Michael A. Persinger
Departments of Psychology and Biology, Laurentian University, Sudbury, Ontario, Canada Canada
Director of Laurentian University's Consciousness Research Laboratory. Notable for his work in the field of neurotheology. Michael A. Persinger is a cognitive neuroscience researcher and university professor with over 200 peer-reviewed publications. He is primarily notable for his experimental work in the field of neurotheology, work which has come under increasing fire in recent years. Much of his work focuses on the commonalities that exist between the sciences, and aims to integrate fundamental concepts of various branches of science. In 1974 Persinger proposed that extremely low frequency electromagnetic waves may be able to carry telepathic and clairvoyant information. Persinger has published reports of rudimentary 'telepathic' communication between pairs of subjects in the laboratory. He has also published increases in remote viewing accuracy of remote viewer Ingo Swann. During the 1980s he stimulated people's temporal lobes artificially with a weak magnetic field to see if he could induce a religious state. He claimed that the field could produce the sensation of "an ethereal presence in the room".
The Harribance Effect as Pervasive Out-of-Body Experiences: NeuroQuantal Evidence with More Precise Measurements
Michael A. Persinger
Abstract
A historical summary is presented of the published and unpublished measurements of the physical changes associated with Sean Harribance while he accurately discerned recondite information about others. Reports of his subjective experiences as well as the quantitative electroencephalographic (QEEG), sLORETA, SPECT, and neuropsychological data support the occurrence of measurable and specific out-of-body like states that are strongly correlated with independent ratings of his accuracy of people he does not know but with whom he is spatially proximal. Coherence between theta (Schumann resonance) and gamma activity within the right temporoparietal and frontal regions and his left temporal region is congruent with information acquired by his right hemisphere and interpreted by the left. The quantitative values of the emissions of photons and alterations in the intensity of the geomagnetic field (both equivalent to energies of about 10-11 J/s or 10 pW/m2) around his head during this state were congruent with the estimated numbers of neurons responsible for the QEEG coherence and are strongly indicative of neuroquantological processes that allow an interface between extracerebral energies, neuronal