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As
significant
as
such results
are
statistically,
the
information
channel
is
imperfect,
containing noise along with
the
signal.
When con-
sidering how best
to
use
such
a
channel,
one
is
led
to
the communication
theory concept of
the
introduction of redundancy
as
a means
of coding
a
message
to combat
the effects
of
a
noisy channel
[30].
A prototype experi-
ment by Ryzl using
such techniques has proved
to
be
successful.
Ryzl had
an assistant
select randomly
five
groups
of
three
digits
each.
These
fif-
teen digits were
then encoded
into binary
form and translated
into
a
se-
quence
of green and white
cards
in sealed envelopes.
By means
of repeated
calling and an elaborate majority vote
protocol,
Ryzl
was
able after
19,350
calls
by Stepanek
(averaging
nine
seconds
per
call)
to correctly
identify
all
fifteen numbers,
a
result
significant
at
p
=
The hit rate
for
individual
calls was
61.9 percent,
11,978
hits,
and 7,372 misses
[31].*
The characteristics of
such
a
channel
can
be
specified
in accordance
with
the precepts of communication
theory.
The
bit rate associated with
the information channel
is
calculated
from
[30]
R =
H(x)
- H
(x)
,
(1)
y
where
H(x)
is
the uncertainty of
the
source message containing
symbols
with
a priori probability
p
•k
Note added
in proof.
It has
just come
to our attention
that
a similar
procedure was used
to transmit without error
the word "peace"
in Inter-
national Morse Code:
J.
C.
Carpenter,
"Toward
the Effective Utilization
of Enhanced Weak-Signal ESP Effects," presented
at
the annual meeting
of
the American Association
for the Advancement
of Science, New York,
N.Y.
(January
27,
1975).
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H(x)
=
- £
P
log
p
,
(2)
i=l
and H
(x)
is
the
conditional entropy based
on
the
a posteriori probabil-
;y
itie4
that
a
received
signal was
actually
transmitted,
H
(x)
=
- V
p (i
, j )
log
p
(j)
.
(3)
y
•
•
i
j=i
For $tepanek’s
run,
with
p_^
=
1/2,
p^(j)
=
0,619,
and
an average
time
of
nine
seconds
per choice,
we have
a
source uncertainty H(x)
=
bit and
a
calculated bit rate
Rm
0 o 041
bits/symbol
or
R/T « 0,0046 bits/s
[Since
the
15-digit number
(49,8
bits)
actually was
transmitted
at
the
rate
of
2,9
x
10~ 4 bits/s,
an
increase
in bit rate
by
a
factor of about
20 could
be expected on
the
basis of
a
coding
scheme more optimum than
that used
in
the
experiments,
(See,
for
example,
Appendix A,)]
Dr,
Charles
Tart at
the University of California has written exten-
sively on
the
so-called decline
effect.
He considers
that having
subjects
attepipt
to
guess
cards,
or perform any other repetitious
task
for which
they receive
no
feedback,
follows
the
classical
technique
for decondition-
ing any
response.
He
thus
considers
card
guessing
!1 a
technique
for
extin-
guishing psychic
functioning
in
the
laboratory”
[32],
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Tart's
injunctions
of
the mid-sixties were being heeded
at Maimonides
Hospital,
Brooklyn,
New York,
by
a
team of researchers
that
included
Dr,
Montague Ullman,
who was director of research
for
the hospital;
Dr.
Stanley
Krippner;
and,
later,
Charles Honorton.
These
three worked
together
for
several years
on experiments on
the occurrence of
telepathy
in dreams.
In
the
course of
a half-dozen experimental
series,
they
found
in
their
week-long sessions
a
number of
subjects who had dreams
that consistently
were highly descriptive
of pictorial material
that
a remote
sender was
looking at
throughout
the
night.
This work
is described
in detail
in
the experimenters'
book Dream Telepathy
[33].
Honorton
is
continuing
work of
this
free-response
type
in which
the
subject has
no preconceived
idea' as
to what
the
target may
be.
In his more
recent work with subjects
in
the waking state,
Honorton
is providing homogeneous
stimulation
to
the
subject who
is
to describe
color
slides viewed
by another person
in
a
remote
room.
In
this
new work,
the
subject
listens
to white
noise via earphones
and views
an homogeneous
visual
field
imposed
through
the
use
of Ping-Pong ball halves
to cover
the
subject's
eyes
in conjunction with diffuse ambient
illumination.
In
this
so-called Ganzfeld
setting,
subjects
are again able,
now
in
the waking
state,
to
give correct
and often highly accurate descriptions
of
the ma-
terial being viewed by
the
sender
[34].
In Honorton' s work and elsewhere
it apparently has been
the
step
away
from
the
repetitive,
forced-choice experiment
that has opened
the way
for
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a ytde variety
of ordinary people
to demonstrate significant functioning
in
the
laboratory, without being bored
into
a decline effect.
This survey would be incomplete
if we did not indicate certain aspects
of
the current state of research
in
the USSR.
It
is
clear from trans-
lated documents and other sources
that many laboratories
in the USSR are
engaged
in paranormal research
[35].
Since
the
1930s
in
the laboratory of
L.
