In 1942 the famous scientist Dr. Nikola Tesla (suspected as having autism spectrum disorder) said, "If you want to find the secrets of the Universe, think in terms of energy, frequency and vibration."  The whole of the Universe is energy and each basic element of the known atomic chart consists of energy at different rates of vibration.  The difference between any two elements is the difference in both atomic structure and vibration rates.

Spiritual growth is our only purpose and reason for being alive on earth.  Each individual must learn how to utilize this energy for spiritual growth and constructive purposes. Constructive use (positive use) of this energy raises the level of consciousness of man and in turn raises his vibration rate or frequency.  Every individual has a different rate of vibration.  All of man's earthly problems are created by his thought projections.  What we project from our mind in the form of thoughts, we create and receive. Spiritual growth requires the elimination of all negative thought, which dissipates "the life force" or vital energy.

There is a frequency or vibration of energy that fills the Universe.   Man utilizes this energy with his mind.  Every thought is transmitted by this energy.  Every aspect of life in the physical depends on this basic energy or power of the Universe”.

Everything in this world is energy and this energy gives off vibrations and that possibly these vibrations may contain the past, present and future history of the object. It is believed that a medium is somehow able to tap into these vibrations which give them a better insight?

It is our thinking that the possible connection involving a person with autism and the paranormal lies in the ability of a person with autism to tap into these vibrations that are similar to the ability of a psychic medium.

 Alpha waves are the frequency associated with creativity and relaxation. While in the Beta state: you are focused and in deep concentration. Gamma is the frequency assigned with awareness and precognition.

During a paranormal encounter science has identified energy fluctuations, extreme temperature differences and at the end there is a burst of Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation.

Electromagnetic fields are present everywhere in our environment but are invisible to the human eye. Every time a neuron (A neuron is an electrically excitable cell that processes and transmits information by electrical and chemical signaling) fires to communicate information to another neuron, an electro-magnetic spark of energy is released. It's like firing a gun to send a message. Humans have an Electromagnetic field and when we die, that field goes with us.

Because of the similarities associated with a psychic medium, it is our thought that those with autism are able to detect and pick up on the Alpha, Beta and Gamma radiation that is released during a paranormal encounter as well as the Electromagnetic fields that are generated everywhere including those with spirits.

This may account for the ability of those with autism to see and hear the spirits as well as the reported changes associated with Alpha, Beta and Gamma frequencies.

Source: https://www.cantonrep.com/story/news/columns/2012/07/20/autism-connecting-paranormal-dots/42246963007/

They are special, no doubt about that. They have their own ways of seeing the world and communicating. And though it can be trying at times, having an autistic child can make your heart grow. These children have so many gifts and can teach us patience. But they have other abilities as well.

If you have one of these special children, you may have noticed that things happen around your house. No, I’m not talking about the normal things in a child-filled home. I’m talking about unusual things. Ghostly things. Things that go bump in the night.

It would appear as if unseen beings like autistic children. Because they process information and see the world differently, autistic children may be more likely to see strange things. They often witness activities way before anyone else in the home. They are more sensitive to nuances, and they cannot lie. If they look at the ceiling and react as if someone is talking to them, you should not, naturally, assume it is a ghost. You must always consider the possibility of hallucination. Medications or mental illness certainly can have that effect. However, when others see and hear the same things, then you might consider other possibilities.

Take Melissa for example. Melissa is a single mom to 12-year-old autistic Daniel. From the time he was little, Daniel would look up at the ceiling and react to some invisible being. As he got older, Daniel would draw pictures of an old man in a cowboy hat and say things like ‘he here.’ He’d point to the picture, then at the ceiling. With time, Melissa became worried about her son’s mental health and took him to a neurologist who found nothing wrong but referred Daniel to a psychiatrist. Though Daniel showed no other signs of psychosis other than seemingly seeing something in the home, the psychiatrist said Daniel was psychotic. This was a real blow, and Melissa was devastated.

Yet, Daniel wasn’t the only family member to see the old cowboy. Even though Melissa hadn’t seen him, her mother had. And Daniel’s 9-year-old brother had seen and heard the man as well. It wasn’t until a neighbor saw the cowboy that Melissa began to believe there was more at work than psychosis.

Melissa began asking questions about the area where her family lived. She never did find out if anyone had died on the property, but after asking around, she found there were other people in the neighborhood who had had strange things happening in their homes too. They talked about things moving on their own. Doors slammed when the windows were closed. Melissa is convinced that her family has contact with the paranormal. She is very angry that her son was labeled as psychotic when he clearly was not. Since coming to terms with it, Melissa said the activity lessened.

Something went on in her home. Whether paranormal or not, her son saw something unusual before anyone else did. Was it his autism that allowed him to do so?

Another case involved Billie and her husband Ray. Billie and Ray were at their wit’s end when their autistic daughter claimed to see people who weren’t there. They took their concerns to their primary doctor who told them that it likely wasn’t schizophrenia and that they should not fear seeing a psychologist. Reluctantly they took Elle to one. Thankfully, this professional was not the type to jump to conclusions. She did say that Elle was very imaginative and it was likely the product of an overactive imagination. Elle was given a clean bill of health, but the family was confused. Elle really believed what she saw.

Maybe it was their apartment, they thought. Maybe being there was too noisy. There was constant traffic and construction. Their lease was coming due anyway, so they decided to move. A change of scenery could help, they thought. But Elle didn’t let up in her behavior after the move. In fact, now it wasn’t only Elle who experienced the vision of the Asian man. Billie began dreaming of him. Her husband Ray had the feeling of being touched when he was in bed. Things seemed to rearrange themselves in the home.

