Papers

Evidence for Elevated Cortical Hyperexcitability and its Association with Out-of-Body Experiences in the non-clinical population: New Findings from a Pattern-Glare Task.

New paper investigating degrees of corticial hyperexcitability in those who hallucinate out-of-body experiences.

Individuals with no history of neurological or psychiatric illness can report hallucinatory Out-of-Body Experiences (OBEs) and display elevated scores on measures of temporal-lobe dysfunction (Braithwaite et al., 2011). However, all previous investigations of such biases in non-clinical populations are based on indirect questionnaire measures. Here we present the first empirical investigation that a non-clinical OBE group is subject to pattern-glare, possibly as a result of cortical hyperexcitability (Wilkins et al., 1984). Fifty-nine students at the University of Birmingham viewed a series of square-wave gratings with spatial frequencies of approximately 0.7, 3 and 11 cycles/degree, both black/white and of contrasting colours. The illusions and discomfort reported when viewing gratings with mid-range spatial frequency have been hypothesized to reflect cortical hyperexcitability (Wilkins, 1995; Huang et al., 2003). Participants also completed the Cardiff Anomalous Perception Scale (CAPS: Bell et al., 2006) which included experiential measures of disruptions in ‘Temporal-lobe Experience’. Participants who reported OBEs also reported significantly more visual illusions / distortions and significantly greater discomfort as a result of viewing the mid-frequency gratings. There were no such differences with respect to gratings with relatively lower or higher spatial frequency. The OBE group also produced significantly elevated scores on the CAPS measures of Temporal-lobe Experience, relative to controls. Collectively, the results are consistent with there being a neural ‘vulnerability’ in the cortices of individuals pre-disposed to some hallucinations, even in the non-clinical population.

Out-Of-Body Experiences, Hallucinations, Out-Of-Body Experiences, Psychology, Hallucination of the Self, Embodiment, Consciousness, Visual hallucinations, Parapsychology, and History of psychical research and parapsychology

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Magnetic Fields, Anomalous Experiences: A Sceptical Critique of the Current Evidence

A comprehensive review of the literature on magnetic fields and anomalous haunt-type experiences published in The Skeptic Magazine.

Skepticism, Psychology of Anomalous Experiences, Parapsychology, Paranormal Belief, Apparitions, Apparitional Experiences, Parapsychology, psychology, anomalous psychology, religious studies, comparative religions, and Ghosts

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New Perspectives on Perspective-taking Mechanisms and the Out-of-Body Experience

A recent critical analysis of findings from contemporary studies on out-of-body experiences.  This paper has been published in the journal 'Cortex'.

Altered States of Consciousness, Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, and Out-Of-Body Experiences

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Cognitive Correlates of the Spontaneous Out-of-Body-Experience (OBE) in the Psychologically Normal Population: Evidence for an Increased Role of Temporal-lobe Instability, Body-distortion Processing, and Impairments in Own-body Transformations

Digital copy of a pre-print for the upcoming OBE paper

Altered States of Consciousness, Embodiment, Philosophy, Clinical Neuroscience, and Out-Of-Body Experiences

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Sleeping with the Entity

Philosophy, Anomalous cognition, Clinical Neuroscience, Psychology, and Philosophy of Mind

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Is This the Room for an Argument? An Introductory Guide on How to Evaluate Arguments.

Critical thinking teaching resources

Argumentation Theory and Critical Thinking, Critical Thinking, Argumentation, Critical Thinking, DIscourse, Philosophy, and Philosophy of Mind

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Seven Fallacies of Thought and Reason: Common Errors in Reasoning and Argument from Pseudoscience

Critical thinking teaching resources

Critical Thinking, Argumentation, Critical Thinking, DIscourse, Pseudoscience, and Argumentation Theory and Critical Thinking

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