Mediumship: review of quantitatives studies published in the 21st century

Background: Mediumship can be defined as the alleged ability to communicate with deceased persons. The last decade has been particularly productive for this field of research and the study of mediumship can help the understanding of the human mind-brain relationship and provide objective data to the scientific community and to the general population.

Objective: The aim of this review is to summarize and discuss the results found on recent studies investigating mediumship. Furthermore, we aim to discuss the psychophysiology underlying mediumship and future perspectives for this study topic.

Methods: A literature search for articles in English, Portuguese and Spanish published from January 2000 up to June 2015 was conducted using three electronic databases (PubMed, Lilacs and Web of Science). Review articles, qualitative studies and studies investigating altered states of consciousness caused by psychoactive substances were excluded. The original search returned 150 articles, but the application of exclusion criteria resulted in the inclusion of 19 articles for final analysis.

Results: The general findings were: (1) an association of mediumship with good mental health, predominantly in experienced mediums, (2) heterogeneous findings regarding the ability of mediums to provide accurate information what may be due to different study methodologies and (3) incipient studies assessing physiological correlations during mediumistic communications (i.e. hypoactivation of brain regions responsible for cognitive processing and writing planning during psychography compared to a control task; electroencephalographic (EEG) changes and a slight predominance of the sympathetic nervous system).

Discussion: There is a paucity of empirical data available in this controversial research field. New studies employing rigorous design (e.g. triple-blind protocols to test accuracy of mediumistic communications), and sensitive methods are required.