What was going on? Billie had a friend who knew someone who was psychic. After all the family had gone through, she figured she’d give that a shot. She asked if the psychic could help, and the psychic agreed to do "remote viewing" of the home. Billie was shocked when the psychic talked about an Asian man who had been killed in a robbery. She said the man was named Ron and had followed Elle home when he saw her. She said the man meant no harm. He simply wanted to be seen and heard. The psychic told Billie that if she spoke to Ron and told him that he was scaring them that he would go away. Reluctantly, Billie took an afternoon when everyone was out of the home and had a "talk" with Ron. She told him he was scaring them and that they wanted him to leave. Billie reported that she heard a loud bang after she told Ron to leave. Was it the neighbors? She wasn’t sure. However, after her "talk," the activity in the home decreased.

Many, many people with autistic children seem to experience the paranormal. In some cases it is simply a matter of a bad medicine reaction. Once the medication is changed, then the "ghost" disappears. However, there are other cases where family members see and hear things as well. If you have had this happen, then you should know you are not alone. But this can add so much stress to an already stressful situation. How can a family cope with strange happenings on top of dealing with a special child?

Don’t jump to conclusions. If your child seems to be interacting with something that you cannot see, don’t assume that it is paranormal. Always look for a physical or psychological cause for any unusual behavior. Check with doctors and check medicines. Always take care of your child’s physical and mental health.

There are so many wonders in this world, and we will never know everything. Some events can be explained; some cannot be explained. Some may scare you, while others are helpful and comforting. Just know that your child is more special than you even knew! And if you are one of the parents living with a child who is different from others, please understand that you are special, too.

Source: https://www.psychologytoday.com/ca/blog/disturbed/201310/are-autistic-kids-magnets-ghosts

Strange reports by kids with high-functioning autism raise intriguing questions. 

KEY POINTS

Recent research suggests that individuals with high-functioning autism may be more likely to report anomalous perceptions.

Gifted children and people who are highly empathetic may also be more likely than most to report anomalous perceptions.

One research team even suggested that “anomalous perception may be experienced by the majority of high-functioning adults” with autism.

This past summer, I came across a most curious report. A family in central California drove into the mountains and stopped to have lunch. That’s when their day started to veer wildly from what they’d planned. As they were eating, their 3-year-old son Kadyn began talking to someone. Pointing to a spot in a nearby meadow, he informed his parents that a woman was lying face down, unable to speak or move. “He flat out told us, ‘Mom, she’s dead; she needs our help,'” said his mother. “That’s when I got the goosebumps.”

Kadyn, described a woman in a black shirt, with blue jeans and blue hair. He said that she’d been “shooted by a bad man.” His parents checked out the meadow but saw nothing. So spooked were they by what their young son insisted, they decided to end their recreation day early and head home. Once there, they posted on Facebook. A Madera County Sheriff’s deputy saw the post and contacted them to investigate—since a woman matching Kadyn’s description had gone missing for more than two weeks in that vicinity. Sandra Johnsen-Hughes had been camping alone in the Sierra National Forest; authorities found her crashed car and a “quite disheveled” campsite but, despite an extensive search, no sign of her. Nor was any further trace found when the deputy took Kadyn and his family back to the meadow. However, Kadyn identified the woman in 3 out of 4 photos that he was shown.

While this report is open to questions (e.g., Was the boy’s account driven by an over-active imagination?; Might he have been coached by his parents for publicity purposes?), it aligns with more systematic evidence that certain kinds of people—synesthetes, gifted children, people who are highly empathetic, children with sensory processing disorder, and at least some individuals with autism—are more likely than most to report anomalous perceptions.

In recent years, several scientific papers have examined such experiences in people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). One study was quite large, with nearly 800 participants. A second study found self-reported anomalous experiences significantly higher among a ‘neurodiverse’ group (primarily individuals with high-functioning autism) than a ‘neurotypical’ group. A third study directly compared the extent of anomalous perceptions reported by individuals with high-functioning autism against a matched, non-autistic group. Of the former, 41% said that their anomalous perceptions had been spontaneous and recurrent since childhood. A fourth research team went so far as to suggest that “anomalous perception may be experienced by the majority of high-functioning adults” on the autism spectrum.

Join Skeptiko host Alex Tsakiris for an interview with neuroscientist, psychiatrist and author Dr. Diane Powell.  During the interview Powell discusses her latest telepathy research working with mathematically gifted autistic savant children:

Alex Tsakiris: So you give this child a six-digit number, and a two-digit number and say, “Multiply those two together” [but that’s] just a distraction to keep her mind occupied [because what you’re finding is] she’s getting the answers telepathically…

Diane Powell: Right, and one of the reasons I know it’s [telepathic] is based on a couple of errors that the therapist made. The therapist isn’t someone who knows math. So the therapist, when she looked at the piece of paper that had the equation that was asking for the cube roots, and this happened on two of the occasions… she is mistook the cube root symbol for meaning divide by three. So she asks the girl, “What’s the first number?” then she gives this long number and then she says and what is it divided by, and the girl says three, and then she asks, “And what’s the answer?” and the girl gives the answer for the cube root, she doesn’t give the answer for dividing that number by three.

Alex Tsakiris: Today we welcome Dr. Diane Powell back to Skeptiko. When we last heard from Dr. Powell in episode 197 – I had to look that up. It was almost one year ago at the beginning of 2014. Well, this Johns Hopkins School of Medicine trained neuroscientist with post doctorate training and psychiatry and a faculty appointment at Harvard Medical School – yeah, folks. She is really, really smart in case you don’t remember that. Anyway, when we last talked to Diane she was just getting ready to head off to India to conduct this really fascinating research into telepathy. And she was quite excited when we talked to her because she thought she really had a chance of nailing this down experimentally and showing people that this really can be demonstrated in a controlled experiment.

So she is back to tell us what she found out. Dr. Powell, welcome to Skeptiko. Thanks again for joining me.

Diane Powell: Thank you for having me. It is wonderful to have this opportunity to talk about the research.

Alex Tsakiris: Well great. Then let’s jump right in to talking about the research. Someone passed along a link to me about your work and then you were nice enough to give me a peek at the paper that is about to come out. Go ahead, tell us what you did, why you did it, and then what you found out.

