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Ed A New Explanation for Paranormal Claims

Maia

Graduate Poster
Maia
Joined
Jul 20, 2009
Messages
1,259
We all know that some people are absolutely convinced that they have paranormal abilities, and that these convictions are totally unshakable in the face of all evidence. No matter how many tests they may fail, they remain 100% sure that their paranormal senses and abilities are in great working order. There seems to be an unbridgeable gap between objective reality and their subjective perceptions of what is going on. The question is why.

There are a lot of theories, all of which have been proposed around the JREF forums at one time or another, and I’m sure that all of you can think of them in more detail than I can. Confirmation bias? Delusions? Stubbornness? A need to believe? An ego clash? Outright fraud? Complex psychological processes? What? Well, all of these explanations do have their merits. But based on some fascinating studies, I believe that something else may very well be going on.

The evidence presented in this thread will show that a person who falls into this category really may have some exceptionally strong reasons—from his/her subjective point of view—to continue to hang on to beliefs about his/her paranormal abilities and paranormal senses, and that the subjective, internal phenomena which perpetuate this belief structure may be neurobiologically based. Evidence from research studies published in peer-reviewed journals will be presented and discussed. Examples of information continued therein will include functional and physical brain anomalies in persons who claim paranormal senses and abilities, as well as unusual EEG responses in these persons to complex, transcerebral magnetic fields applied to the right hemispheres of their brains. Fascinating examples of laboratory- reproduced “paranormal experiences” in sensitive individuals will be discussed, including individuals who have claimed the ability to diagnose illnesses and ailments of others from handling photographs.

Stay tuned for further posts!
 
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This should certainly be enlightning. A neurobiologically based scenario is something I don't think we've discussed. I look forward to reading this thread.
 
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VFF served as the stimulus for this conversation, but the implications should be of broader interest. For one thing, I have similar experiences as VFF and other 'medical intuitives', yet I don't consider myself a medical intuitive. Instead of asking why VFF is the way she is, maybe we should be asking why we are not?

Linda
 
Posts about the title of the thread have been moved to AAH. The title of the thread will be changed when I get a reply to my PM to Maia. In the meantime please restrict yourself to posting about the contents of the OP, not the title of the thread.
Replying to this modbox in thread will be off topic  Posted By: Professor Yaffle
 
I'm looking forward to your article Maia.

Most of the reason I engage with people who display thinking vastly different to my own is to try and get a handle for myself on what makes them tick, but often, I fear, to little avail.

It will be a refreshing change if I can glean something useful from your articles, and not have to keep guessing all the time.


Cheers and bon chance,

Dave
 
This is a fascinating subject.

I have a degree in Experimental Psychology and my final dissertation was about NDEs and OBEs (the similarity of the experiences across cultures, ages and beliefs, while argued by some as an indicator that they are real, seem more likely to be indicative of shared brain neurochemistry).

Part of my fascination with skepticism is how surprisingly unshakeable people's beliefs are in the face of clear and controvertible evidence to the contrary, and despite total lack of evidence towrds their belief.

Much of this is to do with weaknesses and quirks of our perceptual process, memory recall, and basic psychology. And how often people assume they are immune to these weaknesses/quirks.
 
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Well, whatever the other posts were which were moved to AAH (whatever and wherever that may be), I missed them, so we shall concentrate on the topic of the thread! :)

Instead of asking why VFF is the way she is, maybe we should be asking why we are not?
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Ahem.
Clearly, by guessing the exact topic I was going to introduce next, you've demonstrated either amazing psychic powers or the phenomenon of coincidence. :)

A lot of this evidence has to do with (per above) unusual EEG responses in these persons to complex, transcerebral magnetic fields applied to the right hemispheres of their brains. However, it's important to see this information in context.

Before we begin this entire part of the discussion, it’s probably a good idea to remind everybody that we will never be talking about any attempt to prove that paranormal senses and/or abilities actually exist. Moulton and Kosslyn’s 2008 study is the most comprehensive one to date to conclude that no evidence of telepathy, clairvoyance (i.e., direct sensing of remote events), or precognition can reasonably be found by any standard research methods. Nor do any of these studies actually address the question one way or the other; rather, they examine the neurobiological correlates of the subjective experience and interpretation of certain phenomena as “paranormal events.”

