Quantifying the Cognitive and Neurobiological Processes Underlying Remote Viewing

Principal Investigator: Faye McKenna, PhD

The McKenna Neuroimaging Lab

1. Overview

Despite scientists documenting remote reviewing (RV) as a psychological phenomenon since the 1970’s there is still a lack of understanding of its underlying cognitive and neurobiological mechanisms (Escolà-Gascón, Houran, Dagnall, Drinkwater, & Denovan, 2023). Those practicing remote viewing note heightened states of focus, creativity and self-awareness (D. J. Bem, 2011). These cognitive and emotional impacts are similar to those noted by several meditation practices, which are now commonly utilized to treat an array of neuropsychiatric conditions and improve overall health (Sedlmeier, 2018; Zeng, Chio, Oei, Leung, & Liu, 2017). Our study aims to quantify: 1) how RV relates to emotion and cognition in practitioners sampled from the 3000+ sessions on Social RV through remote psychological testing and utilizing Social RV’s existing data; 2) the effects of RV compare to meditation practice by harmonizing and analyzing Social RV data in combination with data from The Shamatha Project dataset, and 3) the underlying neurobiological functions of RV by employing a neuroimaging paradigm that uses portable electroencephalogram (EEG) and functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRs) headsets to Social RV practitioners. This proposal will follow track 2 and investigate how cognition and emotions, specifically emotional intelligence previously found to be related to RV success (Escolà-Gascón et al., 2023), relates to Social RV session-type, outcomes and user abilities. Next, this proposal will again align with track 2 and critically compare aspects of emotion and cognition to RV versus 195 individuals who participated in a Vipassana meditation retreat (Cohen, Jensen, Stange, Neuburger, & Heimberg, 2017; Fraser, 2011). Finally, this project will follow track 3, and for the first time, will use portable neuroimaging systems to investigate the neurobiological correlates, i.e. function and blood flow, of RV in practitioners with our ultimate goal being to identify the cognitive, emotional and neurobiological functioning underlying the RV phenomena. All parts of the study will be conducted at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine, which is an excellent institution for biomedical imaging and psychiatry. This fellowship would be instrumental to the primary investigator’s career and research and, moreover, would further the science of neuroimaging, pre-cognition and RV.

We aim to complete all parts of this project in 18 months are committed to open-source sharing of data, results and publishing.

2. Introduction

Work by other researchers have revealed that emotional intelligence and emotional cognition may be a meditating factor in hits on precognition tests (Escolà-Gascón, Dagnall, & Gallifa, 2021; May, Marwaha, & Chaganti, 2011). It is proposed that individuals who are good are reading emotional signals, anomalous cognitions not assumed to be physical signs, may be better at reading other sensory perceptions (Cardeña, 2018). Specifically, individuals capable of producing or processing emotions with ease, that is, know how to identify them and their meanings, will be those who perform better on RV tasks (Escolà-Gascón et al., 2021, 2023). Therefore, we aim to quantify several aspects of trait and state (in respects to RV) emotional wellbeing and intelligence along with cognition in RV practitioners, and measure how they relate to RV hits and on which tests through Social RV. This will expand upon earlier research and further test the association between emotional intelligence/cognition and RV success using a more advanced psychological battery, with the aim of more clearly describing this relationship.

Furthermore, Since RV and meditation have been noted to involve similar focused attention, emotional openness, mindfulness and awareness (D. Bem, Tressoldi, Rabeyron, & Duggan, 2016; Zeng et al., 2017) we will compare Social RV data to open-source data from The Shamatha Project, which is an international Buddhist research project that brings together scientists, Buddhist teachers and meditators to try to uncover the neuroscience underlying and most effective meditation methods for clinical practice and increased well-being (Fraser, 2011). The project has released several large datasets, one of which looks at the psychosocial and emotional outcomes from a 7-day Vipassana retreat in 195 individuals (Cohen et al., 2017). This study will be particularly suited for comparison as it measured several aspects of emotions (emotional avoidance, emotion regulation, depression, trait anxiety, dysfunctional attitudes and ruminative responses) cogntion (mindfulness, attention control and cognitive flexibility) and meditation practice. The researchers found baseline characteristics predicted beginning and end states of the meditation session and there was decreased depression symptoms post retreat (Cohen et al., 2017). We will employ the same psychological tests to the RV participants so data can be clearly harmonized and analyzed.

Finally, although many neuroimaging studies have been conducted on other precognition, meditative and altered states practices (Fox et al., 2014; Zeng et al., 2017), none have been conducted on RV. The use of neuroimaging to decode the neurobiological underpinnings of these practices, including those of advanced brain states, has provided evidence of their experience and demystified the practices for scientific skeptics. This, in addition to the advent of accurate and portable neuroimaging systems, makes this the perfect time to conduct remote EEG and fNIRs testing on RV practitioners before and after conducting RV in order to delineate the brain function associated with RV.

Hypothesis: Our overarching hypothesis is that emotion intelligence is significantly associated with RV hits and this may meditate practitioner experience, test taken and outcome. We also believe this association is specific to RV compared to meditation when harmonizing Social RV data with 195 individuals who undertook a Vipassana meditation retreat. We additionally propose to test that there are distinct EEG and fNIRS neuroimaging patterns related to sustained attention and emotional regulation associated with RV.

