In July 2008, a great research work was done on psychography in the city of Philadelphia, United States, at the University of Pennsylvania hospital. In this research, during ten days, ten Brazilian mediums were placed at the disposal of a team of scientists from Brazil and the United States, who used high-tech equipment to, through neuroimaging, known as positron emission tomography, to study what occurs with the mediums’ brains during the mediumistic trance.

 

Four universities were represented by the following scientists: Julio Peres from the University of São Paulo, Alexander Moreira-Almeida from the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Leonardo Caixeta and Frederico Leão from the Federal University of Goiás and Andrew B. Newberg from the University of Pennsylvania, which ensured the use of strictly scientific criteria.

The main author of the study was the clinical psychologist and neuroscientist Julio Peres, a researcher of the Health, Spirituality and Religiosity Program, Department of Psychiatry, Medical School from São Paulo University, Brazil.

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To carry out the research procedure, the mediums were asked to perform two tasks:

 

1. They should write a text of their own making, outside the mediumistic trance.

2. They should enter into a psychic trance and perform psychographics.

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Before the tasks, a radioisotope (radioactive marker) was impregnated in the brain tissue, in the areas involved in the task that they were to carry out (writing), and after the task the brain imaging was done.

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The method chosen was SPECT, which is a positron emission tomography with a single photograph, that is, through this procedure it was possible to obtain a brain image of the exact moment in which the medium was writing the text of his own authorship, as well as the exact moment  where he was psychographing, under the mediumistic trance.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the figure above we see each of the steps of the procedure performed in the study

 

After the experiment, the following evaluations were made:

 

1. Analysis of each medium’s experiences during the trance: Feeling of being outside the body, receiving messages in the form of dictation, complete unconsciousness during the procedure, loss of sense of space and time, hearing of an inner voice to write the content of the message.

  2. Analysis of the two texts complexity, produced by each medium, taking into account the following criteria:

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    A) Commas and dots

    B) Selection and spelling lexicon

    C) Verbal and nominal agreement and pronoun placement

    D) Theme development

    E) Coordination and sentence structures between the parts

    F) Consistency

 

It was found that the texts psychographed during the mediumistic trance contained a complexity relatively superior to the texts produced outside the mediumistic trance

 

     3. Analysis of the neurophysiological conditions: Comparing the mediums’ psychic activity images made during the mediumistic trance and outside it, it was verified that the frontal area of the brain, associated with the planning and the creativity and used during the writing had, during the psychography, less activity and, during the generation of the original text, outside the mediumistic trance, a greater activity.

 

Conclusion of the study

 

As it was proved that the texts generated during psychography (under mediumistic trance) were more complex than the texts generated outside the mediumistic trance, it would be normal to expect that the brain areas related to planning and creativity were much more activated during this time procedure.

 

However, at the time of the psychographical texts production, such brain areas were less activated, demonstrating that the mediums’ brain was less active. It was also observed that in the more experienced mediums, the brain activity was still much smaller during psychography than in less experienced ones.

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This proof is a great evidence that the production of the psychographical text was not performed by the medium's brain, but by another intelligence, with which the medium was tuned during the mediumistic trance.

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According to Dr. Peres: "The fact that volunteers (mediums) produced complex content during psychography, suggests that they were not simply relaxed because of this attenuation of blood flow in these areas of planning in the face of this complex, cognitive function that was ongoing during Psychography. It must be said that the mediums were not simply or merely relaxed. Something else was happening.

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These findings deserve further investigation, both in terms of replication and explanatory hypotheses. We must consider this possibility, that the lesser activity of the neural circuits of planning, with a more complex narrative structure, may be in line with what the mediums refer to as authorship by the spirit of this content."

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