Document Type
Article
Publication Date
1-1-2012
Abstract
Despite increasing interest in pathological and non-pathological dissociation, few researchers have focused on the spiritual experiences involving dissociative states such as mediumship, in which an individual (the medium) claims to be in communication with, or under the control of, the mind of a deceased person. Our preliminary study investigated psychography - in which allegedly "the spirit writes through the medium's hand" - for potential associations with specific alterations in cerebral activity. We examined ten healthy psychographers - five less expert mediums and five with substantial experience, ranging from 15 to 47 years of automatic writing and 2 to 18 psychographies per month - using single photon emission computed tomography to scan activity as subjects were writing, in both dissociative trance and non-trance states. The complexity of the original written content they produced was analyzed for each individual and for the sample as a whole. The experienced psychographers showed lower levels of activity in the left culmen, left hippocampus, left inferior occipital gyrus, left anterior cingulate, right superior temporal gyrus and right precentral gyrus during psychography compared to their normal (non-trance) writing. The average complexity scores for psychographed content were higher than those for control writing, for both the whole sample and for experienced mediums. The fact that subjects produced complex content in a trance dissociative state suggests they were not merely relaxed, and relaxation seems an unlikely explanation for the underactivation of brain areas specifically related to the cognitive processing being carried out. This finding deserves further investigation both in terms of replication and explanatory hypotheses.
Recommended Citation
Peres, Julio Fernando; Moreira-Almeida, Alexander; Caixeta, Leonardo; Leao, Frederico; and Newberg, Andrew, "Neuroimaging during Trance State: A Contribution to the Study of Dissociation." (2012). Marcus Institute of Integrative Health Faculty Papers. Paper 8.
https://jdc.jefferson.edu/jmbcimfp/8
PubMed ID
23166648
Comments
The original published version of this article is printed in PLoS One: Volume 7, Issue 11, 16 November 2012. Article number e49360. DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0049360. www.plosone.org.