Plain English Summary
This editorial signals a fascinating pivot in parapsychology: instead of endlessly debating whether psychic abilities are real, researchers are now asking why so many people report having them and what's going on in their brains and personalities. The collected studies turn up some genuinely surprising connections. People who claim psychic reading abilities show brain patterns resembling synesthesia (where senses blend together) and ASMR (those pleasant tingles from soft sounds). DMT trips and near-death experiences look strikingly alike, complete with encounters with mysterious entities and a dissolving sense of self. Shamans in trance show distinctive brainwave signatures, and meditators light up alertness networks on brain scans. The takeaway: self-described psychic abilities seem tightly linked to heightened sensitivity, altered states of consciousness, and specific cognitive-perceptual personality traits rather than being random delusions.
Research Notes
Contemporary editorial reflecting the field's maturation toward interdisciplinary study of subjective psi experiences. Distinguishes self-ascribed abilities (rooted in direct experience, identity-integrated) from abstract paranormal beliefs. Relevant to understanding cognitive-perceptual bases of psi experiences and their relationship to altered states, absorption, and schizotypy. Connects to debates about whether such experiences reflect genuine anomalies or cognitive-perceptual individual differences.
This editorial introduces a Research Topic on self-ascribed parapsychological abilities, marking a shift from proving/disproving psi to understanding psychological underpinnings. Synthesizes findings from multiple contributions: Dagnall et al. found paranormal beliefs serve adaptive coping functions while conspiracy theories link to avoidant coping; Simmonds-Moore et al. identified overlap between psychometry and synesthesia/ASMR; Michael et al. showed DMT experiences and NDEs share phenomenological similarities (entity encounters, ego dissolution); Toriz et al. observed beta/gamma oscillations in shamanic trance; Chaudhary et al. reviewed fMRI studies showing meditation activates alertness networks. Concludes self-ascribed abilities link to cognitive-perceptual traits, heightened sensitivity, and altered states.
Links
Related Papers
Companion
- Paranormal beliefs and cognitive function: A systematic review and assessment of study quality across four decades of research — Dean, Charlotte E (2022)
- Paranormal psychic believers and skeptics: a large-scale test of the cognitive differences hypothesis — Gray, Stephen J (2016)
- Mindless Statistics — Gigerenzer, Gerd (2004)
- Self-Ascribed Paranormal Ability: Reflexive Thematic Analysis — Drinkwater, Kenneth Graham (2022)
Also by these authors
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Inner Experience – Direct Access to Reality: A Complementarist Ontology and Dual Aspect Monism Support a Broader Epistemology
The Experimental Evidence for Parapsychological Phenomena: A Review
📋 Cite this paper
Simione, Luca, Pagani, Camilla, Denovan, Andrew, Dagnall, Neil (2025). Editorial: Emerging Research: Self-Ascribed Parapsychological Abilities. Frontiers in Psychology. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1596390
@article{tressoldi_2025_editorial_parapsychological,
title = {Editorial: Emerging Research: Self-Ascribed Parapsychological Abilities},
author = {Simione, Luca and Pagani, Camilla and Denovan, Andrew and Dagnall, Neil},
year = {2025},
journal = {Frontiers in Psychology},
doi = {10.3389/fpsyg.2025.1596390},
}