Vasiliev
(Leningrad Insti-
tute
for Brain Research)
,
there has been an interest
in
the use
of
tel-
epathy as
a method
of influencing the behavior
of
a person at
a
distance.
In Vasiliev’s book Experiments
in Mental Suggestion ,
he makes
is very
clqar
that
the bulk of his laboratory’s experiments were aimed
at
long-
distance communication combined with
a form of behavior modification;
foif
example,
putting people at a distance
to sleep
through hypnosis
[36].
Similar behavior modification types
of experiments have been carried
out in recent
times by
I.M.
Kogan,
Chairman of
the Bioinformation Section
of
the Moscow Board of
the Popov
Society.
He
is
a Soviet
engineer who un-
til 1969 published extensively on
the theory
of
telepathic communication
[36]- [40].
He was
concerned with
three principal kinds
of experiments:
mental suggest ion. wi thout hypnosis over short distances,
in which
the per-
cipient attempts
to identify
an object; mental awakening over
short distances,
in which
a subject
is
awakened
from
a hypnotic sleep
at
the "beamed"
sug-
gestion from the hypnotist;
and
long-range
(intercity)
telepathic communica-
tion.
Kogan’s main interest has been
to quantify
the channel
capacity
of
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the paranormal
channel.
He
finds
that
the
bit rate decreases
from 0.1
bits/s
for
laboratory experiments
to 01005 bits/s
for his
1000-km inter-
city experiments.
In
the
USSR,
serious consideration
is
given
to
the hypothesis
that
telepathy
is mediated
by extremely low-frequency
(ELF)
electromagnetic
propagation.
(The pros
and
cons
of
this hypothesis
are discussed
in
Section V of
this
paper.)
In general,
the
entire
field of paranormal
research
in
the USSR
is part of
a
larger one concerned with
the
interac-
tion between electromagnetic
fields
and
living organisms
[41], [42].
At
the First International Congress on Parapsychology and Psychotronics
in
Prague,
Czechoslovakia
in
1973,
for example,
Kholodov spoke
at
length
about
the
susceptibility of
living systems
to extremely low-level
ac and dc
fields.
He described conditioning; effects on the behavior of fish resulting from
the application of
to
100
W of RF
to
their
tank
[43].
The USSR
take
these data seriously
in
that
the
Soviet
safety requirements
for
steady-
o
state microwave exposure
set
limits
at
jiW/cm
,
whereas
the United
States
has
set
a steady-state
limit
of
10 mW/cm^
[44].
Kholodov spoke also about
the nonthermal
effects
of microwaves on animals'
central
nervous
systems.
His experiments were very carefully carried
out
and
are characteristic
of
a new dimension
in paranormal
research.
The
increasing
importance
of
this
area
in Soviet research was
indi-
cated recently when
the
Soviet Psychological Association issued an unprece-
dented position paper
calling on
the
Soviet Academy of Sciences
to
step
up
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efforts
in
this
area
[45].
They recommended
that
the
newly
formed Psycho-
logical
Institute within
the
Soviet Academy of Sciences
and
the Psycholog-
ical
Institute of
the Academy of Pedagogical Sciences
review
the
area
and
consider
the
creation of
a
new
laboratory within one
of
the
institutes
to
study persons with unusual
abilities.
They also recommended
a comprehen-
sive! evaluation of experiments
and
theory by
the Academy of
Sciences'
Institute
of Biophysics
and Institute
for
the Problems
of Information
Transmission.
The
Soviet research,
along with other behavioristically oriented
worl^,
suggests
that
in addition
to obtaining overt responses
such
as
verbalizations
or key presses
from
a
subject,
it should
be possible
to
obtain objective evidence of information transfer
by direct measurement
of physiological parameters of
a
subject.
Kamiya,
Lindsley,
Pribram,
Silyerman,
Walter,
and others
brought
together
to discuss physiological
methods
to detect ESP
functioning,
have
suggested
that
a whole
range
of
elect troencephalogram
(EEG)
responses
such as
evoked potentials
(EPs),
spontaneous
EEG, .and
the
contingent negative variation
(CNV) might
be
sensitive
indicators
of
the detection of remote
stimuli
not mediated by
usual
sensory processes
[46].
Early experimentation of
this
type was
carried out by Douglas Dean
at
the Newark College of Engineering.
In his
search
for physiological
correlates of information transfer,
he used
the
pie thysmograph
to measure
changes
in
the
blood volume
in
a
finger,
a
sensitive
indicator of autonomic
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nervous
system functioning
[47]
.
A pie thysmographic measurement was made
on
the
finger of
a
subject during telepathy experiments,
A sender
looked
at randomly
selected
target cards consisting of names known
to
the
subject,
together with names unknown
to him
(selected
at random
from
a
telephone
book).
The names
of
the known people were contributed by
the
subject and
were
to
be
of emotional
significance
to him.
Dean
found significant changes
in
the chart recording of
finger blood volume when
the remote
sender was
looking at
those names
known
to
the
subject
as
compared with
those names
randomly chosen.
Three other experiments using
the physiological approach have now
been published.
