It was dark and quiet, as a woman sat blindfolded in an armchair. On her head was some kind of helmet. She sensed the presence of others, maybe even God, at her left side even though she knew there is no one else in the room. When she tried to focus on them, they moved around. And although she felt fear, she was sad when this presence faded away, as the experiment ended.
Dr. Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at Laurentian University, has been trying to replicate the God experience using the scientific method. He applies patterns of weak magnetic fields to the brain to induce “sensed presence”-the feeling that you’re not alone. He suggested that sensed presence is the prototype for the experience of supernatural beings, from gods to aliens. “Nature’s been doing it forever. We’re not doing anything fancy. All we have done like all science is simply take the scientific method, measure what nature does, duplicate it in the laboratory and then replicate it under controlled conditions,” he told his audience on Friday.
They filled the MacLeod auditorium beyond capacity, to hear his talk, which was presented by the Toronto Secular Alliance. (A raffle held near the end of the evening even promised the winner a paid trip to Sudbury, to participate in Persinger’s experiments.)
In his experiments, subjects sat blindfolded in an armchair in a dark double-walled acoustic chamber that blocked out light and sound. A modified motorcycle helmet was placed on their heads through which weak, but complex magnetic fields were delivered. The fields are first exposed to the right side of the brain, followed by stimulation of both brain lobes by burst-firing magnetic fields. The intensities of the magnetic fields are not the critical factor (they are well below those produced by the earth), but the content is. The more these fields simulate natural electromagnetic patterns displayed by the brain, the lower the intensity required to produce an effect.
Persinger said that about 80 per cent of subjects experienced a sensed presence. This experience was rarely reported for the control group-people exposed to sham-field conditions. Subjects consisted of students enrolled in first year psychology classes who participated in exchange for extra marks, but the same results have been reported by other volunteers, including psychics and brain-injury patients. With the latter group, it helps them to realize that presences that have appeared since the injury, which are often thought to be a deceased family member or cultural icon, can be replicated in the lab and do not mean they are “going crazy,” as they often feel to be the case.
The sense of self is associated with the left hemisphere of the human brain, and by applying a magnetic field with a certain pattern to the right side, Persinger hypothesizes that the right hemisphere also produces an equivalent sense of self. When this is detected by the left hemisphere-cross-talk between hemispheres is normally inhibited, but bilateral stimulation disrupts this inhibition-the person then experiences a sense of a presence.
A volunteer who had experienced a “haunting” was exposed to specific magnetic field patterns. Persinger’s group was able to replicate the experience, as well as detect a sudden outburst of electrical activity they believed came from the right temporal lobe, an area linked to religious experiences. The right hemisphere is often associated with artistic ability and Persinger pointed out in his talk that introspective individuals are more sensitive to electromagnetic activity. This may be the reason, he said, that throughout history creative individuals from different cultures have more frequently reported the presence of a sentient being, such as the Muses in Greek mythology.
Some critics have disputed Persinger’s findings, though. The loudest of them, Dr. Pehr Grandqvist of the University of Uppsala, in Sweden, has charged that his experiments were improperly “double-blinded.” This is a major slight among scientists, for it implies that the experimental subject had some idea of the hypothesis being tested, which spoils the results.
In a Neuroscience Letters paper last year, using his own experimental set-up, Grandqvist reported that he found no direct link between the application of magnetic fields to the brain and religious or paranormal experiences in test subjects. Persinger has countered, arguing that Grandqvist’s group did not replicate his exact procedure, and that Grandqvist’s personal agenda was to discredit his work. There is still no definite answer to this debate.
