds into the subjects’ ears at random times. These subjects also showed a presentiment response (May et al., 2005; Spottiswoode & May, 2003).

A growing number of recent studies are suggesting that other parts of the body may also show a presentiment response, including the heart (McCraty et al., 2004a) and the brain (Bierman & Scholte, 2002; Bierman & van Ditzhuijzen, 2006; Hinterberger et al., 2006; McCraty et al., 2004b). The results of a study by Radin and Eva Lobach (2007) of the University of Amsterdam, which was published in the latest issue of the Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, seems to add to the evidence for the latter.

In Radin and Lobach’s study, slow brain wave activity was recorded from the occipital region (associated with vision) at the back of their subjects’ brains via electroencephalograph (EEG) while the subjects were visually stimulated at random times. The stimulation came in the form of a light that was quickly flashed toward the subject's eyes through a pair of opaque glasses fitted with light-emitting diodes (LEDs). To start each individual test trial, the subject clicked a computer mouse that they held in their hands. After 4 seconds (which constituted the presentiment period) had passed, the computer sampled an electronic random number generator to determine whether it should activate the LEDs in the subject’s glasses and produce a flash, or whether it should keep them dark until the end of the trial (indicated by a computer tone), then the process was repeated for the next trial. The probability of the subject seeing the LEDs flash or not was exactly 50/50 for each trial. The EEG results indicated that during the presentiment period, female subjects had shown a slightly higher level of brain wave activity on the trials where the LEDs were flashed than on the trials where the LEDs did not flash to a statistically significant degree (odds of about 142 to 1 against chance alone). This higher level of brain activity during the flash trials suggests a kind of anticipation or “readying” response to the impending light flash, akin to presentiment. Interestingly, male subjects had shown the opposite effect, in that their level of brain wave activity was slightly lower on flash trials than on no flash trials. This latter finding was not statistically significant, however. Radin and Lobach also found that the peak level of brain wave activity for the female subjects occurred approximately one second before the light flash.

Radin and Lobach’s findings are consistent with other brain studies related to presentiment and precognition. Bierman and Scholte (2002) had monitored their subjects’ brain activity using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) while the subjects randomly viewed affective and neutral pictures. They found that higher levels of brain activity were present in the occipital region just before the subjects viewed affective pictures than when they viewed neutral pictures, a finding consistent with studies on visual processing of affective and neutral pictures (e.g., Lang et al., 1998). McDonough et al. (2002) conducted a series of studies in which they disguised a precognition test in a gambling task. Four playing cards were shown on a computer screen to the subject, and the subject selected one of them. A moment later, the computer randomly chose one of the cards to be the precognition target. EEG monitoring of the subjects during this task revealed higher brain wave activity in subjects when they selected the target card than when they didn’t select it. At least three other EEG studies relating to presentiment have observed similar effects (Bierman & van Ditzhuijzen, 2006; Hinterberger et al., 2006; McCraty et al., 2004b).

A lot of questions still remain about presentiment and precognition as a whole, but these studies strongly hint that there may be a brain correlate of such phenomena, and this is one thing that may eventually help establish their existence, apart from the statistical evidence for them.

- Bryan Williams

References:

Bierman, D. J., & Radin, D. I. (1997). Anomalous anticipatory response on randomized future conditions. Perceptual and Motor Skills 84(2), April. pp. 689 – 690.

Bierman, D. J., & Radin, D. I. (1999). Conscious and anomalous nonconscious emotional processes: A reversal of the arrow of time? In S. R. Hameroff, A. W. Kazniak, & D. J. Chalmers (Eds.) Toward a Science of Consciousness III: The Third TUCSON Discussions and Debates (pp. 367 – 385). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press/Bradford.

Bierman, D. J., & Scholte, H. S. (2002). Anomalous anticipatory brain activation preceding exposure of emotional and neutral pictures. Proceedings of Presented Papers: The Parapsychological Association 45th Annual Convention (pp. 25 – 36). Cary, NC: Parapsychological Association, Inc.

Bierman, D. J., & van Ditzhuijzen, J. (2006). Anomalous slow cortical components in a slot-machine task. Proceedings of Presented Papers: The Parapsychological Association 49th Annual Convention (pp. 5 – 19). Petaluma, CA: Parapsychological Association, Inc.

Hinterberger, T., Studer, P., Jäger, M., Haverty-Stacke, C., & Walach, H. (2006). The slide-show presentiment effect discovered in brain electrical activity. Proceedings of Presented Papers: The Parapsychological Association 49th Annual Convention (pp. 57 – 70). Petaluma, CA: Parapsychological Association, Inc.

Lang, P. J., Bradley, M. M., Fitzsimmons, J. R., Cuthbert, B. N., Scott, J. D., Moulder, B., & Nangia, V. (1998). Emotional arousal and activation of the visual cortex: An fMRI analysis. Psychophysiology 35(2), March. pp. 199 – 210.

May, E. C., Paulinyi, T., & Vassy, Z. (2005). Anomalous anticipatory skin conductance response to acoustic stimuli: Experimental results and speculation about a mechanism. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 11(4), August. pp. 695 – 702.

McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R. T. (2004a). Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 1. The surprising role of the heart. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 10(1), February. pp. 133 – 143.

McCraty, R., Atkinson, M., & Bradley, R. T. (2004b). Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process? Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 10(2), April. pp. 325 – 336.

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(2), Summer. pp. 187 – 206.

Radin, D. I. (1997). Unconscious perception of future emotions: An experiment in presentiment. Journal of Scientific Exploration 11(2), Summer. pp. 163 – 180.

Radin, D. I. (2004). Electrodermal presentiments of future emotions. Journal of Scientific Exploration 18(2), Summer. pp. 253 – 273.

Radin, D., & Lobach, E. (2007). Toward understanding the placebo effect: Investigating a possible retrocausal factor. Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine 13(7), September. pp. 733 – 739.

Spottiswoode, S. J. P., & May, E. C. (2003). Skin conductance prestimulus response: Analyses, artifacts, and a pilot study. Journal of Scientific Exploration 17(4), Winter. pp. 617 – 641.

Telepathy EEG Correlations in Distantly Located Participants

Have you ever picked up the phone and knew it was your sister?

Or you dreamed something and it really happened like that afterwards?

In a recent survey, 45% of those who responded said that they had personal experience of telepathic communication. However, research over the last 70 years has provided enough evidence to convince some scientists that phenomena such as telepathy and clairvoyance do exist and may be occurring some of the time throughout the general population.

Within their study about the measurement of EEG correlations in distantly located participants, researchers in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Northampton are looking for emotionally strongly-connected pairs of subjects (e.g. best friends, couples, twins, mother & daugher, father & grandfather) 18 years and older to participate.

This study will be conducted by Ursula Mochty, Dr. Thilo Hinterberger and Professor Harald Walach at the University of Northampton/UK in cooperation with Devi Erath and Dr. Stefan Schmidt at University clinic Freiburg/Germany.

This experiment will use EEG and skin conductance recordings to test for possible evidence of unconscious telepathy between a visually stimulated and non-stimulated person. The EEG recordings will take place in the laboratory in Northampton, England and in Freiburg, Germany at the same time. The stimulated participant will be trying to send information to their partner about their reaction to images that s/he is seeing, while both are in separate locations. The experiment will take place on one day and will last for about 4 hours. You will be fully reimbursed for your time and we will pay for all travel expenses.

If interested please contact:

Ursula Mochty, Dipl.Psych., MA
Psychology Division
University of Northampton
Park Campus
Boughton Green Road
NN2 7AL
Northampton

Tel: 0044 – 1604 – 89 - 2377 oder 2486
e-Mail: telepathy.NH@googlemail.com

Tips for Measuring Magnetic Fields at Haunt Sites

After discussing the relationship between haunting experiences and magnetic fields in our previous blog posts, we now present some useful tips for paranormal enthusiasts on measuring magnetic fields, both geomagnetic and electromagnetic, at haunt sites during field investigations.

1.) Always take note of the area around the spot you are measuring to make sure that there are no electronics, appliances, power lines or generators, and wiring nearby that may be a natural cause for any magnetic fields you detect. This will be better ensure that you may be getting an anomalous reading, and not a false one. It is vitally important to recognize that although it appears that magnetic fields may be tied in some way to apparitions and haunting phenomena, this does not necessarily mean that the presence of fields at haunt sites are due to ghosts. Many less-experienced investigators have immediately jumped to this conclusion, and one can see that it is generally not correct when one realizes that there are many sources in non-haunted locations that can generate these fields by conventional means. These same sources may also be found in haunt sites.

2.) Be sure to take baseline readings of the haunt site to determine the average magnetic field strength of the site. It can be helpful to compare readings taken from areas where ghostly phenomena has been reported with reading taken from nearby areas where no phenomena has been reported (“control” areas). It is useful to establish a baseline magnetic reading that can be compared to the magnetic field readings at the haunt site, which may help determine just how different the two are from each other (a basic indication of how “anomalous” the magnetic fields at the haunt site are). Measurements should first be recorded throughout the haunt site to determine the average magnetic field strength of the site, as well as locate any areas where there might be natural irregularities in the field due to power generators, power lines entering the building, and/or a large amount of electronics, appliances, and/or electrical wiring gathered in one room. This practice will also help in accomplishing the goal in Tip #1. Houran and Brugger (2000) have suggested that measurements at haunt sites should also be compared to those taken in a “control” site where no haunting phenomena have been reported. This can help to establish that the measurements from haunt sites are anomalous, and not just part of the regular background fields of the site. As noted above, there are several conventional sources at non-haunt sites that may produce large magnetic fields from time-to-time, and some of these same sources may also be found in haunt sites. If the measurements from the haunt site and the control site are close to each other in strength when they are compared, then this may hint at these conventional sources being involved, and the readings at the haunt site not being particularly anomalous.

