Further Possible Physiological Connectedness Between Identical Twins: The London Study
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Plain English Summary
Can identical twins sense when something happens to their sibling? This London study put that old idea to the test. Researchers selected four twin pairs who reported unusual shared experiences, then shocked or startled one twin while the other sat in a separate room hooked up to a polygraph (a device that tracks body responses like heart rate and skin conductance). A blinded expert tried to guess when the shocks happened just by reading the isolated twin's body signals. They got it right twice as often as chance would predict, though the result was only borderline statistically significant β and one young pair (age 25, with one twin pregnant) was responsible for most of the hits. This replicated a similar Copenhagen experiment that also found about one in four screened twin pairs showing mysterious body-signal synchrony. Not a slam dunk, but intriguing enough to warrant bigger studies.
Abstract
Four pairs of monozygotic twins were tested for synchronous responses that occurred in the physiological data of one twin during the period when the other twin was exposed to shock and surprise stimuli. Each of the ο¬ve stimuli was presented in random order, producing ο¬ve blocks of trial periods within each 25-minute session per twin. There were eight possible trial periods within each block. The choice of the trial periods, that is, the exact time placement of the shock stimuli within the blocks, was determined randomly. Data from six sessions with the four pairs of twins were used by the same polygraph expert who was successful in a previous study in identifying these trial periods. In accordance with the previously determined protocol for the experiment, six of these trials were passed on, leaving 24 trial blocks for which assessments were made as to which period the stimulus had occurred. Six of these gave hits, whereas three hits were expected by chance and four of these six correct placements were made by one of the pairs of twins. The data provide further justiο¬cation for a major study in this area using the outlined methodology with selected pairs of twins.
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π Cite this paper
Parker, Adrian, Jensen, Christian G (2013). Further Possible Physiological Connectedness Between Identical Twins: The London Study. Explore. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.explore.2012.10.001
@article{parker_2013_further,
title = {Further Possible Physiological Connectedness Between Identical Twins: The London Study},
author = {Parker, Adrian and Jensen, Christian G},
year = {2013},
journal = {Explore},
doi = {10.1016/j.explore.2012.10.001},
}