Impact: If confirmed, these hypotheses will a) provide a stronger link between emotional intelligence and RV skill; b) show the benefits of RV compared to a more common conscious-altering practice being used for clinical interventions, and c) determine the distinct neurobiological processes underlying RV through neuroimaging.

3. Methods

Aim 1: will examine how several aspects of emotion and cognition are related to RV. Following track 2, we will conduct a comprehensive statistical analysis of Social RVs 3,000+ session dataset across multiple tasking types, target characteristics, and participant outcomes. We will additionally establish a feature of the Social RV program that will allow users to opt into taking questionnaires and cognitive tests, specifically on emotion (emotional IQ, emotional avoidance, emotion regulation, depression, trait anxiety, dysfunctional attitudes and ruminative responses) cognition (mindfulness, attention control and cognitive flexibility) and altered-state practice to match Aim 2’s analysis along with conducting this primary analysis. We will conduct several statistical tests including regressions, mediation analyses testing for emotional intelligence as a mediator and agglomerative hierarchical clustering to determine which task and psychological characteristics associate with RV success.

Aim 2: will test if cognitive and emotional attributes differ in those who practice RV compared to meditation. We will again follow track 2 and repeat the statistical procedure outlined in Aim 1 but in the 195 individuals from the open-source Shamatha dataset to see how another conscious-altering practice compares in terms of cognitive and emotional associations. We hypothesize that Vipassana meditation will have distinct but overlapping cognitive and emotional associations compared to RV. Factors such as time of day, age, sex, level of experience will be controlled for in all analyses.

Aim 3: will examine the neurobiological correlates of RV using advanced portable neuroimaging methods. We follow track 3 of conducting novel experiments leveraging new data methods and will select a subset of 50 practitioners from Social RV to send research-grade EEG and fNIRS headsets to conduct RV neuroimaging analysis. We will train users in use the easy to use devices and subsequently analyze whole-brain neuroimaging recordings. We hypothesize that RV practice will recruit regions in the brain involved in sustained focus, emotion regulation and creativity. Again, Factors such as time of day, age, sex, level of experience will be controlled for in all analyses.

Ethics and Data Management

Facilities and Ethics Approvals: The project requests $100,000 USD for essential personnel, supplies, and overhead. Our MRI research center at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine is well-equipped to perform the proposed research with high-powered computing clusters, EEG and fNIRS analysis software and the principal investigator is currently approved for the proposed experimental procedures working with de-identified human data and to take on new graduate students to work on this project for the upcoming year.

5. Budget

Personnel: $70,000 (Includes partial salaries/benefits for postdoctoral researchers/graduate students/principal investigators)

Supplies/Overhead: $30,00 for 10 X 32-channel portable EEG headset at $$2,000 each and 10 X fNIRS portable headset at $1,000 each(will rotate dispensing them to participants).

Total: $100,000

6. References

Bem, D. J. (2011). Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100(3). https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021524

Bem, D., Tressoldi, P., Rabeyron, T., & Duggan, M. (2016). Feeling the future: A meta-analysis of 90 experiments on the anomalous anticipation of random future events. F1000Research, 4. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.7177.2

Cardeña, E. (2018). The experimental evidence for parapsychological phenomena: A review. American Psychologist, 73(5). https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000236

Cohen, J. N., Jensen, D., Stange, J. P., Neuburger, M., & Heimberg, R. G. (2017). The Immediate and Long-Term Effects of an Intensive Meditation Retreat. Mindfulness, 8(4). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-017-0682-5

Escolà-Gascón, Á., Dagnall, N., & Gallifa, J. (2021). The Multivariable Multiaxial Suggestibility Inventory-2 (MMSI-2): A Psychometric Alternative to Measure and Explain Supernatural Experiences. Frontiers in Psychology, 12. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.692194

Escolà-Gascón, Á., Houran, J., Dagnall, N., Drinkwater, K., & Denovan, A. (2023). Follow-up on the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency’s (CIA) remote viewing experiments☆. Brain and Behavior, 13(6). https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.3026

Fox, K. C. R., Nijeboer, S., Dixon, M. L., Floman, J. L., Ellamil, M., Rumak, S. P., … Christoff, K. (2014). Is meditation associated with altered brain structure? A systematic review and meta-analysis of morphometric neuroimaging in meditation practitioners. Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews, Vol. 43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2014.03.016

Fraser, A. (2011). The Shamatha Project. View.

May, E. C., Marwaha, S. B., & Chaganti, V. (2011). Anomalous cognition: Two protocols for data collection and analyses. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research, 75(905[4]).

Sedlmeier, P. (2018). Meditation and altered states of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 25(11–12).

Zeng, X., Chio, F. H. N., Oei, T. P. S., Leung, F. Y. K., & Liu, X. (2017). A systematic review of associations between amount of meditation practice and outcomes in interventions using the four immeasurables meditations. Frontiers in Psychology, Vol. 8. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.00141

Quantifying the Cognitive and Neurobiological Processes Underlying Remote Viewing

Quantifying the Cognitive and Neurobiological Processes Underlying Remote Viewing

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Request for Proposals - Exploring Expanded Consciousness through Remote Viewing

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