Perceptual and Motor Skills
October 1, 1997
Jorge Conesa
This report describes a test of the hypothesis that significant changes in the ambient geomagnetic field are associated with altered normal nighttime dream patterns. Specifically, it was predicted that there would be a greater incidence of isolated sleep paralysis or vivid dreams with abrupt rises and falls of geomagnetic activity. The author's (JC) and a second subject's (KC) daily reports of...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
August 1, 1997
M A Persinger
Data collected during the last 15 years for the Personal Philosophy Inventory from 1.48 thousand university men (n = 629) and women (n = 853) were analyzed to discern the response characteristics of individuals who stated "yes" to Item 136 "If God told me to kill, I would do it in His name." The percentage (7%, range between 2% and 8% per year) of affirmative responses did not change...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
August 1, 1997
James Houran, Rense Lange, Michelle Crist-Houran
30 experiences of shamanic journeys derived from Harner (1990) were analyzed based on a recent coding scheme for contextual variables proposed by Lange, Houran, Harte, and Havens. Consistent with previous research, the experiential content of the trances was quite consistent with the content of the available contextual variables, and embedded cues in particular ( r = .68, p < .001). As...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1997
Michael Schredl, Evelyn Doll
The present study has investigated the relationship between Autogenic Training and dream recall for 112 participants in 16 beginning courses of 10 wk. Analyses confirmed the hypothesis that learning and practicing this relaxation technique enhanced dream recall.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
August 1, 1996
A Lequerica
The psychophysiological properties of the lucid dream state were examined to evaluate the relationship between lucid and nonlucid dreaming, emphasizing the fact that the components of self-reflectiveness and other cognitive features commonly associated with lucid dreams occur in all dreams to various extents. Although lucid dreams are clearly toward one end of the continuum, they still share...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
October 1, 1995
James A. Prescott, C. Gary Pettigrew
In a survey of 17 middle-school students, search for control over situations in waking life was positively correlated with frequency of lucid dreaming.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
August 1, 1995
Michael Schredl, S Frauscher, A Shendi
The present study estimated correlations for 50 subjects among frequency of dream recall, length of dream report, and visual memory. Whereas the results confirmed the previously found relationship between frequency of dream recall and visual memory, influence of visual memory on length of dream report was not found.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1995
S Sakata, J Shinohara, T Hori et al.
This study was conducted to evaluate the positive effect of flotation REST on the production of random sequences, employing both behavioral and physiological measures. The subjects were 7 student volunteers who spent a 40-min. session lying alone on a bed in an isolation box and two 40-min. sessions floating in a commercially produced tank. Polygraph recordings (EEG, EOG, ECG and respiration)...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1995
J Conesa
This preliminary report, of a longitudinal study, looks at the relationship between geomagnetic activity and the incidence of isolated sleep paralysis over a 23.5-mo. period. The author, who has frequently and for the last 24 years experienced isolated sleep paralysis was the subject. In addition, incidence of lucid dreaming, vivid dreams, and total dream frequency were looked at with respect...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1994
Nisha Rani, P. V. Krishna Rao
88 citations
This study was done to investigate whether the practice of hatha yoga enhances the awareness of the normal, nonemotive bodily processes. A yoga-trained group of 17 and a control group of 19 were administered the Body Awareness Questionnaire. Analysis showed that the yoga-trained group had a significantly better body awareness than the control group.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1994
S. G. Tiller, Michael A. Persinger
11 citations
As predicted by the vectorial cerebral hemisphericity hypothesis, 24 normal young women reported significantly more experiences of a "presence" than did 24 normal young men within a setting that emphasized hypnosis and partial sensory deprivation. The incidence of these experiences was positively correlated with scores on Spiegel's Hypnosis Induction Profile, while the attribution of the...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1994
Tomoka Takeuchi, Akio Miyasita, Maki Inugami et al.
