Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: part 1. The surprising role of the heart

Quantum agriculture and experimental detection of wheat flour quality using thermal image technology

Crop quality and productivity are the fundamental strategies of agricultural practice and technology; consequently, one of the priorities in agriculture is to be aware of new and innovative field experiments and production practices. The effectiveness of innovative practices and resources is influenced by a multitude of factors. This study aimed to propose a new quantum-based approach in agriculture using homoeopathic methodology which incorporates theories and concepts of quantum physics and employs a wave-based methodology for the functional measurement phase. A novel utilization of thermal imaging technology is suggested, wherein each pixel of the image indicates the wave parameters, frequency, or amplitude of wave, is proposed to analyse the functional information of the plant. The relationship between the new quantum-agriculture-based method and the functional characteristics of flour as measured by bio-photonic emissions was estimated, and the findings of this preliminary study on wheat flour are presented. Our preliminary results (i) confirm the superior performance of quantum agriculture (QA) based proposed soil and plant treatments, and (ii) suggest that quantitative analysis based on precise measurements of biophoton emission will provide a novel reliable tool for monitoring the quality of wheat in the future. Further investigations are required to replicate the results of this study under different environmental conditions. Additionally, incorporating comparative chemical analyses that would enhance our knowledge of the proposed agronomic practice.

What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models

The nature of consciousness is considered one of science's most perplexing and persistent mysteries. We all know the subjective experience of consciousness, but where does it arise? What is its purpose? What are its full capacities? The assumption within today's neuroscience is that all aspects of consciousness arise solely from interactions among neurons in the brain. However, the origin and mechanisms of qualia (i.e., subjective or phenomenological experience) are not understood. David Chalmers coined the term "the hard problem" to describe the difficulties in elucidating the origins of subjectivity from the point of view of reductive materialism. We propose that the hard problem arises because one or more assumptions within a materialistic worldview are either wrong or incomplete. If consciousness entails more than the activity of neurons, then we can contemplate new ways of thinking about the hard problem. This review examines phenomena that apparently contradict the notion that consciousness is exclusively dependent on brain activity, including phenomena where consciousness appears to extend beyond the physical brain and body in both space and time. The mechanisms underlying these "non-local" properties are vaguely suggestive of quantum entanglement in physics, but how such effects might manifest remains highly speculative. The existence of these non-local effects appears to support the proposal that post-materialistic models of consciousness may be required to break the conceptual impasse presented by the hard problem of consciousness.

Respiratory Rhythm, Autonomic Modulation, and the Spectrum of Emotions: The Future of Emotion Recognition and Modulation

Pulmonary ventilation and respiration are considered to be primarily involved in oxygenation of blood for oxygen delivery to cells throughout the body for metabolic purposes. Other pulmonary physiological observations, such as respiratory sinus arrhythmia, Hering Brewer reflex, cardiorespiratory synchronization, and the heart rate variability (HRV) relationship with breathing rhythm, lack complete explanations of physiological/functional significance. The spectrum of waveforms of breathing activity correlate to anxiety, depression, anger, stress, and other positive and negative emotions. Respiratory pattern has been thought not only to be influenced by emotion but to itself influence emotion in a bi-directional relationship between the body and the mind. In order to show how filling in gaps in understanding could lead to certain future developments in mind-body medicine, biofeedback, and personal health monitoring, we review and discuss empirical work and tracings to express the vital role of bodily rhythms in influencing emotion, autonomic nervous system activity, and even general neural activity. Future developments in measurement and psychophysiological understanding of the pattern of breathing in combination with other parameters such as HRV, cardiorespiratory synchronization, and skin conductivity may allow for biometric monitoring systems to one day accurately predict affective state and even affective disorders such as anxiety. Better affective prediction based on recent research when incorporated into personal health monitoring devices could greatly improve public mental health by providing at-home biofeedback for greater understanding of one's mental state and for mind-body affective treatments such as breathing exercises.

Development and Psychometric Evaluation of an Instrument to Measure the Use of Intuition in Clinical Practice by Critical Care Nurses

BACKGROUND

The current study was conducted to develop and validate an instrument to measure the use of intuition in clinical practice by critical care nurses.

METHODS

Item generation and psychometric evaluation were developed. In the psychometric, content validity index and content validity ratio were calculated to establish initial instrument validity through the use of expert ratings, as well as, construct and criterion validity.

RESULTS

The original items reduced to 25. Using principal components analysis and orthogonal varimax rotation, three factors had an eigenvalue >1, with 60.05% variance (Factor 1: 47.9%; Factor 2: 7.56%; and Factor 3: 5.05%). The tool had an acceptable correlation to criterion of the instrument (r = .769, p < .001), a Cronbach alpha consistency of 0.953, and a stability level of r = .945 and p < .001.

CONCLUSION

In this study, a valid and reliable instrument was developed to measure intuition.

