Out-of-body experiences (OBEs), defined as the subjective sensation of having a personal identity separate from one's physical body, have captivated humanity across cultures and throughout history. While artificial induction techniques have provided valuable insights into the neural correlates of bodily self-consciousness, these artificially generated experiences often lack the perceptual and...
Introduction: In this study, we describe the construction of the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), a structured instrument for evaluating the evidential strength of perceptions reported during near-death experiences (NDEs), and its first validation by human and artificial raters. Methods: The construction was implemented using a typical Delphi Method. The first draft of the...
Introduction: In this study, we describe the construction of the veridical Near-Death Experience Scale (vNDE Scale), a structured instrument for evaluating the evidential strength of perceptions reported during near-death experiences (NDEs), and its first validation by human and artificial raters.Methods: The construction was implemented using a typical Delphi Method. The first draft of the...
The aim of this study is to replicate Long & Perry’s[1] God study using a more updated database and different inclusion criteria. The descriptions of God’s and Jesus’ characteristics as observed by 303 Near-death or Near-death-like experiencers were analyzed for their frequency both in the whole sample and divided by the participants’ religious experience. Both in the whole sample and in the...
The aim of this study is to replicate Long & Perry’s (2016) God study using a more updated database and different inclusion criteria. The descriptions of God’s and Jesus’ characteristics as observed by 303 Near-death or Near-death-like experiencers were analyzed for their frequency both in the whole sample and divided by the participants’ religious experience. Both in the whole group and in the...
Which is our fundamental essence? Are we biological machines or spiritual eternal beings? In this essay, I attempt to demonstrate that our essence is nothing else than conscious eternal, infinite, nonjudgmental, unconditional love. This eternal, infinite, non-judgmental unconditional love expresses itself as a never-ending creative force that gives rise to infinite expressions with different...
This participatory team science project extended Laythe and Houran’s (2022) prior application of a famous probabilistic argument known as the "Drake equation" to the question of postmortem survival. Specifically, we evaluated effect sizes from peer-reviewed, empirical studies to determine the maximum average percentage effect that ostensibly supports (i.e., "anomalous effects") or refutes...
We used a multiteam system approach (MTS) to map the critical and constructive feedback from four invited Commentaries on Rock et al.’s (2023) probabilistic analysis of purported evidence for postmortem survival. The goal was to mine actionable insights to guide future research with the potential for important learnings or breakthroughs about the nature or limits of human consciousness and...
The references cited in the 29 winner essays were examined with respect to their type.Out of the non-duplicate 3679 references, 51% were books, 37% were scientific papers, 8% were scientific materials, and the remaining 4% were other materials.Among the top 10 most cited references, 7 were books and 6 were related to near-death experiences.Materials related to near-death experiences are...
Shared-death-experiences (SDEs) and after-death-communication-experiences (ADCEs) are non-ordinary mental experiences related to the death of a known or unknown person. These experiences were investigated by surveying four samples with different cultural backgrounds: Italian, Mexican, Brazilian and Taiwanese people. One-hundred-twenty-one participants reported 146 experiences of this type....
Objective: The aim of this study was to assess the results of all meta-analyses on anomalous cognition conducted between 1989 and 2021 in order to find moderators associated with greater effect sizes. Method: We included all meta-analyses of studies related to anomalous cognition published up to 2021. Results: Our dataset, accumulated over more than 80 years of investigation, refers to 11...
By using the descriptions of the Out-of-Body experiences of 13 participants, we aimed to have a picture of what it is like to be in this particular state of consciousness. All information was grouped according to the following topics: consciousness status, self-boundaries, object perception, color perception, other types of perceptions, interactions with other people or beings, emotions, and...
Two experiments involving an international collaboration of experimenters sought to replicate and extend a previously published psi experiment on precognition by Daryl Bem that has been the focus of extensive research. The experiment reverses the usual cause–effect sequence of a standard psychology experiment using priming and reaction times. The preregistered confirmatory hypothesis is that...
In this study we analyzed retrospectively a database of 44 alleged death experiences between incarnations, as reported by 36 participants during hypnotic life regression sessions with the same hypnotist. The descriptions of these experiences were evaluated using the Italian version of the Near-Death Experience Scale. A large part of the reported experiences were categorized as "Affective", with...
The term "retroactive avoidance" refers to a special class of effects of future stimulus presentations on past behavioral responses. Specifically, it refers to the anticipatory avoidance of aversive stimuli that were unpredictable through random selection after the response. This phenomenon is supposed to challenge the common view of the arrow of time and the direction of causality. Preliminary...
The aim of this paper is to describe some ostensibly odd, Non-Ordinary-Mental Expressions (NOMEs), that have been considered implausible, illusory or hallucinatory phenomena, possible symptoms of disorders of the neurological or psychological functioning. They include a large variety of phenomena, encompassing hearing voices, seeing presences, communication with non-incarnated entities...
Abstract This contribution to the science of consciousness aims at comparing how two different theories can explain the emergence of different qualia experiences: meta-awareness, meta-cognition, the placebo effect, out-of-body experiences, cognitive therapy, meditation-induced brain changes, etc. The first theory postulates that qualia experiences derive from specific neural patterns, and the...
This meta-analysis is an investigation into anomalous perception (i.e., conscious identification of information without any conventional sensorial means). The technique used for eliciting an effect is the ganzfeld condition (a form of sensory homogenization that eliminates distracting peripheral noise). The database consists of peer-reviewed studies published between January 1974 and June 2020...
Dream-ESP is a form of extra-sensory perception (ESP) in which a dreaming perceiver ostensibly gains information about a randomly selected target without using the normal sensory modalities or logical inference. We conducted a meta-analysis on dream-ESP studies (dating from 1966 to 2016), and found a number of significant effects indicating support for the ESP hypothesis (Storm et al., 2017)....
Inducing out-of-body experiences in hypnosis (H-OBEs) offers an almost unique opportunity to investigate them under controlled conditions. OBEs were induced as an imaginative task in a resting condition (I-OBE) or in hypnosis (H-OBE) in a group of 15 high hypnotizable subjects. A 32-channel EEG was recorded, and the spectral power and imaginary coherence of each frequency band and each couple...
In this essay, we will support the claim that at the current level of scientific advancement a) some first-person accounts cannot be reduced to their third-person neural and psychophysiological correlates and b) that these first-person accounts are the only information to reckon when it is necessary to analyse qualia contents. Consequently, for many phenomena, first-person accounts are the only...
Consciousness has been one of the most important and tantalizing issues ever since the origin of philosophy and medicine. The concept of consciousness and the so-called "hard problem" (i.e., the mind-brain relationship) are highly complex topics that have yet to be elucidated, involving the realms of both science and philosophy with profound epistemological implications. In the lively debate on...
In 2011, one of the authors (DJB) published a report of nine experiments in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology purporting to demonstrate that an individual's cognitive and affective responses can be influenced by randomly selected stimulus events that do not occur until after his or her responses have already been made and recorded, a generalized variant of the phenomenon...
In 2011, one of the authors (DJB) published a report of nine experiments in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology purporting to demonstrate that an individual’s cognitive and affective responses can be influenced by randomly selected stimulus events that do not occur until after his or her responses have already been made and recorded, a generalized variant of the phenomenon...
The possibility to induce real out-of-body experiences (OBEs) using hypnotic inductions, with the opportunity to interview participants during their experience, permits to investigate in depth the characteristics of different aspects of this particular state of consciousness from a first-person point of view. In this article, six selected participants report the description of another “body” we...