Diane Powell: Well, what I did was years ago was I took my background as a neuroscientist and as a psychiatrist who spends time with patients, observing them and exploring what their experience of the world is. And I took that experience and I thought about who would be the most likely candidate to prove telepathy, if telepathy is real. And I decided upon studying the population called autistic savants, and these are people with autism, but they are also people who have some special skill that is unexplainable. For example, a mathematical savant would be somebody who can do complex math but they never had any formal training in how to do simple math, like simple multiplication. And so I thought when I looked at some of these skills that were accepted by scientists as they are reliably reproduced and they are just as mysterious as some of them – some of them are just as mysterious as what we would label as psy. So, for example, although you have people like Daniel Tammet who can give you Pi to over 22,000 decimal points. He has a phenomenal memory and he also has phenomenal pattern recognition.

I thought I could explain the savant skills by that kind of a modeling but when I was looking more and more at some of these savant skills, the people who were able to express what their experience is, they said that they are not dividing in their head and the answer just pops into their consciousness. And they don’t know how they get it. And so I thought that just sounds so much like psy, maybe it is. And so I hypothesized that it is not necessarily that psy is a savant skill it is more that if someone had psy they might be labeled and autistic savant and actually what they are doing is deriving the information psychically.

So I thought I am going to look for someone who has been diagnosed as an autistic savant and then also for telepathy I thought the situation which would make it most likely for someone to exhibit that would be if they had a high motivation. So the highest motivation is to be trapped in a body in which you cannot verbally communicate and that is the case for a child with nonverbal autism. We really don’t have any reason to think that they don’t have intact language capacity. What we do know is they have an inability to control their ability to speak and their ability to move their body in a way that they can communicate in usual ways. So that is the population I targeted.

Alex Tsakiris: Wow – let me stop there and recap because that is great thinking on your part. So you started out by saying okay, here is a recognized anomaly, consciousness anomaly, if you will. They are underdeveloped in this one way but they are super developed in this other way and the key thing I heard you say is that this is accepted in science and medicine. So we have studied savants and autistic savants, and that is a known phenomenon, so that is out of the way. And then you further said, – I love this last part, where you said is this a population that we could expect to one, experience psy, and because they are self-reporting that they are experiencing it and it seems to line up with the way other folks experience psy. And then finally – I love this other angle you put on it and you said that you just had this hunch as a psychiatrist this group of people might be highly motivated to communicate. So those factors together is what led you in this direction and that’s really quite amazing.

Diane Powell: Yes, well thank you, thank you. And so what I have – and this is one of the reasons why I think I am in a position where I could actually prove telepathy, that I have a model. I am approaching this as someone who studied and I have been in five different neuroscience laboratories and a lot of people don’t realize that I spent two decades immersed in the very scientific model that we get dismissed by as parapsychologists. So I am really somebody who is bridging both worlds.

Alex Tsakiris: And you worked. Just reading your [inaudible – 00:05:58] it is really impressive. You work with some very heavy people academically in terms of your neuroscience training, is that right?

Diane Powell: Yes, yes, exactly. I have worked with people who have been Nobel laureates and Nobel candidates. And I have worked in the neuroscience laboratory of Joseph Quail and he – and then I worked with him again when I did my child psychiatry training and Johns Hopkins. So he knew me as both a neuroscientist and as a psychiatry resident. And he went on from Hopkins to be the head of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital and McClaine, where he still is. So I have people in academia who respect me as a scientist and what I need to do is translate this into the type of scientific language that I know they would understand.

Alex Tsakiris: I am sorry Diane, I kind of shifted things a little bit. I am really curious about this, and you touched on it, and that is the model that you actually have. You have a theory and a model for how this might work.

Diane Powell: One of the things that I am doing is I have a testable model and I really want to not get into my model too much because it is not published, so I would rather just get into explaining what I have in the way of data and where I want to go a little bit and leave talking about the model until later if you don’t mind.

Alex Tsakiris: You bet. Go ahead.

Diane Powell: So what I have in the way of data is I received a letter, actually, from the father of a child who was 9 years old at the time and he had heard, because of me expressing my interest in this child, he had heard that I was interested and he had been referred to me by Daryl [Treffert 00:05:58], who is an expert on autistic savants. And they thought initially that this girl was a mathematical savant because she was giving the answers to these very complicated math questions – for example, multiplying 6 digits by 6 digits, finding cube roots of 6-digit numbers, that sort of that thing. And she couldn’t do simple math. She couldn’t do simple multiplication. And what happened was when this therapist that works in the home with the girl – she made a mistake and she found that the girl would copy her mistakes. One time she switched from using a calculator to generate the answer to this equation, because they were beyond her ability. The answer switched when she went from using a calculator to an iPad to a logarithmic expression. And the girl actually typed out the logarithmic answer – and that is what made the therapist go, ‘Whoa, what is happening here?’

So it was someone in the field who is spending intense time with the patient, and I am still a practicing psychiatrist, and spending time with people that you get to see that these things are real. But unfortunately there is this huge divide between the people who are in the fields, doing this work, and the people who are the neuroscientists who are in the position of creating basically a model for our understanding of the brain and consciousness. So there is often this big divide and it is one half that isn’t speaking to the other half.

Alex Tsakiris: So there is this therapist who is working with this child – and it is interesting, let me make sure I got this right. You said she switched over from a digital calculator that gave the readout as a number, dot, and then a decimal. And then she switched over the iPad and gave the answer logarithmically and then as soon as she changed that the answers coming back from the kid she was working with changed accordingly – did I get that right?

Diane Powell: Yes, exactly. So for example if the answer was what the number would be if you were using a different base – let’s say you were going to have the answer expressed in binary notation, just a series of ones and zeros, this girl would be able to express the answer in the ones and zeros to make them simple because that is a binary expression of the same number. So it is absolutely amazing. Then another, a second therapist, independently who worked with the girl because she has about four therapists who work with her – the second therapist independently had a similar experience where she made a mistake and the girl repeated her mistake. Then she saw this often enough that she said, ‘Hey, it’s like you’re reading my mind.’ Then she had the thought, ‘How do you say I love you in German?’ And the girl typed out the German for ‘I love you’ – ich liebe dich.