The
first work by Tart
[48],
a
later work by Lloyd
[49],
and most recently
the work by
the authors
[4]
all
follow
a
similar procedure
.
Basically,
a
subject
is closeted
in an electrically
shielded room while
his EEG
is
recorded.
Meanwhile,
in another
laboratory,
a
second person
is
stimulated
from time
to
time,
and
the
time
of
that
stimulus
is marked
on
the magnetic
tape recording of
the
subject's EEG.
The
subject does
not know when
the remote
stimulus periods
are
as
compared with
the
non-
stimulus
periods.
With
regard
to
choice
of stimulus
for our own experimentation,
we
noted
that
in previous work others had attempted,
without
success,
to
detect evoked potential changes
in
a
subject's EEG
in response
to
a
single
stroboscopic
flash stimulus
observed
by another
subject
[50].
In
a discus-
sion of
that experiment,
Kamiya
suggested
that because
of
the
unknown
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temporal characteristics
of
the
information channel,
it might
be more
appropriate
to use
repetitive bursts
of
light
to
increase
the probability
of detecting
information transfer
[51].
Therefore,
in our
study we
chose
to
ujse
a
stroboscopic
flash
train of
10-s duration as
the
remote
stimulus.
In
the design of
the
study,
we assumed
that
the
application of
the
remolte
stimulus would result
in responses
similar
to
those obtained under
conditions
of direct
stimulation.
For example,
when an individual
is
stim-
ulated with
a
low-frequency
(<30 Hz)
flashing
light,
the EEG
typically
showp
a decrease
in
the amplitude
of
the
resting rhythm and
a driving of
the brain waves
at
the
frequency of
the
flashes
[52].
We hypothesized
that
if we
stimulated one
subject
in
this manner
(a putative
sender),
the
EEG of another
subject
in
a remote room with no
flash present
(a receiver)
might show changes
in alpha
(9-11
Hz)
activity and possibly an EEG driving
similar
to
that
of
the
sender,
or other coupling
to
the
sender's EEG
[53].
The receiver was
seated
in
a visually opaque,
acoustically and electrically
shielded,
double-walled
steel room about
7 m from
the
sender.
The details
of
the experiment,
consisting of seven runs
of thirty-six,
10-s
trials
each
(twelve periods
each
for 0-Hz,
6-Hz,
and
16-Hz
stimuli,
randomly intermixed)
are presented
in
[4].
This experiment proved
to
be
successful:
The receiv-
er's
alpha activity
(9-11
Hz)
showed
a significant reduction
in average
power
(-24%,
p < 0.04)
and peak power
(-28%,
p < 0.03)
during
16-Hz
flash
stimuli as compared with periods
of no-flash stimulus.
[A similar response
was
observed
for
6-Hz
stimuli
( — 1 2%
in average
power,
-21%,
in peak power),
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but
the
AppK&yetcfe F©t tReil^S]eo20fr2/DiaA1 7 t^A*RQR96-£Gipfi7i^
shows
an overlay of
three averaged EEG
spectra
from one
of
the
subject’s
trial
runs,
displaying differences
in alpha activity during
the
three
stimulus
conditions.
Extensive control procedures were undertaken
to de-
termine
if
these
results were produced
by system artifacts,
electromag-
netic pickup
(EMI),
or by subtle
cueing;
the results were negative
[4].
As
part of
the experimental protocol,
the
subject was asked
to
indi-
cate
a conscious assessment
for each
trial
(via
telegraph key)
as
to
the
nature of
the
stimulus;
analysis
showed
these guesses
to
be
at
chance.
Thus,
arousal
as evidenced
by significant alpha blocking occurred only
at
the noncognitive
level
of physiological
response.
Hence,
the
experi-
ment provided direct physiological
(EEG)
evidence
of perception of remote
stimuli
even
in
the absence
of overt cognitive
response.
Whereas
in our experiments we used
a remote
light
flash
as
a
stimulus.
Tart
[48]
in his work used an electrical
shock
to himself
as
sender,
and
Lloyd
[49]
simply
told
the
sender
to
think of
a
red
triangle each
time
a
red warning
light was
illuminated within his
view.
Lloyd observed
a
con-
sistent evoked potential
in his
subjects; whereas
in our experiments
and
in Tart's,
a reduction
in amplitude
and
a desynchronization of alpha was
observed,
an arousal
response.
(If
a
subject
is
resting
in an alpha-
dominant condition and he
is
then stimulated,
for example
in any direct
manner,
one will observe
a decrease and desynchronization
in alpha power.)
We
consider
that
these combined results
are evidence
for
the existence
of
noncognitive awareness
of remote happenings
and
that
they have
a profound
implication
for paranormal
research.
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Hz
10 Hz
Hz
TA-760525-4
FIGURE
OCCIPITAL EEG FREQUENCY SPECTRA,
0 TO 20
Hz, OF
ONE SUBJECT
(H.H.) ACTING AS RECEIVER SHOWING
AMPLITUDE CHANGES
IN THE
9-11-Hz BAND AS A
FUNCTION OF STROBE FREQUENCY
Three
Cases —
0-,
6-
and
16-Hz
flashes
(12
trial
averages)
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