Neuroscientists Often Sound Like They Never Seriously Studied Psychical Research

Serious scientific research into paranormal phenomena and mysterious facets of the human mind has gone on for at least about two centuries. Such research has gone on since at least the year 1826, the beginning of the French Royal Academy of Medicine's five-year inquiry into the phenomena of hypnotism, which was then called Mesmerism, artificial somnambulism and animal magnetism. The literature documenting such investigations is vast, and includes the writings of scientists such as Alfred Russel Wallace (co-founder of the theory of evolution) and Sir William Crookes, one of the most accomplished physicists of the 19th century. But amazingly today's scientists often sound they are ignorant about all of this careful work that was done.  An example is an essay this year by neuroscience researcher Marc Wittmann, one with the title "Scientists Are Finally Taking Altered States of Consciousness Seriously." 

The title of that essay gives you the extremely wrong idea that scientific research into altered states of consciousness is something that has only recently begun.  Such a narrative is a false one, for two reasons. The first reason is that altered states of consciousness (such as in hypnotism and the trances of mediums) have been abundantly studied by researchers for about two hundred years.  Among some highlights were:

• The astronomer Camille Flammarion's monumental three-volume work Death and Its Mystery (which you can read here, here and here);
• Flammarion's also monumental opus The Unknown;
• Catherine Crowe's long book The Night Side of Nature;
• The often cited work two-volume Phantasms of the Living by Gurney, Podmore and Myers, which you can read here and here;
• Natural and Mesmeric Clairvoyance by James Esdaille MD, written by a doctor who was very successful in getting very large numbers of patients to be pain-free during surgery without anesthesia (using only hypnosis);
• Extra-sensory perception after sixty years; a critical appraisal of the research in extra-sensory perception by Joseph Rhine, J. B. Pratt and others; 
• The very long two-volume work Human Personality and Its Survival of Bodily Death by Frederic Myers, which you can read here and here;
• From the Unconscious to the Conscious by Gustave Geley;
• Researches into the Phenomena of Modern Spiritualism by Sir William Crookes, one of the most accomplished physicists of the nineteenth century (see here and here and here for related writing by the same author);
• Letters to a Candid Inquirer, on Animal Magnetism, by William Gregory M.D. professor of Chemistry at Edinburgh University,  a book abundantly documenting the reality of clairvoyance, as discussed here; 
• New Frontiers of the Mind by J. B. Rhine, the foremost twentieth century researcher on ESP;
• After Death -- What? by Cesare Lombroso;
• Thirty Years of Psychical Research by Charles Richet, a Nobel Prize winner in Physiology or Medicine;
• Out-of-the-Body Experiences by Robert Crookall;
• More Astral Projections by the same author, containing some fascinating cases I discuss here;
• The Seeress of Provost by physician Justinus Kerner, an astonishing case history described here; 
• An Introduction to the Study of Animal Magnetism by the Baron Dupotet de Sennevoy, a book that abundantly testifies to the reality of clairvoyance during hypnotic trances; 
• The "Report on Spiritualism" by the Dialectical Society of London, a document of more than 400 pages containing some of the most shocking and interesting testimony ever given (the contents of which are discussed here); 
• Supernormal Faculties in Man by Eugene Osty, one of the most carefully documented accounts of clairvoyance, including the very interesting case discussed here;
• The Celestial Telegraph by Louis Alphonse Cahagnet, a book notable for its report of extreme clairvoyant or mediumistic skill in Adele Magnot, as I describe in my post here; 
• Man and His Relations by Samuel Byron Brittan, a very long and little-known classic of parapsychology with contents described here; 
• Glimpses of the Unseen by B. F. Austin, a 500+ page book documenting a great variety of paranormal experiences;
•  The 633-page book "Psychical and Supernormal Phenomena, Their Observation and Experimentation" by Dr. Paul Joire, which you can read here (it includes the extremely interesting case I discuss here);
• The Watseka Wonder by E.W. Stevens,  a contemporary account of one of the most notable cases in the history of the paranormal, discussed here; 
• Psychic Science: An Introduction and Contribution to the Experimental Study of Psychical Phenomena by Emile Boirac, which you can read  here;
• "Mollie Fancher, the Brooklyn enigma : an authentic statement of facts in the life of Mary J. Fancher, the psychological marvel of the nineteenth century,"  which can be read here. 

