Mapping the psychic mind

Over the past week or so I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what it might mean to be psychic in any sense of the word. Aside from the odd anomalous experience, I can’t really say that I know what it feels like. I’ve seen the odd psychic here and there, as well as a couple famous mediums in action. As a consequence I can say that I’m still open to the possibility despite not having had any direct personal experiences. Thinking about psychics and psi raised a lot of questions for me. Is everyone psychic to some extent or are only certain people? Can a person learn to be psychic? How could someone learn and how would they practice?


While there may be no satisfactorily objective answers to the above questions, another one occurred to me. From the standpoint of neuroscience and neurochemistry, what does the psychic brain look like and more to the point, where in the brain does psychic activity occur?

Empirical studies measuring psi activity are in remarkably short supply in the main body of medical literature. While some of this is likely because of the perceived fringe nature of this field, another possibility is the challenge imposed by knowing what and how to measure psi-related processes in the brain. After a reasonably stringent search for publications on the National Library of Medicine’s database, PubMed, I came up with a pair of recent articles using 2 different techniques with 2 very different results.

The first of these was “Using Neuroimaging to Resolve the Psi Debate” by Samuel T. Molton and Stephen M. Kosslyn.1 These researchers utilized functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to search for activity in the brains of pairs of biologically or emotionally related participants. The participants were shown emotional stimuli while in separate rooms with one participant acting as a “sender” and another playing the role of “receiver” while monitored by fMRI. According to Moulton and Kosslyn, “psi stimuli and non-psi stimuli evoked indistinguishable neuronal responses – although differences in stimulus arousal values of the same stimuli had the expected effects on patterns of brain activation.” In other words, the investigators found no evidence in support of psi using this method.

The second paper was “The Transliminal Brain at Rest: Baseline EEG, Unusual Experiences, and Access to Unconscious Mental Activity” by Jessica I. Fleck and colleagues. In order to understand this one better, I needed to look up the definition of transliminality which is, “a reflection of individual differences in the threshold at which unconscious processes or external stimuli enter into consciousness.” Among the characteristics reported for people high in transliminality are 1) belief in the paranormal and 2) reported occurrences of mystic experiences. While not examining psychic functioning directly, the investigators used electroencephalography (EEG) to measure the resting brain activity of individuals reportedly high or low in transliminality. The study revealed significant differences in 3 areas: the left posterior association cortex, the right superior temporal region, and the frontal-midline region. Aside from the similarities to schizotypy, this study demonstrates some fundamental functional/processing differences in the brains of individuals more open to the idea of the paranormal.

Of course neither of the above papers is an end result in and of itself with respect to the question of whether psi exists and where in the human brain it can be found. What they do serve to illustrate is the pronounced challenges and complexities inherent in investigating these phenomena. The methods and the choices of subjects for each study leave some questions unanswered. Were any of the participants in either study self-professed psychics? Why fMRI as opposed to diffusion weighted or diffusion tensor imaging? Would a 3-tesla magnet or an EEG monitor be expected to interfere with psi activity or reception? Would magnetoencephalography (MEG) provide better resolution that EEG?

Questions notwithstanding, these studies represent an encouraging effort in legitimate scientific research into psi. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about these 2 fascinating studies to obtain copies of the papers and have a read. Enjoy!



References

1. Molton ST, Kosslyn SM. Using neuroimaging to resolve the psi debate. J Cognitive Neurosci. 2008;20:182–192.

2. Fleck JI, Green DL, Stevenson JL, et al. The transliminal brain at rest: Baseline EEG, unusual experiences, and access to unconscious mental activity. Cortex. 2008;44:1353–1363.

Does our consciousness survive bodily death?

As I spent some time this past week poring over the abstract book from the recent conference “Toward a Science of Consciousness” sponsored by the Center for Consciousness Studies at the University of Arizona, I realized that it was going to be more than a little challenging to select a topic for this week’s blog post. Ultimately, I decided to select a paper presented by Julie Beischel and Adam Rock of the Windbridge Institute that bridges (no pun intended) 2 of my favorite subjects: specifically, the survival of consciousness and psi (feel free to substitute your favorite term here, eg clairvoyance, telepathy, etc.).


In their paper, entitled “A Phenomenological Pathway to an Empirically Driven Distinction Between Survival Psi and Somatic Psi by Research Mediums,” Drs. Beischel and Rock describe the experiences of the Windbridge Institute with certified research mediums (CRMs) who had been screened and trained over a period of several months and had their abilities documented under controlled laboratory conditions. According to the paper, “these CRMs are able to consistently report accurate and specific information about the deceased loved ones (termed discarnates) of living people (termed sitters) during anomalous information reception (AIR); that is, without any prior knowledge about the discarnates or sitters, in the absence of sensory feedback, and without using deceptive means.”

Up to this point, the scientific/skeptical portion of my brain really liked what I’d read, although I felt strongly compelled to read more of the background on the screening, training, documentation processes as well as the controlled lab conditions. (Note: Many publications on the research conducted at the Windbridge Institute are available through the Publications section of their website) However, in the interest of time (and knowing that a follow-up post is always fair game, as is a query directed to the good researchers at Windbridge), I decided to give them the benefit of the doubt…

Continuing on, the researchers indicated that an identification of the specific parapsychological mechanisms underlying the AIR demonstrated by the CRMs has been historically lacking. They proposed 3 specific psi-based mechanisms by which AIR might be possible, namely super-psi (potent psychic ability), somatic-psi (psi communication with the living – used to obtain information regarding the deceased), and survival-psi (telepathic communication – specifically with the deceased). Two specific studies were described, one quantitative study in which CRMs’ experiences during readings for discarnates were compared to their experiences during control conditions, and a subsequent study in which CRMs’ experiences of purported communication with discarnates was qualitatively compared to their experiences during psychic readings for the living (ostensibly employing somatic psi).

In the final analysis comparing the essential aspects of the 2 experiences, Beischel and Rock suggested that CRMs could differentiate between ostensible discarnate communication and their use of somatic psi during psychic readings. To me this is an absolutely fascinating statement suggesting that individuals with mediumistic abilities are able to not only tap into the conscious and subconscious minds of the living, but that they are also able to establish communication with the deceased and further can discriminate between the two. While this paper may not directly address the question of survival of consciousness after physical death, it does indicate a positive trend in the establishment of objective research methodologies for interrogating these very questions.