Alex Tsakiris: Oh my gosh.

Diane Powell: So this created the opportunity to go and test her with two independent therapists. And the results, if people go to my website and they want to read the abstract, you will see that the results are astounding. I mean, there is this one period where I have over four hours of experimental footage with her. And there was a period of about ten minutes of where she gave – out of 162 random numbers, and I was generating these with a random number generator, out of 162, she only made 7 errors. And each one of those she corrected on the second try.

Alex Tsakiris: Say that again, really slowly. So tell folks exactly the setup and then how you conducted the experiment and then what the results were.

Diane Powell: So the setup was that the girl had been sitting – and when I was first contacted by her family she would sit at the same table with the therapist and the girl was typing independently the answers to these questions into either a iPad or into a talker, which is a device that has a qwerty keyboard and it has all the numbers there right on the device itself. It is something that has been developed specifically for children with autism and special needs.

Alex Tsakiris: Right, because she is nonverbal and she can’t speak in a normal way?

Diane Powell: Right, so this is their communication device, correct. And so she would just type into that using one finger. And so I said to them that they needed to have a visual barrier between the two of them because of the protocol that parapsychologists have to follow and there has to be no evidence of any kind of potential for visual of physical cuing. So because the girl is autistic and children who are autistic will react frequently in a way that they have tantrums when you introduce something new to their environment – because of that, you can only modify the environment in increments of change that they can handle. You want to minimize the stress to the person who is doing this. And so we introduced this basically standing mirror that is over 5 feet tall and it is about 2 feet wide, and we put material over it so the mirror part wasn’t there and that part was facing the therapist. But it had cloth over it. So it was essentially a 2-foot barrier between the two of them so that the therapist was on one side and she would ask this girl, who goes by the name of Hailey, would ask Hailey, ‘What am I thinking? What am I reading?’

I had generated random numbers, I generated random sentences, I generated even fake words and I gave them to – I had total control over the experimental conditions and it was only the therapist and Hailey in the room on either side of this divider. And I was with my videographer in another room and we had cameras documenting the experimental space entirely. We had cameras in front of them, behind them, mounted on either side of the divider, so that we saw everything. It was capable of a frame-by-frame analysis and we had a total of five different camera views watching everything.

The therapist would be given a stack of stimuli. For example, I think the most impressive time period was on the second day I was there and I was only there for three days. The second day that I was there, it was when I asked for her to give the numbers that are involved in mathematical questions and so I generated these numbers using a random number generator, created these large equations with them – for example, maybe multiplying a six-digit number by a two-digit number, that sort of thing. And then I used a calculator to calculate the answer. And the reason why I set up this part of the experiment this was that one of the things that I was told by the therapist – and this turned out to be true – is that she does better if she is fooled into thinking – she was getting bored with the constant telepathy experiments. They get bored, these are very bright children often times. So to make it more challenging for her and to make it feel like okay, we’re doing some homework here. I put it into this format of an equation.

I wrote them down on pieces of paper after generating them and then I put them in the stack, face down, and handed them to the therapist. And she picked them up one by one, and showed them to the camera on her side and says to Hailey, ‘What number am I thinking?’ And Hailey then would use her right hand to pick the number from a stencil – these are these plastic boards that are very thick that have cutout letters in them and numbers in them. And it is what she first learned language using. We ended up having to work with her with her pointing to the stencil first and then she would type the answer with her left finger into the talker. We had to do it that way because that was the way that the therapist had been doing it with her leading up to the time that I was able to go there and film it. So we couldn’t really change the protocol so we just filmed it as accurately as we could.

Alex Tsakiris: So you are giving her a six-digit number, a two-digit number and then you are saying, ‘What is the answer if you multiply those two together?’ just to keep her mind occupied that there really is some mathematical work to be involved and then she is getting the answers telepathically to each number, the two numbers you are multiplying together and the answer.

Diane Powell: Right, and one of the reasons why I know that it is not that she is doing this because she is a mathematical savant is based on a couple of errors that the therapist made. The therapist isn’t someone who knows math. So the therapist, when she looked at the piece of paper that had the equation that was asking for the cube roots, and this happened on two of the occasions and two of the ten equations were like this where she is looking at it and she is mistaking the cube root symbol for meaning divide by three. So she asks the girl to – what’s the first number, then she gives this long number and then she says and what is it divided by, and the girl says three, and then she says, ‘And what’s the answer?’ and the girl gives the answer for the cube root, she doesn’t give the answer for dividing that number by three.

Alex Tsakiris: Wow, that’s very interesting.

Diane Powell: Yes, and so the experiments – I am just describing a small set of the experiments but I missed it up. I had different ways in which I presented the different stimuli that I used. There are different ways in which I presented it. And so I have a lot of built-in controls in the data set itself. And this setup, no matter what people think is going on, this setup is a wonderful opportunity to explore whatever is going on here. Even if it were subtle cuing, which is really hard to imagine that it is because you don’t see anything that would indicate that.

Alex Tsakiris: Do we really have to go there? I mean, come on, this is such a simple experiment. You have five cameras and you have this divider. I mean, I know you have to go there but I almost think that is just like too goofy to even explore, subtle cuing. We don’t understand it, yeah, but I mean – recap for me again. I don’t want to – I know you have to go there and I know you will in your paper, but give us again the results. So now we understand that. You have got this six-digit number, a cube root. I mean I can’t do the cube root of 27. So a six-digit number cube root, I don’t even know. Then the results she gets – 100% of the numbers, like 30 or 40 times in a row.