Besides these books there are innumerable periodical publications between 1850 and 1950 documenting scientific observations of altered states of consciousness and mysterious psychic phenomena.  The site www.iapsop.com is a great site for looking into such periodicals. Some of the main periodicals published were:

• The Journal and Proceedings of the Society for Psychical Research. You can read the editions (many of which were book-length) from 1884 to 1950 using the page here or using the link here. 
• The Zoist, a scientific journal devoted to investigations of hypnotic phenomena, published between 1843 and 1856, which you can read using the page here. 
• The Spiritualist, a publication published between 1869 and 1882.  The pages of this publication would very often include the most detailed observational records of mysterious psychical phenomena (often involving altered states of consciousness).  The accounts would often be written by scientists or physicians, or by laymen who were following rules of observation more careful and commendable than are typically followed by those writing scientific papers today (rules such as telling exactly who observed something, where the observation occurred, and the exact date of the observation, important details typically omitted from scientific papers published these days). You can read editions of this publication using the page here.  Some of the more interesting accounts are summarized in my posts  here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here.
• The Annals of Psychical Science, which published for several years, and can be read here. 

There is another reason why the insinuation of Witttmann's article (that scientific research into altered states of consciousness is something that has only recently become serious) is a false narrative.  That reason is that there has been no great blossoming in recent years of research into altered states of consciousness. There continues to be all-too-little research into altered states of consciousness and anomalous mental experiences. Psychology and neuroscience continue to be dominated by attempts to back up the misguided dogmas prevailing in the belief communities of neuroscientists and psychologists, particularly the belief that the brain is the source of the human mind and the storage place of human memories. Research is still dominated by a senseless "nothing spooky allowed" rule. 

Wittmann tries to back up his "only recently" erroneous narrative of "scientists are finally starting to take altered states of consciousness seriously" by first giving us a very poorly chosen example. He cites some research by Olaf Blanke, specifically Blanke's 2002 paper "Stimulating illusory own-body perceptions." Wittmann makes this inaccurate claim: "Under experimental conditions, Blanke triggered an out-of-body experience in a female neurological patient at the University Hospital in Geneva."  No, a careful look at the study shows it provides no good evidence that any such thing was done. 

The 2002 paper has some quotes by a subject in whom the authors had brain-zapped with electricity, by inserting electrodes in her brain. The authors have attempted to portray this as evidence of an artificially induced out-of-body experience. But the only sentence that the paper quotes from the subject is one that does not indicate a full out-of-body experience. That sentence is this: "I see myself lying in bed, from above, but I only see my legs and lower trunk." That sounds like some weird electricity-induced perception anomaly that is not properly described as an out-of-body experience. During an out-of-body experience a person will typically report leaving his body and seeing his entire body (not just the legs and lower trunk) from outside of the body. Eager to report some experimental induction of an out-of-body experience, Blanke seems to have taken some account that does not match those of out-of-body experiences, and called that an out-of-body experience.  Blanke make this claim: "Two further stimulations induced the same sensation, which included an instantaneous feeling of 'lightness' and 'floating' about two metres above the bed, close to the ceiling." Since this is not an actual full-sentence quote from the subject, it has very little value as evidence. A second-hand account of a person's weird experience during brain zapping (by some other person who did not have that experience) is pretty worthless as evidence. What would we have read from a transcript of what the subject said, one including any questions the subject was asked? We have no idea. 

Reading a transcript of the interviews that went on in a similar but later experiment (done by other researchers) involving zapping people's brains with electricity, I found no good evidence that any genuine "out-of-body experience" had been produced. What I did find was abundant evidence of researchers improperly using "loaded questions" or "leading questions" that seemed designed to elicit from subjects (by the power of suggestion) some kind of account sounding a little like an out-of-body experience.  Is that what went on in the paper by Blanke that Wittmann referred to? We can't tell, because Blanke did not  publish any interview transcript that would allow us to tell what the subject said, and whether the subject's answers were responses to "leading" questions or "loaded questions." Without such a transcript, Blanke's paper has very little value as evidence. 

So the very paper that Wittmann cites as evidence for scientists "finally taking altered states of consciousness seriously" is no such thing. It's just another example of scientists following bad research methods while engaging in shoddy low-effort attempts to debunk reports of extraordinary human experiences.   Wittmann then makes this claim:

"But what has enabled such a shift in scientific approach, whereby these 'speculative'  phenomena more and more are being examined by mainstream researchers? Perhaps it is thanks to a new generation of researchers, who completed their education in a society — reflected in its universities — that is moving toward greater social and psychological openness."

