Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2020
Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan, Neil Dagnall
23 citations
Among people who have experienced lucid dreaming, those who also report nightmares and sleep paralysis tend to score higher on measures of paranormal experience and belief, but the correlations are weak. A tendency toward reality-testing deficits—especially auditory and visual hallucinations—shows the strongest links with these sleep-related dissociative experiences. Paranormal experience alone does not predict lucid dreaming, nightmares, or sleep paralysis once hallucination-proneness is accounted for, but it becomes a significant predictor when hallucinations are controlled. The findings suggest that internally generated cognitive processes, such as hallucinatory tendencies, play a key role in conscious control during lucid dreaming and related dissociative sleep states.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2022
Kenneth Graham Drinkwater, Neil Dagnall, Stephen J Walsh et al.
12 citations
People who claim to have paranormal abilities—such as psychic powers or mediumship—describe their experiences as deeply tied to their personal history, beliefs, and sense of self. In interviews with 12 participants, four main themes emerged: formative influences like gifted family members or unusual childhood events; subjective experiences of transcendence or extra-sensory perception; embodied processes, especially a sense of control; and perceptions of reality involving self-awareness and surreal experiences. Participants used autobiographical evidence to validate their abilities and often dismissed conventional explanations. The findings suggest that belief in paranormal ability is inseparable from how individuals interpret and make sense of their own experiences.
PLoS One
November 13, 2024
Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan, Neil Dagnall
1 citation
Traditional Paranormal Belief (TPB), which involves belief in supernatural forces that provide social-level control, predicts higher distress and lower coping, whereas New Age Philosophy (NAP), which involves belief in individual-level control, shows no such association. In a sample of 3,084 adults (ages 18–91), TPB was significantly linked to worse well-being as measured by the Perceived Stress Scale, while NAP was unrelated to either distress or coping. The findings support the idea that TPB is associated with an external locus of control, specifically the notion that unknown supernatural forces influence existence.
Frontiers in Psychology
March 6, 2026
Neil Dagnall, Andrew Denovan, Claire Murphy-Morgan et al.
People who hold strong scientific beliefs tend to rely on analytical-rational thinking, while those who hold paranormal beliefs tend to rely on intuitive-experiential thinking. In a sample of 300 adults, traditional and New Age paranormal beliefs correlated positively with intuitive processing and negatively with analytical processing; belief in science showed the opposite pattern. Two subgroups emerged: Higher Evidence-based Thinking (55% of participants) with high scientific and low paranormal belief, and Lower Evidence-based Thinking (45%) with low scientific and high paranormal belief. Cognitive rigidity (dogmatism and need for closure) did not differ between groups, suggesting these traits are belief-neutral characteristics of strongly held convictions rather than specific to scientific or paranormal worldviews.
The Innovation
March 1, 2026
Álex Escolà-Gascón, Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan et al.
A large-scale, randomized, double-blind, multicenter trial across 13 hospitals in the UK and Spain tested whether the human mind can access information during clinical death when exposed to auditory stimuli governed by quantum entanglement, synchronized with a 127-qubit IBM quantum computer. During cardiopulmonary arrest, neurophysiological biomarkers were measured. After reanimation, 142 survivors completed recall tests and near-death experience scales. Recall lucidity increased as cerebral oxygenation dropped, and near-death experiences correlated with neuroplasticity during arrest. Biomarker models explained up to 56.8% of variance in recall. The authors argue these findings suggest consciousness may persist during clinical death, quantum-bound and detectable.
Frontiers in Psychology
April 10, 2025
Luca Simione, Camilla Pagani, Andrew Denovan et al.
Paranormal beliefs are linked to intuitive thinking, reduced analytical reasoning, and cognitive illusions, as well as to schizotypal personality traits and cognitive-perceptual tendencies. Theorists also connect these beliefs to emotional and existential functions, serving as coping mechanisms for uncertainty and mortality anxiety. Contemporary research has shifted from proving or disproving paranormal abilities to understanding their psychological underpinnings, particularly self-ascribed paranormal abilities rooted in direct personal experience. Individuals who claim such abilities exhibit heightened cognitive-perceptual tendencies like anomalous perception and absorption, with social and cultural factors reinforcing these self-attributions.
Neuroscience and Biobehavioral Reviews
December 1, 2025
Álex Escolà-Gascón, Kenneth Drinkwater, Andrew Denovan et al.
A new metric called the Attribution Consciousness Index (ACI) estimates the likelihood that neural activity supports conscious processing by balancing measures of dynamic information and complexity. Using brain simulations and artificial neural networks, the ACI follows a log-normal distribution, enabling robust thresholding: values above 10 correspond to over 90% probability of conscious emergence. The framework also applies to artificial systems, explaining 38.4% of variance between biological and AI-derived patterns. While not measuring subjective experience, the ACI predicts when neural or artificial conditions are poised to sustain consciousness, with potential applications in disorders of consciousness, anesthesia monitoring, neurorehabilitation, and evaluating neuroprosthetics, generative AI, and robotics.