Diane Powell: And she did that all in ten minutes. Each one of these equations only took her about a minute on average. And so for her to, in about ten minutes plus or minus some, she was able to give 162 numbers and only made seven errors. And corrected them on the second time. And what was interesting was when she made those errors they often times might have been errors that have to do with more of a motor control issue because having talked with people who have worked with these children they say that sometimes it’s harder for them to – that they will accidentally hit the wrong, like when we hit the wrong key. And there is no reverse there for her to go, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean that.’ So we had the remote feed and we could monitor the experiment from another room. And sometimes you could see that when she made the error that she was a little frustrated because there was no way for her to express to erase that. So next time I do experiments I am actually going to have built into whatever she is using as a communication device something where she can communicate that she wants to backspace and correct something.

Alex Tsakiris: So an unbelievably amazing result statistically. I don’t even want to get into statistics because it is just too outrageous, that kind of statistical significance that would be in that set of experiments there. I mean, 160 out of 170 or whatever it is, that’s just too amazing to even calculate. What does this mean? What does it mean Diane?

Diane Powell: Well I think that once telepathy is proven, and I really – one of the things I want to say is that because of the fact that there are these people who are such extreme skeptics out there, I am not done yet, I presented this data at the parapsychological association’s annual meeting in the Bay Area in August and people who saw the video, the called it jaw-dropping. It really is quite incredible footage.

The problem is that it is not blind the way the skeptics would like. The therapist who is there with her in the room is the one who knows the answer, ideally that wouldn’t be the case. But when I listen to the whole story, if you really look at this and you try to be parsimonious with your conclusion and you look at the fact that the father, the mother, two independent therapists, all of whom I interviewed independently for half an hour or an hour each about this child, they would all have to be lying to me because what they described to me is that she can do it without this particular setup. But there are skeptics who will say oh, there is an electronic device in the room. How do I know that it is not an electronic device? People are that skeptical.

So what I need to do is I want to put the best foot forward. I want to go back and film her. And I have at least two, if not three, other children who are like her to show that this isn’t just this child. And armed with being able to show that it is not just unique to this child and being able to go back and have the optimal setup, that is going to put me in a position where I can write this up and it will change everything. You know how much hostility there has been towards this area of research and when you actually come up with the first irrefutable data and you have people who are neuroscientists and I really believe that I have an opportunity to get neuroscientists to agree with this data. I have shown it already to some of my – I have shown my paper and I have also shown the experimental video to a psychiatrist from Johns Hopkins who looked at it and said it has to be telepathy.

So I really have something powerful here. I want to present it to the world with the best platform possible. I am looking to raise money for funding this next wing, to go back to India and a couple of other places in the world. There are also some children here in the US. And document their abilities, write it up, and change the paradigm.

Alex Tsakiris: Because you have been doing this and basically funding it out of your own pocket, more or less, up until now, right? This research generally costs a lot of money to conduct this on a full-scale basis. If you were being sponsored by a university this would be a million dollar plus kind of effort and I am sure you are just doing the best you can. But you have to fund this yourself, right?

Diane Powell: Yes, and that is what slows down the progress. That is why I haven’t written another book since the [inaudible – 00:26:11]. It is not because I haven’t advanced my model and my theory and thinking, and it is not that I don’t have a lot more to say, it is that I have an active, full-time psychiatrist practice that pays my bills for me to go to India and for me to go and do these kinds of experiments.

Alex Tsakiris: How much money do you need to raise, Diane? How can people hop on board? I am definitely on board with this, just give me the Kickstarter address and I am in. Just tell me how much we need to get how we are going to do it.

Diane Powell: What we are going to do is we are going to start a Kickstarter campaign on November 3rd and the reason why we chose that date is because I will be on Coast to Coast for November 3rd and there is a large audience then. And it will be – the Kickstarter campaign will be running through mid-December and I will be doing several radio appearances in the meantime. So I want people to spread the news about it. Tell all your friends. And in terms of how much money do I need, there are going to be different levels of funding. With Kickstarter campaigns there is an art to requesting funding. Ideally a million dollars would be phenomenal. That would enable me to devote myself to this work and get a book out there, get an article out there within this next year. If I got $100,000 that would enable me to go and my videographer could go and we could get additional footage that we could then use for a documentary and I could write up a paper. It wouldn’t be enough money to create the documentary. So what I am doing is I am going to set an initial level of $100,000 just for me to go and do the next phase of this research, which I am very optimistic will be all I will need to do. I am that close. But any money we raise beyond that will accelerate the pace at which this research gets out there.

Alex Tsakiris: Great, well we will certainly do our part here at Skeptiko and maybe a little bit before it hits on Coast to Coast and we will see if we can get a couple of folks over there to help get the ball rolling. It is important work. I just have serious doubts about whether or not this will lead to any big paradigm change. But I do think that you have some interesting angle in terms of I think you understand what it takes. Tell folks a little bit about why you think this can really change some minds. I mean, it’s not going to change everyone’s minds, but tell us why you think this has a chance of kind of permeating that stone wall against anything like this, any kind of psy or parapsychology, paranormal phenomenon.

Diane Powell: I think it is a combination of things. I think first of all it is the fact that I come from this neuroscience background and I am a neuropsychiatrist and I can write about this and discuss it in scientific terms. Secondly it is how compelling the data is. It is just strikingly compelling, particularly when you combine it with the stories of not only this child but the stories of other children who are highly telepathic. I have a model to explain it.

One of the things that I think is that I think this is really an innate ability. I don’t think it is supernatural, I think it is an innate ability but that autistic children are able to demonstrate it to the type of precision and reliability that is necessary for scientific proof and I don’t think it is a supernatural ability. I think it is something that is part of who we are as human beings and it is innate in all of us.

Alex Tsakiris: I think is looking through the wrong end of the telescope, but I will go with you for purposes of getting it through, sure yeah.

Diane Powell: Well you really I think that what we call supernatural – see one of the problems is that implies that it defies laws of nature. But if you think about the fact that we live in a world where Einstein radically changed our concept of time and space and matter, and that was a century ago.

