Discussion A few prior electrophysiological Solfvin et al. Correlation in the gamma frequency band Findings in the EEG gamma frequency band have been associated with meditative trance states Lutz et al. Study limitations The design of this study, while necessary for the collection of clean EEG data in quantities large enough for analysis, was not conducive to the testing of hypotheses about mediums' ability to gain accurate information about deceased persons. Conclusion To conclude, we believe the results for Medium 1, correlating accuracy with electrocortical activity, qualify as a robust finding.
Conflict of interest statement The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Acknowledgments The authors wish to thank the anonymous mediums and sitters who volunteered their time for this study as well as research assistants Danielle C. Appendix Table A1 Questions asked of each medium during each reading. Describe the discarnate's hair. Describe the discarnate's eyes. Describe the discarnate's build. Describe the discarnate's height. Is there anything else you can tell me about the discarnate's physical appearance? Questions regarding the discarnate's personality: 7.
Was the discarnate more shy or more outgoing? Was the discarnate more serious or more playful? Was the discarnate more rational or more emotional?
Is there anything else you can tell me about the discarnate's personality? Questions regarding the discarnate's cause of death: Did the death occur quickly or slowly? Was the cause of death natural or unnatural? What body parts were affected at the death? Is there anything else you can tell me about the discarnate's cause of death? What were the discarnate's favorite foods? What was the discarnate's occupation?
Provide dates or times of year important to the discarnate. Provide names of people who were close or important to the discarnate. Describe any animals that were close or important to the discarnate. Does the discarnate have any messages specifically for the sitter? Is there anything else you can tell me about the discarnate? Table A2 Comparison of the cumulative number of significant electrodes across the six participants between mental states in the gamma and beta frequency bands.
The maximum for each table is highlighted using a green background. Supplementary material The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: www. Click here for additional data file. References Beauregard M. Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns. Contemporary methods used in laboratory-based mediumship research. Anomalous information reception by research mediums demonstrated using a novel triple-blind protocol. Explore 3 , 23—27 The possible effects on bereavement of assisted after-death communication during readings with psychic mediums: a continuing bonds perspective.
Omega J. Death Dying. Lost in thoughts: neural markers of low alertness during mind wandering. Neuroimage 54 , — Occipital gamma activation during Vipassana meditation. Methods , 9—21 Is There an Afterlife? A Comprehensive Overview of the Evidence.
Mediumship and sUrvival: A Century of Investigation. Changes in brain activity during trance channeling: a pilot study. A controlled long-distance test of a professional medium.
Effects on regional cerebral blood flow of transcendental meditation. Kimble with M. An investigation of mediums who claim to give information about deceased persons. Humanity's first healers: psychological and psychiatric stances on shamans and shamanism.
Neuroimage 19 , — Long-term meditators self-induce high-amplitude gamma synchrony during mental practice. Nonparametric statistical testing of coherence differences.
Methods , — Dissociative states with abnormal temporal lobe EEG: multiple personality and the illusion of possession. New York, NY: Springer; , — Dissociative and psychotic experiences in Brazilian spiritist mediums. Testing alleged mediumship: methods and results.
Frontal midline EEG dynamics during working memory. Neuroimage 27 , — Electroencephalographic measurement of possession trance in the field. Neuroimaging during trance state: a contribution to the study of dissociation. Can the EEG be used in the study of possession states? Prince Montreal, QC: R.
Human gamma-band activity and behavior. Quantitative analysis of mediums' conscious experiences during a discarnate reading versus a control task: a pilot study. Psi vs. Transpersonal Psychol. A survey of dissociation, boundary-thinness, and psychological well-being in Spiritualist mental mediumship. Results of the application of the Robertson-Roy protocol to a series of experiments with mediums and participants. Psychical Res. Evidence of anomalous information retreival between two mediums: replication in a double blind design.
Evidence of anomalous information retrieval: replication and extension. A psychophysiological study of mediumistic communicators. The use of fast Fourier transform for the estimation of power spectra: a method based on time averaging over short, modified periodograms.
IEEE Trans. Audio Electroacoust. Transient induced gamma-band response in EEG as a manifestation of miniature saccades. Neuron 58 , — Support Center Support Center. External link. Please review our privacy policy. Meanings Meanings. What does psychic mean? Don't Get Mixed Up Again! Get Dictionary. This field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged.
J Neurol Neurosurg Psychiatry. Hypnosis can be defined as a state of focused attention, concentration and inner absorption with a relative suspension of peripheral awareness. Hypnosis has three main components: absorption, dissociation and suggestibility 14 Functional neuroanatomy of the hypnotic state. J Physiol Paris. Based on results of functional neuroimaging studies, some authors argue that highly hypnotizable individuals have frontal attentional systems that work more efficiently 15 Plasticity changes in the brain in hypnosis and meditation.
Contemp Hypn. At the basal state, highly hypnotizable individuals usually have greater cortical coherence 16 Neurophysiology of hypnosis. Neurophysiol Clin. Neurophysiological correlates of dissociative symptoms. There is a positive correlation between scores of hypnotizability and EEG theta power 16 Highly hypnotizable individuals have greater probability to report conversive symptoms 16 The literature about electroencephalographic correlates of culture-bound nonpathological dissociative experiences such as mediumship and possession trances is sparse.