We may believe that only a small subset of very credulous (or delusional) people could ever believe that they have had anything resembling a paranormal sense or experience. However, several fascinating experiments have indicated that this may not be true at all. A “sensed presence” can be consistently evoked under lab conditions in a significant percentage of random subjects under double-blind conditions (Persinger & Cooke; 1997, Persinger & Healey, 2002; Booth et al, 2005). This subjective experience of a “sentient being” which could not be detected by any normal means was reported when subjects were exposed to weak (1 microT) complex magnetic fields over the right temporoparietal regions of their brains. (This experience was sometimes variously described by cultural and religious labels such as God, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, an angel, a spirit, a ghost, etc. From these particular studies, though, I don't know if any of the subjects actually had visual hallucinations of any kind. My guess would be that very few, if any of them, did.) In fact, the evocation of the “sensed presence” was consistently increased in all subjects during periods of increased global geomagnetic activity (as measured by magnometer) during the 3-h periods of the experiences. This natural activity roughly matched the laboratory-produced magnetic fields in type and intensity (Booth et al, 2005). (Yes, I know; this one sounded hard to believe—it was in the International Journal of Neuroscience,though.)

Can it be said, however, that all subjects were equally likely to sense a “presence”, and that all subjects who did share this “sense” were a homogenous group in both their belief structures and their neurobiology? The answer is no, and this will be the subject of the next post.
 
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Hi Maia

Is it possible to link to the articles. I'd like to read them myself

Thanks
 
These are the abstracts from the Persinger work mentioned in this thread. Looking around PubMed, he's done quite a bit of work on this - I'd like to see if someone else has replciated it, unfortunately I come up blank on the Booth et al paper.

1: Percept Mot Skills. 1997 Oct;85(2):683-93.
Experimental induction of the "sensed presence" in normal subjects and an exceptional subject.
Cook CM, Persinger MA.
Behavioral Neuroscience Laboratory, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada.

9 of the 15 volunteers who were exposed to successive 3-min. durations of bursts of different types of weak (1 microT) complex magnetic fields or sham-fields reported the sense of a presence as indicated by a button press at the time of the experience. Reports of subjective experiences indicated that attempts to "focus" cognitively upon the location of the presence altered its location or induced its "movement." An exceptional subject who had a history of experiencing within his upper left peripheral visual field "flashing images" concerning the health and history of people [when handling their photographs] was also exposed to the burst sequences. Numbers of button presses associated with the experiences of a mystical presence, to whom the subject attributed his capacity, increased when the complex magnetic fields were applied without the subject's knowledge. The results support the hypothesis that the sense of a presence, which may be the common phenomenological base from which experiences of gods, spirits, angels, and other entities are derived, is a right hemispheric homologue of the left hemispheric sense of self.

PMID: 9347559 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]


1: J Nerv Ment Dis. 2002 Aug;190(8):533-41.
Experimental facilitation of the sensed presence: possible intercalation between the hemispheres induced by complex magnetic fields.
Persinger MA, Healey F.
Behavioral Neuroscience Program, Department of Psychology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario P3E 2C6.

This experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that the sensed presence, the feeling of a proximal sentient being, can be evoked within the laboratory. Under double-blind conditions, 48 university men and women were exposed to weak (100 nT to 1 muT), complex, pulsed magnetic fields that were applied primarily over the right temporoparietal region, primarily over the left temporoparietal region, or equally across both hemispheres (one treatment per group) for 20 minutes while wearing opaque goggles in a very quiet room. A fourth group was exposed to a sham-field condition. Subjects who received greater stimulation over the right hemisphere or equal stimulation across both hemispheres reported more frequent incidences of presences, fears, and odd smells than did the subjects who received greater stimulation over the left hemisphere or who were exposed to the sham-field condition. The results suggest that the sensed presence is subject to experimental manipulation. This experimental procedure could be employed to explore the idea that the experience of a sensed presence is a resident property of the human brain and may be the fundamental source for phenomena attributed to visitations by gods, spirits, and other ephemeral phenomena.

PMID: 12193838 [PubMed - indexed for MEDLINE]
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Ok, maybe it is just me, but I can only find the abstracts. Does anyone know if it is possible to read the whole article online or do you have to be registered for that or something. Maybe I am missing an obvious step?
 
I'm genuinely surprised this has not been raised on the forums before - it's such a relevant study to so many different types of claims.
 
I'm pretty sure the Persinger studies have been discussed on the forums before, but mainly in the context of explainng religious experiences and seeing ghosts. I think there has been some criticism of Persinger himself as he seems rather attracted to woo ideas (he also had a theory to explain UFO sightings)? Wasn't he involved in testing some psychics too?

Search the forum for Persinger and I'm sure you will find a few threads.
 
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I really wish it was possible to link to the full articles. :( That's one of the things which annoys me the most about the entire internet... (quite the broad statement, I know.) Still, it's true. What I'm referring to, of course, is how appallingly difficult it is to link to the full text of scholarly articles.