Alex Tsakiris: But we don’t really live in that world. That is the issue. We don’t really live in that world, we just choose to say well, that all sounds good. Let me just go on with things the way they are. But I don’t know that we can live in that world. I don’t know if we are equipped to live in that world. And maybe what you are talking about – the last time you were on, I loved the phrase that you put down. You said, ‘I want to lay down a first paver for this.’ Like pave the highway, I want to just put the first layer on the road because we do have to start somewhere if we are going to try and turn the telescope around and say hey, let’s take a broader look at consciousness.

Diane Powell: Right, but all I am saying in terms of brining in the physics, because say that is just using the one weird phenomenon to describe another phenomenon, but what I am saying is that we actually do live in that world. It is not how we experience the world because our brain is what plays a role in how we perceive our world. But we do live in that world. We do live in a world in which matter is made up of – it is not what we think it is. We do live in that world.

Alex Tsakiris: And I wasn’t trying to be too obtuse, but in another way that we don’t totally understand we don’t live in that world because we construct a world that says time is linear. Yesterday was yesterday and tomorrow is tomorrow. We live in a world that we construct that says this is solid. Then we encounter other people who don’t live in that world. They say well no, that is not really the way that it is.

Diane Powell: Yeah, exactly. But I also believe that it is like – so for example, with telepathy I also believe that it is like the four-minute mile in the sense that people thought that you couldn’t run a mile in less than four minutes. And it was a psychological barrier. Once that psychological barrier was broken it was broken many more times and by at least 17 more seconds. And so I think that we have a very limited sense of what our potential is, and that is the point that I am getting at.

Alex Tsakiris: Yes.

Diane Powell: But in terms of being able to get scientists to look at this seriously I realized from what I know as a neuroscientist that there are all of these phenomena that are already unexplained phenomena and then when you lump them all together it really challenges the way that people think about our brain and its relationship to consciousness. It really does. But you don’t have to throw out neuroscience. There is a way of actually combining the best of both.

Alex Tsakiris: Right, there has to be because sometimes I get off on this thing about kind of knocking neuroscience and the kind of brain dead, materialist, reductionalist but it is super effective in a lot of areas and we can’t deny that. We have all this medical – all these medical miracles that prove that and all these drugs that prove that. So I think that is wonderful that you have this sense that they can be integrated. And I guess you are also saying, I am reading into what you are saying, that you feel like there is a certain groundswell of if not support maybe openness or willingness to kind of reconsider some of the ideas that you are talking about. Do you sense that?

Diane Powell: Oh, absolutely. I am seeing two things. One is that when I was at the parapsychological association meeting I saw that people were much more optimistic about parapsychology in our research and the increased interest in it. People are much more optimistic about that. This is one of those pendulums that swings back and forth. But more importantly there are more and more neuroscientists who are coming forward and saying, ‘Our model is broken. It doesn’t work.’ In fact, there are over 400 neuroscientists who are protesting this brain mapping initiative because they see it as a waste of time. It is not going to get us any closer to understanding it. So this is where I am a full member of both communities and I understand each of them and what they know. That is rare, most people aren’t in both communities and know what each other know. I know what the parapsychological community knows and there is a lot of really valid data out there that needs to be looked at. And I know what neuroscientists know and that has to be incorporated into the model. If it is not it will get rejected. And I am somebody who can do that.

Alex Tsakiris: That is very promising, and particularly the neuroscience that emerges out of the medical branch from these schools of medicine, these highly – some of the best schools of medicine in the world that you have been associated with – Johns Hopkins, Harvard, those kind of people. And the reason that I say that is what I am seeing in just observing this landscape is that the medical people, they are just more pragmatic. They are like hey, how do we get this done? How do we cure this illness? How do we make my patients better. They are kind of less inhibited by the philosophical implications of things. Do you find that to be true?

Diane Powell: Absolutely. That is one of the reasons why I want to present this to psychiatric communities, give it as a grand rounds talk about it in terms of we initially talked about it from the standpoint of look at what we’re seeing in this population of autistic children and get their interest because in psychiatry people with autism aren’t supposed to have a theory of mind. They are not supposed to realize that other people have ongoing thoughts. That is one of the kind of basic premises behind why it is named autism. Autism comes from autos, meaning self. And they think they are antisocial and really don’t have any concept of other beings as having consciousness. That is far from the truth.

So the fact that his girl can be asked by a therapist, ‘Read my mind,’ and she gets an accurate representation that is just – that alone breaks psychiatry’s conception of these children and it creates and opening to then say to look at this other thing as well. And yes, I do believe that clinicians, because those of us who actually work with these patients, we see that there is stuff that we don’t understand. Neuroscientists are in the laboratories and they are reading papers that confirm their theories and they are not really having them challenged the way a clinician does. And there is a pragmatism of it is not about me, it is about service. And what do I need to understand to serve you? I feel that way about individuals and I feel that way about society.

Alex Tsakiris: That is excellent. It is certainly an optimistic view of things and there is nothing wrong with a little optimism now and then. So let’s see if we can get everyone on board on this Kickstarter campaign. There aren’t many research projects out there that have this much potential to really turn the ocean liner a little bit, but you certainly made a great case for yours, Diane. So again, that kickstarter campaign, I will have that, folks, up in the show notes. I don’t have it right now because Diane hasn’t posted it but I will put it up in the show notes. Make sure you go over there and check it out and throw a few dollars that way. Let’s see if we can move this thing a little bit further along.

Diane, it has been great having you on. Is there anything else we need to mention before we go?

Diane Powell: Well, I was going to just put a little thing out there that was I smiled when I read who won the Nobel prize for medicine this year because it was work with rats and it is work that is on their internal GPS system. And they discovered these cells that are in the brain in the region of the brain that I am very interested in the limbic system that respond to and know where – it is like a map that the mouse has or a rat has which is a map of their environment. They trigger off certain cells specifically only when they are in that specific location within t heir environment. And that is what the Nobel prize was given to, proving that there is a sort of GPS in these brains.

