Telepathy

Telepathy (from the Greek, tele, "distant"; and , patheia, "feeling") is the claimed ability of humans and other creatures to communicate information from one mind to another, without the use of extra tools such as speech or body language. Considered a form of extra-sensory perception or anomalous cognition, telepathy is often connected to various paranormal phenomena such as precognition, clairvoyance and empathy.

Western scientific investigation of telepathy is generally recognized as having begun with the initial program or research of the Society for Psychical Research. The apex of their early investigations was the report published in 1886 as the two-volume work Phantasms of the Living. It was with this work that the term "telepathy" was introduced, replacing the earlier term "thought transference". Although much of the initial investigations consisted largely of gathering anecdotal accounts with follow-up investigations, they also conducted experiments with some of those who claimed telepathic abilities

When the American Society for Psychical Research (ASPR) was founded in 1885, after the SPR in 1884, telepathy became the first psychic phenomenon to be studied scientifically. The first testing was simple. A sender in one room would try to transmit a two-digit number, a taste, or a visual image to a receiver in another room. The French physiologist Charles Richet introduced mathematical chance to the tests, and also discovered that telepathy occurred independent of hypnotism.

Telepathy seems to be related to the individual's emotional state. This is true of both the sender and receiver. Most women were receivers, as case findings showed, and one possible explanation is that women are more in touch with their emotions and rely on intuition more than men. Geriatric telepathy is fairly common, this may be due, it is speculated, to the impairment of the senses with age. Telepathy can be induced in the dream state. It appears to be related to some biological factors: blood volume changes during telepathic sending, and electroencephalogram monitoring show that the brain waves of the recipient change to match those of the sender. Dissociative drugs adversely affect telepathy, but caffeine has a positive effect on it.