There is no evidence that there has been such a shift.  We are still in blundering and blind age of psychology and neuroscience, in which research is dominated by Questionable Research Practices, and research into the paranormal and anomalous mental phenomena receives all too little attention.  Wittmann then makes this strange claim:

"Scientific dogmas and attitudes to life are scarcely ever changed through rational argument. Such shifts require life-changing experiences, of the 'road to Damascus' kind, that affect the researcher emotionally."

No, that isn't true. By very many long hours of scholarly research involving burying your nose in the relevant works, a person's belief in "scientific dogmas" (really just the dogmas of scientists) can be changed.  Wittmann's quote above sounds like some excuse for failing to do the work needed to seriously study the human mind.  It's a lame excuse.  People who keep on repeating the unwarranted dogmas they were taught in college, and who fail to do the study they should have done that would have caused them to doubt such dogmas are not excused for their decades of parroting the tall tales of academia on the excuse that they failed to have a "road to Damascus" life-changing experience. 

Wittmann ends his article discussed above with this triumphal note of book pitching:

"I have brought together empirical findings from various branches of the sciences to form a whole. From this emerges a clear picture of the psychological and neuronal foundations of our time consciousness, as it is linked to our consciousness of self." 

There is no neuronal foundation of our time consciousness.  Nothing in a brain can explain how you can tell the difference between ten minutes passing and ten hours passing.  Wittmann's paper "The inner sense of time: how the brain creates a representation of duration" fails to discuss any neuroscience findings that back up the claim that "the brain creates a representation of duration."  It's just yet another in the endless number of cases of psychologists or neuroscientists making groundless claims to have seen non-genetic  "representations" in brains that have no actual evidence of any representations other than DNA or genetic representations of amino acids.  

Brains really do have one type of  representation, a type that involves a system whereby particular triple combinations of nucleotide base pairs represent particular types of amino acids. There is no good evidence that any other type of representation exists in the brain. The idea that the brain would have a representation of a minute or an hour makes no sense, as such time units are arbitrary constructs of human society, constructs only a few thousand years old (in contrast to brains, which have not changed in structure for tens of thousands of years). Wittmann attempts to sell us on some implausible idea that there are something like water clocks in your brain, stating this:

"In the ‘dual klepsydra model’ (DKM)14, subjective duration is represented by the states of inflow–outflow units, which function as leaky integrators (FIG. 1). These units can be thought to function like water clocks (klepsydra is the Greek for water clock), with water flowing in at a constant rate and simultaneously flowing out (the ‘leakage’) at a rate proportional to the momentary accumulated state. The state of the integrator is thus a nonlinear (climbing) function of physical time." 

Once again, we seem to have a case of scientist pareidolia, in which a scientist seems to see some things that are not really there, but which he was hoping to find, rather like believers in animal ghosts eagerly scanning the clouds, and finding some cloud shapes that they think look like the shapes of animals.  But in this case, it's not someone saying he sees animals in the clouds, but someone saying he sees something like water clocks in the brain. 

See my widely read post here ("There Is No Evidence of a Neural Explanation for Out-of-Body Experiences")  for a discussion of quite a few papers that claim to provide some scientific explanation or neural explanation or clue in regard to out-of-body experiences. None of the papers sheds any real light on this topic.  In that post and the post here, I discuss many cases of misleading statements or shoddy methods in papers purporting to have a neural or natural explanation for out-of-body experiences or  near-death experiences. 

I often read neuroscientists making untrue claims that sound like claims that would only be made by someone who failed to seriously study the literature on psychical research. The failure of most neuroscientists to adequately study minds and human mental phenomena is something that undermines their credibility when making claims that brains make minds.  Examine the course requirements needed to get a master's degree in neuroscience and a neuroscience PhD. You will typically find that it involves almost no study of psychology. And given all of the taboos of modern psychology professors, who follow a "nothing spooky allowed" rule that excludes many important phenomena from being adequately discussed, studying psychology in a university would only give you a fraction of the knowledge about human mental experiences that you should have before claiming to know where human minds come from. The topic of human minds and human mental experiences is a topic of oceanic depth,  with many strange bays, gulfs and rivers that you will find properly examined only in books and publications on psychical research and paranormal phenomena.  A typical neuroscientist is someone who has not swum very long and deeply in such an ocean.  So why should such a person be regarded as someone qualified to lecture us on how our minds arise? 

Neuroscientists typically fail to study the red part in the diagram below, offering a lame excuse of "nothing spooky allowed!"