Mediums' Brains: Doors to Another World?
Can people write better while their brains are less active?
Imagine sitting in a neuroscience lab while a medium enters a trance state, claiming that a deceased spirit is guiding their hand to write complex poetry and prose. Brazilian researchers did exactly this, scanning the brains of ten psychographers as they produced automatic writing both in normal consciousness and during claimed spirit communication. What they found challenges our understanding of how the brain works during creative and dissociative states. The brain scans revealed something unexpected about what happens when people claim to channel the dead.
Brazilian mediums showed decreased brain activity yet wrote more complex content during trance states.
In Brazil, psychography is a widely practiced form of mediumship where people claim spirits write through their hands. Researchers at the University of São Paulo decided to peek inside the brains of ten such mediums using advanced brain imaging. This cultural specificity means the findings may not apply broadly to other populations or spiritual practices.
During claimed spirit communication, experienced mediums showed decreased brain activity in areas typically associated with conscious control and self-awareness, while simultaneously producing more complex written content.
Key Findings
- Surprisingly, experienced mediums showed decreased activity in six brain regions during trance writing, including areas involved in memory and attention.
- Yet paradoxically, their trance writing was more complex and sophisticated than their normal writing.
- This suggests something more interesting than simple relaxation was happening.
What Is This About?
The researchers recruited ten people who practice psychography - five beginners and five experts with 15-47 years of experience. Each person underwent brain scans using SPECT imaging while writing in two conditions: normal conscious writing and trance writing where they claimed spirits were guiding their hand. The team then analyzed how complex and sophisticated the resulting texts were in both conditions.
Ten mediums underwent brain scans while writing in both normal states and trance states during alleged spirit communication. The complexity of their written content was analyzed.
Experienced mediums showed decreased brain activity in several regions during trance writing, yet produced more complex written content compared to their normal writing.
How Good Is the Evidence?
Ten participants is quite small for brain imaging studies, which typically need 20-30 people minimum for reliable results. However, the effect was consistent across the experienced mediums, suggesting a real pattern despite the small sample.
Supporters argue this provides the first neurological evidence that mediumistic states involve genuine altered consciousness, not just pretense or relaxation. Skeptics counter that the small sample size and lack of controls for expectation effects make the findings preliminary at best. Both sides agree the paradox of decreased brain activity with increased performance complexity warrants replication.
Mainstream: The findings reflect normal variations in brain states during different types of creative writing tasks. Moderate: This suggests altered states of consciousness may involve counterintuitive neural patterns that merit scientific study. Frontier: The results support the possibility that consciousness can access information or abilities beyond normal waking awareness.
This study doesn't prove spirits are real or that mediumship is genuine. It only shows that something neurologically interesting happens during trance states that deserves further investigation.
To settle this question would require larger studies (50+ participants), control groups of actors pretending to channel, and replication across different cultures and mediumship traditions. This study meets the criterion of objective brain measurement but lacks adequate sample size and controls.
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.
Stance: Mixed
What Does It Mean?
The most fascinating aspect is that experienced mediums produced more complex, sophisticated writing while showing less brain activity in areas responsible for conscious control—essentially creating better content with less apparent mental effort.
It's like a musician who plays their most beautiful pieces when they're 'in the zone' and not consciously thinking about every note - except here, people were writing complex texts while their thinking brain regions were actually less active.
If these findings prove robust in larger studies, they could revolutionize our understanding of consciousness, creativity, and the brain's capacity for dissociative states. The results might suggest that human consciousness is more flexible and complex than previously thought, with implications for treating dissociative disorders and understanding peak creative performance. Such research could also inform debates about the nature of consciousness itself and whether the brain acts as a receiver rather than solely a generator of conscious experience.
Small sample sizes in brain imaging studies can produce interesting findings, but they need replication with larger groups before we can trust the results apply broadly.
Understanding Terms
What This Study Claims
Findings
The complexity scores for psychographed content were higher than those for control writing, for both the whole sample and experienced mediums
moderateExperienced psychographers showed lower brain activity in multiple regions including left hippocampus and anterior cingulate during trance writing compared to normal writing
moderateInterpretations
Relaxation seems an unlikely explanation for the underactivation of brain areas specifically related to cognitive processing during trance writing
weakLimitations
The study lacks a control group and is not controlled
weakThe study was preliminary with a small sample size of only ten participants
strongThis summary is for general information about current research. It does not constitute medical advice. The scientific interpretation of these results is debated among researchers. If personally affected, please consult qualified professionals.