Delorme et al. Electrocortical activity associated with subjective communication with the deceased. Front Psychol. In the same article, they reported the finding that gamma and beta waves were the frequency bands that could differentiate mediumistic communication and mental tasks of perception. In other study from Indonesia possession trance during a religious ritual , Oohashi et al.
Electroencephalographic measurement of possession trance in the field. Clin Neurophysiol. Likewise, in a Brazilian study, Hageman et al. The neurobiology of trance and mediumship in Brazil. In: Krippner S, Friedman H. Mysterious minds: the neurobiology of psychics, mediums and other extraordinary people.
Santa Barbara, CA; Hence, research experiments investigating culture-bound non-pathological dissociation are necessary to advance our understanding of dissociative phenomena and their mechanisms. EEG is a sensitive non-invasive method with portable technologies that allow it to be used in situ , in cultural context 21 Seligman R, Brown RA. Theory and method at the intersection of anthropology and cultural neuroscience.
Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci. The specific aim of the present field study was to investigate frontal electroencephalographic activity in Spiritist mediums from Brazil and compare them with non-medium control subjects from the same cultural context. Given the findings of research on mediumship to date, it was hypothesized that, in response to the mediumistic experience, significant differences in EEG parameters would be found between mediums and non-medium control participants.
This is a comparative study carried out in the city of Campo Grande, Brazil from July to February As the present report concerns part of a work that had also focused on other peripheral correlates of mediumistic experiences Bastos Jr.
To find qualified mediums, investigators contacted a regulatory organization for Spiritism in Campo Grande, central-west region of Brazil. The board of directors of this institution Spiritist Federation of Mato Grosso do Sul indicated that there were five different Spiritist centers, where standardized disobsession meetings a type of Spirit release therapy took place on a weekly basis. Kardec, A. Araras: IDE Editora; The Spiritist disobsession meetings usually include an average of eight to ten participants, each performing one of the following alleged roles: the leader or dialoguer , responsible for enlightening the communicating Spirit ; mediums responsible for speaking under the influence of a Spirit and support staff responsible for making mental prayer and energetic irradiation 23 For this study, according to the roles they usually played in these meetings, participants were divided into two groups.
Ten subjects allegedly capable of mediumistic speaking mediums group and ten subjects who were members of the support staff of the meetings controls group. For each participant recruited for the mediums group MG , a member of the support staff of the same meeting team was also recruited to constitute the controls group CG. Study participants were invited consecutively from these centers by two investigators MAVBJ and DIJ , and the research was presented to candidates as a potential contribution to the scientific understanding of mediumistic experience.
For reasons of convenience, investigators decided to include only adult females in this experiment. In the mediums group, only individuals participating as mediums in disobsession meetings for five years or more were included. For the controls groups, the recruitment of a woman of a similar age was tried whenever possible.
Exclusion criteria for both groups were pregnancy, people of indigenous origin, smoking, history of severe traumatic head injury or meningitis, diagnosis of cardiovascular disorders including hypertension , epilepsy, psychiatric illnesses, hypothalamic or pituitary diseases, chronic diseases e. Data from participants were collected on separate occasions with two subjects on each occasion one from MG and one from CG.
All data collection took place in the Spiritist center that participants usually attended to maintain the routine, format and schedules of the disobsession meetings. Each subject participated in only one group, and each subject had been tested and had her data tabulated only once.
The EEG signal capturing was undertaken in three different moments: 1 a basal 7-minute recording 30 minutes before the start of the meeting, 2 a recording simultaneous to the mediumistic communication by the medium under study called during communication and 3 a 7-minute recording immediately after the mediumistic communication called post-communication.
At each data collection, the same experimental procedures were undertaken simultaneously for both groups MG and GC. Negro Jr. Do religious mediumship dissociative experiences conform to the sociocognitive theory of dissociation? J Trauma Dissociation. Moreover, at the end of the experiment, MG participants were also asked to fill out a self-reported scale 10 cm-long line, numbered from zero to ten rating whether the experimental procedures had any influence on their mediumistic communication, with 0 meaning no influence at all and 10 meaning a very serious influence.
Menezes Jr. Mari J, Williams PA. Br J Psychiatry. This is a item questionnaire formulated to detect common mental disorders, at the primary care level. The medium is in an altered state and inspired by the spirit world.
The face could change, voice be overtaken, and mannerisms of the spirit person could be seen through body movement. People sometimes think this is physical mediumship, but the distinction needs to be clearly made. With all mental and perceptive mediumship, the medium is aware of what was happening and can regain control at any point.
Perceptive mental mediumship is mainly used to provide evidence of survival after death to loved ones during a Divine Service, private or group sitting. This form of mediumship works well for three-way attunement, the recipient, the spirit communicator and the medium.
Spirit controlled mental mediumship is more likely to bring forward communication form the ministry of angels or spirit guides to share teachings and philosophy that could benefit a larger group. Known by many mediums as the purest form of mediumship. Spiritual healing can take many forms, from contact to absent healing, trance healing and magnetic healing. They become a channel for healing. It is worth noting that during both physical and mental mediumship, healing is also delivered.
The fundamental difference between physical and mental mediumship is the way the spirit world communicates through the medium.
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