3.) Investigators may want to try to detect changes in the magnetic field over time by taking repeated measurements in different areas of a room, and/or different areas of the haunt site to see if there is any potential sign of a gradual increase or decrease across the haunt site. A number of field investigations reported in the parapsychological literature are beginning to indicate that it is not the absolute strength or intensity of the magnetic field at the haunt site that may be important, but rather the way that the field changes over time. In at least two of the haunts investigated by noted parapsychologist William Roll (reported in Roll & Persinger, pp. 156 – 157), the strength of the magnetic fields were noted to either be gradually increasing or decreasing as one moved from one side of the haunt site to the other, suggesting that the field was changing throughout the site. In the course of investigating haunt reports at historic Hampton Court Palace in England, Wiseman et al. (2002, 2003) noted in a statistical comparison that the magnetic field changes in areas of the palace where haunting phenomena had been reported were significantly different from the field changes in areas where no phenomena were reported. They also found in another statistical comparison that the number of unusual experiences reported by tourists visiting the Palace was also related in some way to the magnetic field changes at the site. Braithwaite and associates have taken several measurements in a specific bedroom at historic Muncaster Castle in England (Braithwaite, 2004; Braithwaite et al., 2004). People sleeping in the bed found in that bedroom have reported hearing voices at night that sound like children crying, and measurements were taken in the area around the pillow of the bed and later compared to control measurements taken towards the center of the room, where the voices apparently came from. Notable changes in magnetic field strength were noted over this very short distance (roughly a few meters), suggesting magnetic field changes across the space of a single room. Most recently, Terhune et al. (2007) found suggestive differences when statistically comparing the magnetic field changes in areas where haunt phenomena were reported to control areas where no phenomena occurred. Similarly, the magnetic fields applied to the brain that Persinger and his associates use to simulate haunt-related experiences (Persinger, 2001; Persinger & Koren, 2001; Persinger et al., 2000) are composed of complex patterns that can change the structure of the fields.

4.) Carefully log all magnetic readings and conditions, including specific locations where readings where taken, time that readings were taken, and the length of time that the magnetic field was present. If a floor plan of the site(s) under investigation is available, use copies of this floor plan to record your readings. Otherwise, it might be beneficial to draft your own floor plan of the site(s), time and resources permitting. If one hopes to have their results taken seriously, it is vital to have a complete record or log of the investigation, particularly of all measurements made. Human memory alone is unreliable because it is subject to bias and error. Having a record may also help to reveal possible patterns in the activity at the haunt site that may hint at a possible natural source for it (e.g., some EMFs in homes and buildings may sometimes change at regular intervals when certain equipment or appliances, such as air conditioners, refrigerators, etc., turn on and off).

Although it is not meant to be comprehensive, we hope that this primer provides a starting basis for those paranormal enthusiasts who wish to take their approach to haunting investigations a step further.

-Bryan Williams, University of New Mexico

-Annalisa Ventola, Public Parapsychology

-Mike Wilson, Psi Society

*********

References

Braithwaite, J. J. (2004). Magnetic variances associated with ‘haunt-type’ experiences: A comparison using time-synchronized baseline measurements. European Journal of Parapsychology, 19, 3 – 28.

Braithwaite, J. J., Perez-Aquino, K., & Townsend, M. (2004). In search of magnetic anomalies associated with haunt-type experiences: Pulses and patterns in dual time-synchronized measurements. Journal of Parapsychology, 68, 255 – 288.

Houran, J., & Brugger, P. (2000). The need for independent control sites: A methodological suggestion with special reference to haunting and poltergeist field research. European Journal of Parapsychology, 15, 30 – 45.

Persinger, M. A. (2001). The neuropsychiatry of paranormal experiences. Journal of Neuropsychiatry and the Clinical Neurosciences, 13, 515 – 524.

Persinger, M. A., & Koren, S. A. (2001). Predicting the characteristics of haunt phenomena from geomagnetic factors and brain sensitivity: Evidence from field and experimental studies. In J. Houran & R. Lange (Eds.) Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 179 – 194). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Persinger, M. A., Tiller, S. G., & Koren, S. A. (2000). Experimental simulation of a haunt experience and elicitation of paroxysmal electroencephalographic activity by transcerebral complex magnetic fields: Induction of a synthetic “ghost”? Perceptual and Motor Skills, 90, 659 – 674.

Roll, W. G., & Persinger, M. A. (2001). Investigations of poltergeists and haunts: A review and interpretation. In J. Houran & R. Lange (Eds.) Hauntings and Poltergeists: Multidisciplinary Perspectives (pp. 123 – 163). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc.

Terhune, D. B., Ventola, A., & Houran, J. (2007). An analysis of contextual variables and the incidence of photographic anomalies at an alleged haunt and a control site. Journal of Scientific Exploration, 21, 99 – 120.

Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Greening, E., Stevens, P., & O’Keeffe, C. (2002). An investigation into the alleged haunting of Hampton Court Palace: Psychological variables and magnetic fields. Journal of Parapsychology, 66, 387 – 408.

Wiseman, R., Watt, C., Stevens, P., Greening, E., & O’Keeffe, C. (2003). An investigation into alleged ‘hauntings.’ British Journal of Psychology, 94, 195 – 211.