Well, there is also research that is very interesting about large cats who have territories and they have a GPS in their brain and they have a sense of their territory and when there is another creature within their territory and not within sight or smell. They have similarly – they have a part of their brain that responds to that. Isn’t that interesting? Because that goes along with this idea that we have, within our brain, an ability to navigate space time around us. Do you see that?

Alex Tsakiris: Not exactly. The one thing that always is kind of hard for me is that when we start talking about neurocorrelates for consciousness, again I can’t feel that we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Diane Powell: Okay, let me make sure that you understand this. This is a very important part because I am not really looking through the wrong end of the telescope.

Alex Tsakiris: I know you are not, and please explain it to me. I just worry that we have to put it in those terms in order for it to fit in with this accepted paradigm that we have, that the brain is kind of creating consciousness and that sort of thing. But please, go ahead.

Diane Powell: Actually, it isn’t about the brain creating consciousness. This is about the brain’s ability to navigate our world in ways in which it is not the census that we know about, that the information is coming from. So that goes against the model that neuroscience has. This cat that is not – the fact that a part of its brain lights up and is more active and gets more of an electrical signal when specifically something is happening within this internal map that is has of the world –

Alex Tsakiris: So there is an extra antenna in the rat’s brain that we don’t –

Diane Powell: Right, that is what I am saying. And so the neurons – if there is perception, so when somebody perceives a vision, and it could be that the vision actually is associated with something that is – just any experience that you have, Any human experience that you have, whether it is hallucination or actually seeing something that is really there, they each light up the visual cortex. That doesn’t explain anything, that is a correlation. The reason why the correlation is important is not as an explanatory thing. the correlation is important because anything that is really happening in conscious experience has a correlated neural activity but the neural activity doesn’t explain it. It just validates that this person is actually having an experience. So for example if you have two people in fMRIs that are in telepathic communication and you have one person who is thinking about something that activates one specific part of their brain and simultaneously the person in the other scanner has the same part of their brain activated and you see that, that is just something that shows you that there is something going on there, but it is not to be confused with mechanism.

Alex Tsakiris: I am with you, Diane, and I don’t want to get too far afield. But what pops into my mind is that I don’t even know that is valid. You obviously know the research a lot better than I do, but I just stumble across these things and I stumble across David Nutt’s work in the UK with psilocybin. There is an inverse correlation, right? We would expect these areas of the brain to be more stimulated, more excited, and they are not. They are less. Or the most dramatic cases, near-death experience and now we don’t have any neurocorrelates at all. And we still have a conscious experience, as near as we can tell, that somehow gets reported back and gets incorporated in and maybe even gets reincorporated back into that physical structure of the brain. So I love what you are saying.

Diane Powell: With the near-death experience, we do have neurocorrelates. Often times the neurocorrelate is a flatline EEG. So it is not the correlates that the current model would expect.

Alex Tsakiris: Right, but I mean I think both – I am with you on this. I think both are true. First of all, let me step back and say that is fascinating new information for me, that the rat – we study it and it has another antenna here that isn’t one of our five sense, but there it is and it lights up like a GPS system when he walks into this familiar territory. That is really cool and the same thing happens in a cat. The cat has a GPS system and that starts explaining a lot of these strange phenomena. I am totally with you there and there are huge advances that need to be made there. I just think at the same time that we have this other stuff over here that will never fit into that because when we talk about the near-death experience and we don’t have any electrical activity and then we have this out of body – I mean, how could we even have senses that – that just really freaks people out. I don’t know how well those merge and I think what is really exiting about what you are saying, and I am totally with you on this is that you say we don’t have to worry about some of those questions right now, we just have to kind of keep pushing forward. And you are trying to push forward on this one front that is extremely promising and you are saying let’s lay down the path over here and come up over this next vista and see where that gets us. Then we can kind of tackle more and more of these questions.

Diane Powell: That’s right. So what I am saying, and I think this is really important, that this research is not one that one could say is really addressing the issue of materialism. I think that it doesn’t – this is addressing the conscious experience that people have when they experience something like telepathy or clairvoyance. This is not getting – there is still that question of how one thing as immaterial as consciousness arises from the brain. That is a whole other area of research that I am also engaged in but that is a different question, you are right. And I am not saying that this addresses that question. I am saying that just like with the area of the brain that if you stimulate the right temporal lobe people will have a spiritual experience. And scientists argue about does that mean that God exists and some people say yes – why would we have a place that gives us that experience if it didn’t exist? Then you have other people that say no, it is just an illusion. So you are still going to have that kind of an argument after this work. But there are still more years ahead to be continuing to do this research. I am just trying to address this and I am putting it in the second paper.

Alex Tsakiris: Right, great. And it sounds like a fantastic second paper. So we are going to try to get this out and see if our little audience can kick in. I rarely ask people to – I never ask people to donate any money to this show and I rarely ask them to support any causes but I think this is the perfect kind of cause for Skeptiko listeners to get behind because it is science, it is research. How can you object to this? And it is very, very difficult to get this work done if it is not privately funded because at this point there is nobody who is going to get behind this.

Now, I imagine if you got a little bit further you probably could get some institutions who could get behind it. But not at this stage, right?

Diane Powell: That’s correct. I am optimistic that in the future I will be able to get traditional funding sources but no, not at this time.

Alex Tsakiris: Well Diane, this is great work. Again, best of luck with it and please do keep us in touch in terms of how it is going.

Diane Powell: Okay, thank you very much. Take care.

Telepathic Girl Baffles Researchers with Her Ability to Read Minds

Being autistic, Nandana Unnikrishnan is not like other girls her age. Despite the troubles that come with such a developmental disorder, autism sometimes lends itself to unusual and amazing talents, but never one like this: Nandana is allegedly telepathic. According to initial testing, it appears that the young Indian girl has the ability to read her mother’s thoughts and emotions with no physical contact, able to pass ESP tests with flying colors, even going so far as to type out entire poems that have been telepathically communicated to her. The results have stunned skeptical researchers like Dr. Phillip John of the Indian Psychiatric Society, who told the Khaleej Times that he believes Nandana’s case is genuine.