I've looked through all of Persinger's articles that are available through PubMed, which really is the gold-standard site for anything published in a truly reputable publication, and I have to say that Persinger's actual experiments seem to have very good protocols. His research in anything related to these areas produces conclusions which I would think to be exactly the opposite of anything that anyone hoping for the woo-ish would want to find. Essentially, he concludes that if mystical experiences and "sensed presences" can be evoked by simply aiming a weak magnetic field at most people's heads, then the paranormal explanation is pretty much out. Persinger contributed to a really funny study which examined supposedly paranormal apparitions of Jesus and Mary in a specific site, and the findings were that the site had unusual geomagnetic activity and that two people with signs of complex partial epilepsy were the ones who had been convincing everyone else that they really saw the apparitions. I don't know if I can say that Persinger NEVER had ANYTHING to do with any kind of woo-ish study, but so much of his stuff really seems to be debunking paranormal events and abilities. (A lot of it also has nothing to do with the topic whatsoever--he's done some really good work on the use of novel anticonvulsants for traumatic brain injury!)

Persinger did test Sean Harriman, which is one case I was planning to bring up next. (I can email this study to anyone who wants to see it as a pdf). That was fascinating, because Harriman claimed (probably still does) that he can diagnose people's illnesses and ailments from photographs. Now, we all KNOW how this is relevant. Remember the original title of this thread??? The study didn't address whether or not Harriman had any actual paranormal powers in this area. Instead, it published the results of a complete neurological and psychological workup of Harriman. His psychological test results weren't all that unusual, but there were ALL kinds of functional abnormalities in his brain. And then there were the particularly interesting results of EEG's done while he was handling photographs and reporting all kinds of specific details about the people in them. The more specific the details became, the more abnormal his EEG was. It's extremely important to remember than we are not talking about increased accuracy of specific information about these people in the photographs. Rather, this particular finding means that when Harriman subjectively believed that he was relaying accurate information which reflected paranormal ability, his EEG became significantly abnormal.

Look, my personal opinion is that yes, this and a whole lot of other evidence like it (which I'll post tomorrow, when I have more time!) MIGHT apply to VFF. I don't know if it does-- I couldn't possibly say that without seeing a neurological exam done on her! But I think that IF it does, it could actually be an explanation that would be very kind. There have been so many threads about her and so much discussion over such a length of time, and it seems that a big part of the fascination has got to be an ongoing attempt to figure out why on earth someone would keep clinging to a belief in paranormal powers in the face of all evidence. There have been a lot of theories as to why, and some of them haven't been, well, very charitable. I think there's no doubt that for some people who have made exactly the same claims as Anita, the reason why they've kept doing it is that they have overpowering subjective sensations which continually convince them that they must be correct about their paranormal senses and powers, and that eventually they'll be proven right. I don't believe that these people are deliberately attempting to be fradulent, or playing games, or trying to fool themselves, or attempting to trick anyone. And if Anita might fall into this category-- again, God or Odin or Bast or Inanna or whoever only knows if she does-- then I don't think that she's deliberately trying to do any of these things either.
 
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An interesting thread, indeed.
Thanks for the link, Chimera!
Off to find threads on Persinger's work.
 
Maia said:
We all know that some people are absolutely convinced that they have paranormal abilities, and that these convictions are totally unshakable in the face of all evidence. No matter how many tests they may fail, they remain 100% sure that their paranormal senses and abilities are in great working order. There seems to be an unbridgeable gap between objective reality and their subjective perceptions of what is going on. The question is why.

There are a lot of theories, all of which have been proposed around the JREF forums at one time or another, and I’m sure that all of you can think of them in more detail than I can. Confirmation bias? Delusions? Stubbornness? A need to believe? An ego clash? Outright fraud? Complex psychological processes? What? Well, all of these explanations do have their merits. But based on some fascinating studies, I believe that something else may very well be going on.

The evidence presented in this thread will show that a person who falls into this category really may have some exceptionally strong reasons—from his/her subjective point of view—to continue to hang on to beliefs about his/her paranormal abilities and paranormal senses, and that the subjective, internal phenomena which perpetuate this belief structure may be neurobiologically based. Evidence from research studies published in peer-reviewed journals will be presented and discussed. Examples of information continued therein will include functional and physical brain anomalies in persons who claim paranormal senses and abilities, as well as unusual EEG responses in these persons to complex, transcerebral magnetic fields applied to the right hemispheres of their brains. Fascinating examples of laboratory- reproduced “paranormal experiences” in sensitive individuals will be discussed, including individuals who have claimed the ability to diagnose illnesses and ailments of others from handling photographs.

Stay tuned for further posts!
Click to expand...
'Neurobiological based'... magnetic fields as applied to the right hemisphere to the brain... very interesting. I do wonder if the physical manifestation of these'paranormal abilities' is some sort of placebo effect. Even better, a new form of evolution, though I doubt this one. The magnetic waves to the right hemisphere thing can be expected, that will muck around with the charged particles transferred when a neurone fires. Potentially sounds useful. Any chance of 'developing' these 'skills'?
 
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