16 citations
During an experiment on nocturnal sleep interruption, we observed a unique case of hallucination without sleep paralysis during the sleep-onset REM period in a normal individual. We documented the polysomnogram recorded during this hallucination. The polysomnogram showed a mixed pattern of Stages REM and W, with muscle-tone inhibition, rapid eye movements (REMs), slow eye movements (SEMs), and...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1994
Piercarla Cicogna
7 citations
The aim of the present work was to investigate the characteristics of the dreaming during the beginning and the end of sleep, both phases being transitional between different states of consciousness (wakefulness vs sleep and vice versa). The hypothesis of an adaptive function of the mental activity in the two sleep phases is put forward to ensure a continuity of self-experience in the passage...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1994
Michael Schredl
The present study investigated the relation between dream length and verbal creativity for 32 subjects who were given a verbal creativity test and also kept a dream diary over a 2-wk. period. Subjects with high verbal creativity scores reported significantly shorter dreams. This may indicate that other factors influence the dream report's length, including visual memory.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
April 1, 1994
David Foulkes, Nancy H. Kerr
9 citations
Most nocturnal dream reports of 4 young-adult subjects were of events reported to have been experienced from an own-eyes perspective. The alternative, see-oneself, perspective seems to be incompatible with full dream elaboration. This may help to explain the primitive form of dreaming in early development, when children are unable to imagine their own active participation in dream events.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
April 1, 1994
Michael A. Persinger
5 citations
20 male and 20 female undergraduate students were exposed singly for 20 min. to an exotic setting (partial sensory deprivation and weak, bilateral transtemporal pulsed magnetic fields) that enhances relaxation and exotic experiences. The numerical incidence of subjective experiences described as old memories, dreams, emotions, or vestibular sensations did not differ significantly between the...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
February 1, 1994
Joseph H. Pearl, Alfred F. Carlozzi
Comparison of a group practicing Clinically Standardized Meditation ( n = 24) for 8 wk. and a no-treatment control group ( n = 26) showed that meditation diminished anxiety but had no effect on empathy.
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1993
Kazuhiko Fukuda
36 citations
In a previous study, the author and coworkers found 39.8% of healthy young adults had experienced sleep paralysis. Some other studies reported prevalence as about the same or higher (i.e., 40.7% to 62.0%) than that previous estimate, while yet other studies, including Goode's work cited by ASDC and ASDA classifications, suggested much lower prevalences (i.e., 4.7% to 26.2%). The author tested...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1993
Lee Fergusson
This study confirmed that scores on the Group Embedded Figures Test of 106 undergraduate art students from four universities were positively correlated .32 with grade point average, .27 with artistic ability, and .21 with how students perceived their own artistic competence in relation to peers. The 12 art students who practiced Transcendental Meditation tended to score higher on the test of...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
August 1, 1993
David Koulack, Marc Nesca, Bradley M. Stroud
4 citations
The suggestion that there may be a discrepancy between subjective and objective measures of sleep led us to explore the sleep and dreams of 7 Type A and 7 Type B scorers in our laboratory over a three-night period. In earlier studies, Type A scorers had indicated that their sleep was somewhat more disturbed and their dream content generally more active and negative in tone than that of Type B...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
June 1, 1993
M. A. Persinger
86 citations
Multiple variants of the sensed presence often precede mystical and religious experiences that are frequently followed by sudden, permanent changes in self-concept. The model of vectorial hemisphericity assumes that the relative metabolic activity of synaptic patterns between the cerebral hemispheres at the time of transient interhemispheric intercalation determines the affect, content, and...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
February 1, 1993
M A Persinger
40 citations
The Personal Philosophy Inventories of 221 university students who had learned to meditate (about 65% to 70% Transcendental Meditation) were compared to 860 nonmeditators. Meditators displayed a significantly wider range of complex partial epileptic-like signs. Experiences of vibrations, hearing one's name called, paranormal phenomena, profound meaning from reading poetry/prose, and religious...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1992
Michael A. Persinger
13 citations
If the "sensed presence" is the transient intrusion of the right hemispheric equivalent of the left hemispheric (and highly linguistic) sense of self, then any process that facilitates interhemispheric electrical coherence should enhance these experiences. As predicted, the "ego-alien intrusion" (sensed presence) factor was specifically and significantly elevated in 221 people who had learned...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1992
H T Hunt, A Gervais, S Shearing-Johns et al.
A questionnaire was developed to assess adult recall for a range of transpersonal experiences throughout childhood and adolescence (mystical experience, out-of-body experience, lucid dreams, archetypal dreams, ESP), as well as nightmares and night terrors as indicators of more conflicted, negative states. In two exploratory studies this questionnaire was administered to subjects with high...
Perceptual and Motor Skills
December 1, 1991
Kazuhiko Fukuda, Nobuo Inamatsu, Makoto Kuroiwa et al.
19 citations
Sleep paralysis occurs in normal persons. This phenomenon had been studied psychoanalytically or in terms of the deviation of the victims' personality. This present study aimed to assess the personalities of such persons by using the MMPI and the Maudsley Personality Inventory. The subjects showed a slightly higher mean T score on the MMPI Paranoia Scale than those who did not have this...