Biofeedback in Grandmothers Raising Grandchildren: Evaluating Intervention Parameters

This study examined the six critical parameters for evaluating interventions, including necessity, acceptability, feasibility, safety, fidelity, and effectiveness, of a heart rate variability (HRV) biofeedback training intervention in a sample of 20 grandmothers who were the primary caregivers of their grandchildren. After the grandmothers completed the HRV biofeedback training, they answered open-ended questions to provide data on the six parameters during face-to-face interviews. The findings of the study provided evidence for the necessity, acceptability, feasibility, safety, fidelity, and effectiveness of the HRV biofeedback intervention for reducing the stress experienced by grandmothers in raising their grandchildren.

Heart Rate Variability (HRV) Analysis: A Methodology for Organizational Neuroscience

Recently, the application of neuroscience methods and findings to the study of organizational phenomena has gained significant interest and converged in the emerging field of organizational neuroscience. Yet, this body of research has principally focused on the brain, often overlooking fuller analysis of the activities of the human nervous system and associated methods available to assess them. In this article, we aim to narrow this gap by reviewing heart rate variability (HRV) analysis, which is that set of methods assessing beat-to-beat changes in the heart rhythm over time, used to draw inference on the outflow of the autonomic nervous system (ANS). In addition to anatomo-physiological and detailed methodological considerations, we discuss related theoretical, ethical, and practical implications. Overall, we argue that this methodology offers the opportunity not only to inform on a wealth of constructs relevant for management inquiries but also to advance the overarching organizational neuroscience research agenda and its ecological validity.

Psycho-Emotional and Functional State in the Process of Intuitive Thinking

The article is devoted to studying the mechanisms of regulating physiological maintenance of mental processes and the possibility of Kirlian photography for assessing psycho-emotional state with intuitive thinking. While doing the tasks connected with the intuition, the students with the low level of intuitive thinking demonstrated the increase in the degree of filling blood hemoglobin with oxygen (saturation) and the increase in heart systole rate (HSR). The change of the indices of the heart rhythm variability – the mode decrease with the simultaneous increase in the mode amplitude and the vegetative indices – indicates the activation of both sympathetic and central mechanisms of mental processes regulation. The tension index of the regulatory systems (RS) allows us to judge about the mental process activity. The students were in the state of the compensated distress. All indices of the heart rhythm variability of the students with the medium intuition level indicate the central mechanisms of regulating the intuitive thinking processes. The increase in saturation, increased RS on the background of HSR decrease in the students of this group reveals a special functional state connected with the doubled control over the processes. The area of the Kirlian luminescence crown around the right hand forth finger is increased in all students with intuitive thinking. The energetic luminescence degree of the corresponding finger reveals the level of development of this kind of thinking: the higher the level of intuitive thinking, the more the luminescence area. Due to its high sensitivity, the Kirlian method can be applied for revealing the student’s individuality that is not identified by the psychological tests.

Psycho-Emotional and Functional State in the Process of Intuitive Thinking

The article is devoted to studying the mechanisms of regulating physiological maintenance of mental processes and the possibility of Kirlian photography for assessing psycho-emotional state with intuitive thinking. While doing the tasks connected with the intuition, the students with the low level of intuitive thinking demonstrated the increase in the degree of filling blood hemoglobin with oxygen (saturation) and the increase in heart systole rate (HSR). The change of the indices of the heart rhythm variability – the mode decrease with the simultaneous increase in the mode amplitude and the vegetative indices – indicates the activation of both sympathetic and central mechanisms of mental processes regulation. The tension index of the regulatory systems (RS) allows us to judge about the mental process activity. The students were in the state of the compensated distress. All indices of the heart rhythm variability of the students with the medium intuition level indicate the central mechanisms of regulating the intuitive thinking processes. The increase in saturation, increased RS on the background of HSR decrease in the students of this group reveals a special functional state connected with the doubled control over the processes. The area of the Kirlian luminescence crown around the right hand forth finger is increased in all students with intuitive thinking. The energetic luminescence degree of the corresponding finger reveals the level of development of this kind of thinking: the higher the level of intuitive thinking, the more the luminescence area. Due to its high sensitivity, the Kirlian method can be applied for revealing the student’s individuality that is not identified by the psychological tests.

State of Science, "Intuition in Nursing Practice": A Systematic Review Study

INTRODUCTION

There were many attempts for introducing "intuition" to nursing practice, But despite the efficacy, it has been ignored as a valid way of knowing. Therefore the current study was conducted for evaluating the state of sciences to intuition in nursing practice.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

In a systematic review study, all researches, published from 1995 to 2014, were searched in the databases of "PubMed", using "intuition" and "nursing" keywords. The abstract of articles were read in scrutiny, then the related researches selected, thereafter the full text of them was assessed carefully.

RESULTS

From searching the databases, 144 articles with "intuition and nursing" were found, 53 as original research, and 15 with inclusion criteria were selected. Most of the studies had qualitative approaches design as phenomenology (N=4), content analyses (N=2) and grounded theory (N=1), six was done for developing the instrument, and two studies have been conducted as descriptive method.

