Brain-to-Brain (Mind-to-Mind) Interaction at Distance: A Confirmatory Study
📄 Original study ↗Plain English Summary
Can two meditators communicate brain-to-brain from 190 km apart? This pre-registered study said yes — a machine learning classifier (SVM, a pattern-detection algorithm) found a 78% match between what a 'sender' saw and the 'receiver's' brain waves. The statistical confidence was enormous. But here's the twist: when researchers checked whether the effect was specific to actual pairs versus random pairings, it mostly vanished. Even more damning, a reviewer reanalyzed the open data and showed the headline result was an artifact — the algorithm was fooled by natural rhythmic patterns in EEG signals (temporal autocorrelations), not telepathy. A fascinating case study in how sophisticated-looking analysis can generate impressive but hollow results.
Actual Paper Abstract
This study reports the results of a confirmatory experiment testing the hypothesis that it is possible to detect coincidences of a sequence of events (silence-signal) of different length, by analyzing the EEG activity of two human partners spatially separated when one member of the pair receives the stimulation and the second one is connected only mentally with the first. Seven selected participants with a long friendship and a capacity to maintain focused mental concentration, were divided into two groups located in two different laboratories approximately 190 km apart. Each participant acted both as a "stimulated" and as a "mentally connected" member of the pair for a total of twenty sessions overall. The offline analysis of EEG activity using a special classification algorithm based on a support vector machine, detected the coincidences in the sequence of events of the stimulation protocol between the EEG activity of the "stimulated" and the "mentally connected" pairs. Furthermore the correlation of the power spectra of the five EEG frequency bands between each of the twenty pairs of data was analyzed using a bootstrap procedure. The overall percentage of coincidences out of 88 events was 78.4% and the statistically significant average correlations between the EEG alpha and gamma bands among the pairs of participants, confirmed the results observed in a pilot study. The examination of potential internal, external and statistical artifacts which might have caused these results, ruled out external and internal artifacts. However, the examination of potential statistical artifacts revealed a good level of coincidences in only four pairs using a new procedure to detect the sequences of silence and signal between the EEG activity of the pairs of participants, giving a mild support to the hypothesis that two brains and hence two minds can be connected at distance.
Research Notes
Important for the library's methodology debate: a transparently peer-reviewed EEG telepathy study whose open data and published reviewer reanalysis expose how SVM classification can produce spurious 'brain-to-brain' effects. Extends Tressoldi's pilot and connects to the generalized quantum theory framework (von Lucadou, Walach, Atmanspacher).
Pre-registered confirmatory study testing whether EEG activity of a distant 'receiver' can reflect the stimulus sequence (silence/signal) delivered to a paired 'sender' ~190 km away. Seven experienced meditators served as both senders and receivers across 20 sessions. An SVM classifier detected 78.4% coincidences (BF=390,625) between stimulus protocol and receiver EEG, and significant alpha-band (r=0.37) and gamma-band (r=0.24) correlations were observed between pairs. However, a stricter cross-participant analysis reduced positive results to only 4 of 20 pairs, and specificity controls showed similar correlations for unpaired participants. Reviewer reanalysis demonstrated the main SVM result was an analytical artifact caused by temporal autocorrelations in EEG data.
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Related Papers
Same Research Program
Cites
- Synchronistic Phenomena as Entanglement Correlations in Generalized Quantum Theory — von Lucadou, Walter (2007)
- Weak Quantum Theory: Complementarity and Entanglement in Physics and Beyond — Atmanspacher, Harald (2002)
- Parapsychological Phenomena as Examples of Generalized Nonlocal Correlations—A Theoretical Framework — Walach, Harald (2014)
- Why Psychologists Must Change the Way They Analyze Their Data: The Case of Psi — Wagenmakers, Eric-Jan (2011)
Also by these authors
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On the Correspondence Between Dream Content and Target Material Under Laboratory Conditions: A Meta-Analysis of Dream-ESP Studies, 1966-2016
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More in Telepathy
Telecommunication Telepathy: A Meta-Analysis
Rethinking Communication and Consciousness: Lessons from The Telepathy Tapes Podcast
Taking the Mindfield Literally: Discovering Minds by Assuming Competence Among Nonspeakers
Who's Calling? Evaluating the Accuracy of Guessing Who Is on the Phone
A Comparison of Four New Automated Telephone Telepathy Tests
📋 Cite this paper
Tressoldi, Patrizio E, Pederzoli, Luciano, Bilucaglia, Marco, Caini, Patrizio, Fedele, Pasquale, Ferrini, Alessandro, Melloni, Simone, Richeldi, Diana, Richeldi, Florentina, Accardo, Agostino (2014). Brain-to-Brain (Mind-to-Mind) Interaction at Distance: A Confirmatory Study. F1000Research. https://doi.org/10.12688/f1000research.4336.3
@article{tressoldi_2014_eeg_distant,
title = {Brain-to-Brain (Mind-to-Mind) Interaction at Distance: A Confirmatory Study},
author = {Tressoldi, Patrizio E and Pederzoli, Luciano and Bilucaglia, Marco and Caini, Patrizio and Fedele, Pasquale and Ferrini, Alessandro and Melloni, Simone and Richeldi, Diana and Richeldi, Florentina and Accardo, Agostino},
year = {2014},
journal = {F1000Research},
doi = {10.12688/f1000research.4336.3},
}