Transcranial Magnetic Stimulations God Helmet Meets a Psychic

At the 2006 International Remote Viewing Associations conference, in a rare speech by remote viewing phenomenon, Ingo Swann responded to an audience member’s blurt about Dr. Persinger’s research on the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation machine known as the “God Helmet”. Unfortunately, the IRVA took the video down. They are now selling it. In the video, Ingo mentions something that lingers on in my mind. He says the Persinger is locked out of his lab because of certain discoveries. As the father of “remote viewing” and a onery, straight shooter, Ingo is a bit of champion for me, but I couldn’t help but be skeptical. I started to research his statement.

A bit more about the God Helmet. This is a device that allows 80% of its participants to have “spiritual” experiences. They feel a presence, hear voices, have visions etc. Some have taken this to mean that all such phenomenon are artificial.

I have been very much interested in the God Helmet and Persinger’s research so when Ingo Swann talked about being apart of Dr. Persinger’s experienment, I had to search it. What I found was a very interesting set of comments from Marcos Ferreira and others regarding Dr. Persinger’s perspective on paranormal phenomenon on the blog of author Micheal Prescott.

Comments from Michael Prescott’s Blog:

I came across this 2001 paper by famed neuroscientist Michael Persinger (he of the notorious “God Helmet”, and cited approvingly by Dawkins, Blackmore, and the JREF crowd).

The paper is about neural correlates of paranormal experiences. Under the section “Special Cases”, he tests a psychic (Sean Harribance) and a remote viewer (Ingo Swann). Both tests give statistically significant results under double-blind conditions. Persinger casually ignores the implications of this (”The neural mechanism … remains to be identified”) in order to spend time discussing the EEG readings…

Did this generate a controversy which I’ve missed, or has this just been quietly ignored? I can find plenty of squabbling about the supposed experimental failings of Gary Schwartz and the SRI researchers, but no real mention anywhere of this replication by “one of their own”. Is anyone aware of any responses or discussion of these results?

Posted by: marcos ferreira | September 17, 2007 at 01:13 PM

No surprise on the Persinger data: once a science becomes attached to a particular theory, data which contradicts that theory tends to disappear without effect. Has anyone ever been able to reproduce Persinger’s reported results with magnetic stimulation of certain brain areas, especially the temporal lobe? His widely trumpeted claims that temporal lobe epilepsy was responsible for NDEs and OBEs hasn’t, to my knowledge, been corroberated. I know that changes in temporal lobe functioning have been found in NDExperiencers, but it isn’t known whether the changes produced the experiences or vice versa. I’m looking forward to Carter’s book. It promises to be a good follow-on after “Irreducible Mind”.

Posted by: Kevin | September 17, 2007 at 05:22 PM

I corresponded with Persinger a few years ago about Dr. Andrija Puharich’s book “Beyond Telepathy” — a must-read!! Puharich emphasizes the magnetic momentum of the proton-electron resonance being altered through increased potassium and decreased sodium intake. Puharich then ties this physiological transformation to his “psi-plasma vortex” model for bending spacetime.

Persinger knew Puharich fairly well and Persinger told me that he thought very highly of Puharich’s psi-plasma model. When I asked Persinger about Puharich’s CIA work I received no response. haha.

The Persinger’s paper only talks about the phenomenon in the Special Cases section of the paper. It sounds like he does not doubt that such abilities exist. The data indicated that these “remote viewers” and “psychics” are more sensitive to the TMS device.

Interesting cutting edge stuff.. to say the VERY least, but I am still not sure what Ingo was talking about.