Brazilian mediums shed light on brain activity during a trance state
Brazilian mediums shed light on brain activity during a trance state
November 19, 2012
(PHILADELPHIA) - Researchers at Thomas Jefferson University and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil analyzed the cerebral blood flow (CBF) of Brazilian mediums during the practice of psychography, described as a form of writing whereby a deceased person or spirit is believed to write through the medium's hand. The new research revealed intriguing findings of decreased brain activity during mediumistic dissociative state which generated complex written content. Their findings will appear in the November 16th edition of the online journal PLOS ONE at http://dx.plos.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0049360.
The 10 mediums-five less expert and five experienced-were injected with a radioactive tracer to capture their brain activity during normal writing and during the practice of psychography which involves the subject entering a trance-like state. The subjects were scanned using SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) to highlight the areas of the brain that are active and inactive during the practice.
"Spiritual experiences affect cerebral activity, this is known. But, the cerebral response to mediumship, the practice of supposedly being in communication with, or under the control of the spirit of a deceased person, has received little scientific attention, and from now on new studies should be conducted," says Andrew Newberg, MD, director of Research at the Jefferson-Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine and a nationally-known expert on spirituality and the brain, who collaborated with Julio F. P. Peres, Clinical Psychologist, PhD in Neuroscience and Behavior, Institute of Psychology at the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, and colleagues on the research.
The mediums ranged from 15 to 47 years of automatic writing experience, performing up to 18 psychographies per month. All were right-handed, in good mental health, and not currently using any psychiatric drugs. All reported that during the study, they were able to reach their usual trance-like state during the psychography task and were in their regular state of consciousness during the control task.
More:
http://www.brightsurf.com/news/headlines/80968/Brazilian_mediums_shed_light_on_brain_activity_during_a_trance_state.html
