This Man found that the brain might block or filter out psi (psychic or extrasensory abilities). He and his team of researchers have uncovered evidence suggesting that the human mind may possess latent abilities to influence seemingly random events—abilities typically suppressed by the brain itself.
Dr. Morris Freedman, Head of Neurology at Baycrest and Professor of Neurology at the University of Toronto, along with Malcolm A. Binns, Jed A. Meltzer, Rohila Hashimi, and Robert Chen, authored a research paper titled “Enhanced Mind-Matter Interactions Following rTMS-Induced Frontal Lobe Inhibition” in 2023.
In this study, they tested healthy people by using a technique called rTMS, which temporarily weakens or shuts down a small area of the brain. When they used rTMS on the left middle frontal area, they saw a noticeable increase in psi-related effects, just like they had predicted. They analyzed the results to match their main theory and found clear evidence to support it.
Their earlier research on people with brain damage in the frontal lobe showed that a specific part of the brain, the left middle frontal area, might be involved in this blocking.
This suggests that the brain may normally stop psi from happening, and when that blocking area is weakened, either by injury or temporarily through rTMS, psi effects become easier to detect.
One big reason people don’t accept psychic abilities is that the effects are usually very small and hard to repeat in experiments.
Psi is a group of mysterious mental abilities like telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, and psychokinesis. While some researchers have found evidence supporting these abilities, others argue that the effects are too small or too hard to prove in scientific tests.
There are also no solid scientific theories explaining how psi might work. Still, if these abilities are real, they could be very important, so scientists believe more well-designed studies are needed to understand them better.
One theory suggests that the human brain may block these psi abilities. If psi were real and useful, evolution should have made them stronger over time.
But since that hasn’t happened, it’s possible that the brain evolved to suppress them. This may have helped people survive by stopping distractions from overwhelming psychic information, like random thoughts or future visions.
The idea goes back to the philosopher Henri Bergson, who suggested over 100 years ago thatthe nervous system may have evolved to inhibit psi as a protective mechanism to screen individuals from stimuli that are of no interest or benefit to them.
Based on this idea, the researchers created a model suggesting that the frontal lobes of the brain, especially a part called the left medial middle frontal area, may act as a filter to block psi abilities.
They found support for this in two patients with brain damage in that exact area. Both patients showed unusual ability to mentally affect a computer-generated arrow on a screen—something called micro-psychokinesis, or micro-PK—which means , nfluencing small random events with the mind.
To test their theory more broadly, Dr. Morris Freedman and other researchers used a non-invasive technique called repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) on healthy volunteers.
rTMS can temporarily “turn off” parts of the brain.
They used it to simulate brain damage in the same area linked to psi filtering in their earlier patients. They then asked these volunteers to try to mentally influence the direction of a computer arrow controlled by a Random Event Generator (REG). They hypothesized that people with this temporary brain disruption would show more ability to influence the arrow than those without it.
In total, they studied 108 healthy people using this method. Their goal was to see if disrupting the brain’s “psi filter” would allow hidden mental abilities to show up, supporting the idea that psi might be real but usually suppressed by the brain.
How did they conduct the study?
The researchers recruited 108 healthy adults from a participant database at the Rotman Research Institute. They made sure no one in the study had brain-related disorders, serious mental health issues, or had experienced major depression recently.
People with past psychosis, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, or obsessive-compulsive disorder were also excluded. Participants also had to pass a standard screening to make sure they were safe candidates for transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS), which is the brain stimulation technique used in the study.
To prevent participants from guessing whether they were receiving real or fake (sham) brain stimulation, anyone who had experienced rTMS before was not allowed to take part.
Everyone was randomly assigned to one of three groups: one group received rTMS to the left frontal brain area, another to the right frontal area, and the third group received a sham treatment that mimicked rTMS but didn’t affect the brain.
Each group had 36 people, and each person completed a large number of mental influence tasks (500 where they tried to influence the outcome and 500 where they didn’t).
Participants were also evenly divided in terms of the order in which they performed the tasks (some started with tasks trying to move an arrow left, others right). The researchers carefully planned the group assignments to make sure the results would be reliable and could show even small differences between the real and sham stimulation groups.
Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS)
In this part of the study, researchers used a special machine to send magnetic pulses to specific parts of the brain. This technique is called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), and it can temporarily reduce activity in the brain area it’s aimed at—almost like turning that part of the brain off for a short time.
They used it on two spots: the left and right frontal areas of the brain. Some people got real brain stimulation, and others got sham stimulation, which looked and sounded the same but didn’t affect the brain. This helped the researchers compare real effects with fake ones.
Each person got the stimulation in the same way, and everything was carefully controlled, so the only difference between groups was whether they got real or sham stimulation. The goal was to see if turning off a specific brain area would allow psi to show up.
Result!
In this study, researchers wanted to see if people could influence a computer with their mind, like making an arrow on a screen move just by thinking about it. They believed that a part of the brain might usually block this ability, so they used a safe method to temporarily “turn off” that brain area in some people.
They divided people into three groups: one had the left side of that brain area turned off, another had the right side turned off, and the last group got a fake version of the treatment (so they wouldn’t know if they were being treated or not).
The task was to try to mentally push the arrow on the screen to the left or right. Everyone did hundreds of trials, and the researchers watched to see if any group did better than the others at influencing the arrow.
At first, the results weren’t clear. But when they focused on the early part of the experiment, when the brain “turning off” was likely strongest, they saw something interesting: the group with the left side of their brain affected seemed to be better at mentally pushing the arrow to the right. This didn’t happen in the other groups.
This suggests that when that specific brain area is not working normally, people might be better able to use some kind of psychic ability to affect things outside their body. The results support the idea that the brain might usually block these abilities, and when the block is lifted, they can show up more easily.
Dr. Steve Taylor, a psychologist and author of 16 books on psychology and spirituality, says, “I’m willing to accept the possibility of psychic phenomena such as telepathy and precognition.” (Source)
