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Plain English Summary
Here's a brain-twister: researchers in Brazil put ten spirit-writing mediums into a brain scanner and asked them to write normally, then write in a trance state where they believe a spirit is guiding their hand. The results were genuinely surprising. The five experienced mediums showed significantly less brain activity during trance writing — their left anterior cingulate, hippocampus, and other key thinking regions basically quieted down. Yet the writing they produced while in trance was rated as more complex and sophisticated than their normal writing. That's the opposite of what you'd expect — harder output from a less active brain. Less experienced mediums showed the reverse pattern, with their brains lighting up more during trance, suggesting something changes with practice. The stronger the drop in brain activity, the bigger the jump in writing quality, a striking inverse correlation. This was one of the first studies to actually image the brain during mediumistic trance, and it complicates simple explanations that trance writing is just a form of mental disconnection.
Research Notes
One of the first neuroimaging studies of mediumistic trance, providing SPECT evidence of paradoxical neural underactivation during complex psychographic writing. The finding that experienced mediums show reduced brain activity while producing more complex output challenges simple dissociation explanations and adds neuroscience data to the mediumship controversy (Controversy #6). Connects to Delorme et al. (2013) electrocortical work and the broader Windbridge/IONS mediumship research program.
Ten Brazilian psychographers (5 experienced, 5 less expert) underwent SPECT neuroimaging during psychographic (trance) writing and normal (control) writing. Experienced mediums showed significantly lower regional cerebral blood flow in six brain regions during psychography compared to control writing, including the left anterior cingulate, left hippocampus, and right superior temporal gyrus (p<0.05 interaction effect). Less expert mediums showed the opposite pattern with increased activation. Paradoxically, psychographed content was rated significantly more complex than control writing for the whole sample (16.8 vs 14.4, p=0.007) and experienced mediums (18.4 vs 15.4, p=0.041). An inverse correlation between text complexity increase and cerebral blood flow decrease (r=0.59-0.74) suggests experienced mediums produced more sophisticated content with less brain activation in cognitive processing areas.
Links
Related Papers
Companion
- Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased — Delorme, Arnaud (2013)
- Anomalous Experiences, Psi, and Functional Neuroimaging — Acunzo, David J (2013)
- The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during glossolalia: A preliminary SPECT study — Newberg, Andrew B (2006)
Cites
More in Mediumship
Intuitive Assessment of Mortality Based on Facial Characteristics: Behavioral, Electrocortical, and Machine Learning Analyses
A Mixed Methods Phenomenological and Exploratory Study of Channeling
People Reporting Experiences of Mediumship Have Higher Dissociation Symptom Scores Than Non-Mediums, But Below Thresholds for Pathological Dissociation
Some Directions for Mediumship Research
Testing Alleged Mediumship: Methods and Results
📋 Cite this paper
Peres, Julio Fernando, Moreira-Almeida, Alexander, Caixeta, Leonardo, Leão, Frederico, Newberg, Andrew (2012). Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of Dissociation. PLoS ONE. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049360
@article{peres_2012_neuroimaging_trance,
title = {Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of Dissociation},
author = {Peres, Julio Fernando and Moreira-Almeida, Alexander and Caixeta, Leonardo and Leão, Frederico and Newberg, Andrew},
year = {2012},
journal = {PLoS ONE},
doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0049360},
}