Entangled Minds

I'm the cover story for the North Bay Bohemian (the name seems appropriate for Northern California) newspaper. If you go here you can read the entire newspaper online, but I think this link will only last for one week.

Let's say we want to win a million dollar prize for rigorously demonstrating something psychic in a scientifically acceptable way. One of the best candidates at present is the ganzfeld telepathy experiment . In this study two people are isolated, one is given the job of the "sender," the other the "receiver." The receiver is placed into a mild, unpatterned sensory stimulation condition called the ganzfeld, which produces a dream-like, hypnagogic state. In this state the receiver is asked to verbally report any impressions which come to mind. Meanwhile the sender is shown a randomly selected target image or video clip, and asked to mentally send that material to the receiver. After a half-hour of sending, the receiver is taken out of the ganzfeld and asked to select one of four images based on his or her impressions. One of those images is the target, along with three decoys. By chance, the receiver will choose the actual target one in four times, or a 25% chance...