"Spacetime is being very naughty right now."
" So if we accept that these psi phenomena are real, how then can we explain them without throwing out our entire understanding of time and physics?" - Melissa Burkley, Psychology Today [Popular idea, but at least this time it was stated as a question. (sigh)]
Given that Daryl Bem's article "Feeling the Future: Experimental Evidence for Anomalous Retroactive Influences on Cognition and Affect" has been discussed in blogs and the popular press for over three months now, my response is a bit delayed. But I promise that it will contain none of that ever-present blah blah blah (old, boring, tired) debating about the reality of ESP. ;)
My response to Bem's article was more in line with Burkley's question: "If we suspend our beliefs about time and accept that the brain is capable of reaching into the future, the next question becomes 'how does it do this?'" The question in my notes was... What, if any, is/are the neurological, neurochemical, and/or neuroelectrical correlates of the salience of information that has significance in the future? (Note that I didn't say 'information from the future', for good reason.)
If you remember this modest post, you'll understand what I'm getting at with that question and where I hope researchers like Bem will go next. Which brings me to...
Suggestion 1: I would like to see a database of psychological and neurological characteristics for high-performing (and no-effect) subjects. Bem had some psychological data in his results (e.g., stimulus-seeking) but there is room for a much more comprehensive workup involving more-detailed psychological profiles. I would also like to see EEG responses at various points during this testing paradigm. (And, of course, appropriate control data.) With the collection and comparison of appropriate EEG data, it might be possible to isolate an element of the response that indicates the 'path' from the future. Further testing could then see if this element of the EEG response alone could predict a successful trial. [Note: I picked EEG data largely because I am already familiar with EEG and ERP testing paradigms and data collection. And, one might expect to see clean/robust differences in EEG data if differences in 'stimulus-seeking' are involved.]
Suggestion 2: Train subjects with the goal of improving their performance. Ideally, these would be the same subjects from which you have created the aforementioned database, as it would also be interesting to know if/how the aforementioned EEG markers covaried as the brain adapted to using this 'source' of information.
Suggestion 3: Something in Bem's results made me wonder if there wasn't something within the timing of the response to the stimuli which could illuminate the 'path' that this information took. No solid ideas yet, I can't quite shake the notion that there's something there...
Daryl, this post is for you, because I admire the clean and elegant design of your experiments, and I hope you'll follow them up with additional research.
My response to Bem's article was more in line with Burkley's question: "If we suspend our beliefs about time and accept that the brain is capable of reaching into the future, the next question becomes 'how does it do this?'" The question in my notes was... What, if any, is/are the neurological, neurochemical, and/or neuroelectrical correlates of the salience of information that has significance in the future? (Note that I didn't say 'information from the future', for good reason.)
If you remember this modest post, you'll understand what I'm getting at with that question and where I hope researchers like Bem will go next. Which brings me to...
Suggestion 1: I would like to see a database of psychological and neurological characteristics for high-performing (and no-effect) subjects. Bem had some psychological data in his results (e.g., stimulus-seeking) but there is room for a much more comprehensive workup involving more-detailed psychological profiles. I would also like to see EEG responses at various points during this testing paradigm. (And, of course, appropriate control data.) With the collection and comparison of appropriate EEG data, it might be possible to isolate an element of the response that indicates the 'path' from the future. Further testing could then see if this element of the EEG response alone could predict a successful trial. [Note: I picked EEG data largely because I am already familiar with EEG and ERP testing paradigms and data collection. And, one might expect to see clean/robust differences in EEG data if differences in 'stimulus-seeking' are involved.]
Suggestion 2: Train subjects with the goal of improving their performance. Ideally, these would be the same subjects from which you have created the aforementioned database, as it would also be interesting to know if/how the aforementioned EEG markers covaried as the brain adapted to using this 'source' of information.
Suggestion 3: Something in Bem's results made me wonder if there wasn't something within the timing of the response to the stimuli which could illuminate the 'path' that this information took. No solid ideas yet, I can't quite shake the notion that there's something there...
Daryl, this post is for you, because I admire the clean and elegant design of your experiments, and I hope you'll follow them up with additional research.
