Ever pick up the phone and already know who’s on the other end? How about knowing what your friend is going to say before telling you? Imagine having this advantageous ability in an exam, allowing you to tap into the thoughts of the smart kid. These examples illustrate the apparent ability known as telepathy, or the ability to communicate information between organisms, disregarding visual, auditory, and somatic perceptual systems.
While extremely controversial, researchers over the past two decades have worked together to examine the possible validity of telepathic experiences. This culminated in the development of the Ganzfeld studies, a large group of experiments guided by protocols developed in 1987 by a partnership between telepathy proponent Charles Honorton and Dr. Ray Hyman, a skeptic of the phenomena.
This experimental protocol involved a “sender” who would view a randomly selected image on a computer screen, and mentally send the image to a “receiver” situated in a neighbouring soundproof room. Following the sending session, the “receiver” would choose between one of four images, with an expected hit-rate—how often the receiver identifies the correct image out of four possible choices—of 25 per cent given no telepathic effect. A meta-analysis conducted in 2001 revealed an overall significant hit-rate of 30.1 per cent, suggesting telepathic experiences may be valid.
Following publication, debate ensued due to a lack of converging lines of evidence, suggesting the significant findings may simply be statistical anomalies. To resolve this problem, scientists turned their attention to a different means of examining telepathy in relation to specific brain activity. Within the last few years, electroencephalograph (EEG) methods have been employed.
In 2005, lead researcher Dr. Leila Kozak and her team from the University of Washington and University of Bastyr conducted EGG studies that aimed to reveal if brain activity in one brain could cause activity in another. The experimental protocol involved pairs of people attached to EEG monitors, one being the “sender” and one being the “receiver.” The “sender” was placed in a soundproof room in front of a computer monitor that randomly presented images at different times. This technique was used to evoke a response, namely brain activity measured with the EEG. Throughout the duration of the trial, the “sender” was to keep the “receiver”—who was stationed 10 meters away in a different room—in his or her mind. If the “sender” saw an image or experienced brain activity, and the “receiver” experienced similar brain activity, it would suggest the occurrence of telepathic-like communication between brains. Furthermore, it would suggest telepathic communication is mediated in part by the brain. The results of the study revealed significant correlation between brain activity levels of the participants.
As of 2009, there has not been a meta-analysis conducted that has pooled all EEG telepathy experimental data, so it is difficult to be certain how common the results found by Dr. Kozak and her colleagues are. Nevertheless, her study was later replicated in three other labs worldwide and, combined with the results of the Ganzfeld experiments, builds a case that this phenomena may be legitimate.
Over the next decade, the telepathy debate will continue. With current research just beginning to explore telepathy with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), researchers may be able to determine which, if any, brain areas mediate the hypothesized telepathic effect. Moreover, if the phenomenon is to be accepted, it will also need an explanation detailing what is taking place physically. This is a tall order given contemporary physics is very powerful and does not explicitly have room for “spooky” energy travelling outside of the electromagnetic spectrum. Alternatively, telepathy may turn out to be a bunch of hocus-pocus.