“We see several autistic children with savant skills like unusual Mathematical skills, extraordinary memory about calendar days and dates. In such cases, they have access to their memory. In some people with schizophrenia, there is a symptom called “thought broadcast” wherein they believe their thoughts are known to others. It is not transmission of memory. In Nandana’s case, she has access to her mother’s memory and there is a transmission of memory, that too without a medium. This is the first time I am seeing a case like this. Here, we are talking about memory as a function which is why it is very surprising. This is a very rare phenomenon of transmission of memory without a medium.”

Nandana’s parents first became aware of her bizarre talents when they began to notice “unusual coincidences” when it came to her almost premeditated responses to her mother’s thoughts and feelings.

“I used to feel strange when she would come to me and say the name of the food I was thinking of preparing for her”, Nandana’s mother Sandhya, told reporters. “The same way, if my husband and I had decided to take her somewhere, she would know about it without being told about it and would start reacting to it.”

Despite her amazing ability, the autistic girl still has trouble grasping certain concepts like words and objects, and has some issues writing and verbally communicating. To help overcome this challenge, Sandhya gave her daughter a keyboard, which she uses to type out responses. This has come with it’s own set of hurdles.

“Now, if I prompt her to type what I am thinking of, she can do that. Sometimes there could be spelling mistakes and she cannot understand the concept of punctuation marks and the space bar. If I say space in my mind when she types the words, she might start typing the word ‘space’ instead of leaving a space between the words,” Sandhya said.

The case has even attracted the attention of Dr. Darold A. Treffert, whose work in the field of gifted children has earned him the reputation of “godfather of savant research”, and even he believes that Nandana’s case is “very convincing”.

“I certainly want to emphasize that Nandana’s case is extraordinarily rare in an already rare condition, but with far-reaching ramifications,” he told the Khaleej Times.

In one test, Nandana and her mother were placed in separate rooms and Sandyha was given a six digit number to glance at. When Nandana was able to type the number with ease, the researchers decided to up the ante, and gave her mother a Grade 2 level poem to read. When prompted, the young girl was able to type the entire poem without issue.

As of now, Dr. Treffert remains amazed, but has urged the family to seek more controlled testing in order to verify claims of the girls extrasensory powers.

“I also want to compliment you on the testing you did to confirm the ability…When it is musical skill, or art, the pieces speak for themselves.  But in this instance the ability needs to be demonstrated by more rigorous testing of the type you did.”

If it turns out that Nandana’s abilities are, in fact, genuine, the mplications would change everything we know about how the mind works and the shockwaves would be far reaching in the scientific fields. For now though, what we’re left with is a little girl whose mother is simply interested in answers.

“We want to know how it is possible for her to have this ability and how best we can make use of this for her future benefits or for others.”

Step one: build school for gifted children.

Step two: begin forming the real life X-Men.

So, what do you make of Nandana’s amazing abilities? Is she the world’s first real telepath? Or is there a simpler answer to the mind-reading skills baffling the researchers? Share your thoughts with us on our Facebook page, tweet us @WeirdHQ, or leave a message in the comments below!

Here is the abstract for my recent presentation at the Parapsychological Association’s meeting:

Autistic savants have not undergone rigorous scientific investigation for psi, although many of their skills are very psi-like. For example, some give cube roots of six digit numbers without knowing how to perform simple mathematical functions, such as addition or multiplication, and with no conscious derivation of the answers.  These remarkable skills are accepted by science because they are reliably replicated. Brief reports by physicians that are suggestive of psi in autistic savants have been ignored or criticized.  

The psi ability most frequently reported by parents to the author in her research has been telepathy, especially in nonverbal children. In 2013, the author received three homemade videos of a nonverbal, nine year-old, severely autistic girl that were claimed to demonstrate telepathy. The videos were intriguing, but scientifically insufficient. Two therapists reported telepathic experiences with the girl, creating the opportunity to test both. The author conducted two controlled, two-hour research sessions with “Therapist A”, and one two-hour controlled research session with “Therapist B”. Randomized numbers, sentences, fake words, and visual images were presented to the therapists out of view of the girl, who was asked to “read the therapist’s mind.” The therapists were asked to write their own verbal descriptions of the images for comparison to the girl’s answers. Random numbers were generated for mathematical equations. The girl was asked to give all the numbers involved in the equations and duplicate the answers generated by the author with a calculator. The therapist and child could not be tested in separate rooms, because even subtle changes to the environment are very distracting and disturbing for a child with severe autism. 

The experimental set-up required the therapists and child to work with a divider between them. The child typed her answers after choosing them from a stencil. To assess for any possible visual and/or auditory cueing, five high definition point-of-view (POV) cameras and three microphones were strategically placed in the experimental space to capture coverage of the entire room, the therapist and child, and their separate workspaces. All cameras were synchronized and time-stamped. Data from the first session with Therapist A includes 100% accuracy on three out of twenty image descriptions containing up to nine letters each, 60 to 100% accuracy on all three of the five-letter nonsense words, and 100% accuracy on two random numbers: one eight digits and the other nine. Data from the second session with Therapist A includes 100% accuracy on six out of twelve equations with 15 to 19 digits each, 100% accuracy on seven out of 20 image descriptions containing up to six letters, and between 81 to 100% accuracy on sentences of between 18 and 35 letters. Data from the session with Therapist B showed 100% accuracy with five out of twenty random numbers up to six digits in length, and 100% accuracy with five out of twelve image descriptions containing up to six letters. 

There was no evidence of cueing or fraud. The data is highly suggestive of an alternative, latent and/or default communication mechanism that can be accessed by people born with severely impaired language abilities.