CONCLUSION

The results revealed the researches about intuition in nursing mostly were conducted with qualitative and instrument developing methodology and there is a lack of quantitative and trial studies.

A healthy heart is not a metronome: an integrative review of the heart's anatomy and heart rate variability

Heart rate variability (HRV), the change in the time intervals between adjacent heartbeats, is an emergent property of interdependent regulatory systems that operate on different time scales to adapt to challenges and achieve optimal performance. This article briefly reviews neural regulation of the heart, and its basic anatomy, the cardiac cycle, and the sinoatrial and atrioventricular pacemakers. The cardiovascular regulation center in the medulla integrates sensory information and input from higher brain centers, and afferent cardiovascular system inputs to adjust heart rate and blood pressure via sympathetic and parasympathetic efferent pathways. This article reviews sympathetic and parasympathetic influences on the heart, and examines the interpretation of HRV and the association between reduced HRV, risk of disease and mortality, and the loss of regulatory capacity. This article also discusses the intrinsic cardiac nervous system and the heart-brain connection, through which afferent information can influence activity in the subcortical and frontocortical areas, and motor cortex. It also considers new perspectives on the putative underlying physiological mechanisms and properties of the ultra-low-frequency (ULF), very-low-frequency (VLF), low-frequency (LF), and high-frequency (HF) bands. Additionally, it reviews the most common time and frequency domain measurements as well as standardized data collection protocols. In its final section, this article integrates Porges' polyvagal theory, Thayer and colleagues' neurovisceral integration model, Lehrer et al.'s resonance frequency model, and the Institute of HeartMath's coherence model. The authors conclude that a coherent heart is not a metronome because its rhythms are characterized by both complexity and stability over longer time scales. Future research should expand understanding of how the heart and its intrinsic nervous system influence the brain.

Intuitive Intelligence, Self-regulation, and Lifting Consciousness

This article explores the role of the heart in emotional experience, as well as how learning to shift the rhythms of the heart into a more coherent state makes it possible to establish a new inner baseline reference that allows access to our heart's intuitive capacities and deeper wisdom. The nature and types of intuition and the connection between intuition and compassionate action are discussed. It is suggested that increased effectiveness in self-regulatory capacity and the resultant reorganization of memories sustained in the neural architecture facilitates a stable and integrated experience of self in relationship to others and to the environment, otherwise known as consciousness. The implications of meeting the increasingly complex demands of life with greater love, compassion, and kindness, thereby lifting consciousness, are considered.

Nonlocal Intuition: Replication and Paired-subjects Enhancement Effects

This article reports the results of a study of repeat entrepreneurs in Tehran, Iran, in which nonlocal intuition was investigated in a replication and extension of experiment using measures of heart rate variability (HRV). Nonlocal intuition is the perception of information about a distant or future event by the body's psychophysiological systems, which is not based on reason or memories of prior experience. This study follows up on the McCraty, Radin, and Bradley studies, which found evidence of nonlocal intuition. We used Radin's experimental protocol, with the addition of HRV measures as in the McCraty studies involving computer administration of a random sequence of calm and emotional pictures as the stimulus, and conducted two experiments on mutually exclusive samples—the first on a group of single participants (N=15) and the second on a group of co-participant pairs (N=30)—to investigate the question of the “amplification” of intuition effects by social connection. Each experiment was conducted over 45 trials while heart rate rhythm activity was recorded continuously. Results, using random permutation analysis, a statistically conservative procedure, show significant pre-stimulus results—that is, for the period before the computer had randomly selected the picture stimulus—for both experiments. Moreover, while significant separation between the emotional and calm HRV curves was observed in the single-participant experiment, an even larger separation was apparent for the experiment on co-participant pairs; the difference between the two groups was also significant. Overall, the results of the single-participant experiment confirm previous finding: that electrophysiological measures, especially changes in the heart rhythm, can detect intuitive foreknowledge. This result is notable because it constitutes cross-cultural corroboration in a non-Western context—namely, Iran. In addition, the results for co-participant pairs offer new evidence on the amplification of the nonlocal intuition signal.

Predicting the unpredictable: critical analysis and practical implications of predictive anticipatory activity

A recent meta-analysis of experiments from seven independent laboratories (n = 26) indicates that the human body can apparently detect randomly delivered stimuli occurring 1-10 s in the future (Mossbridge etal., 2012). The key observation in these studies is that human physiology appears to be able to distinguish between unpredictable dichotomous future stimuli, such as emotional vs. neutral images or sound vs. silence. This phenomenon has been called presentiment (as in "feeling the future"). In this paper we call it predictive anticipatory activity (PAA). The phenomenon is "predictive" because it can distinguish between upcoming stimuli; it is "anticipatory" because the physiological changes occur before a future event; and it is an "activity" because it involves changes in the cardiopulmonary, skin, and/or nervous systems. PAA is an unconscious phenomenon that seems to be a time-reversed reflection of the usual physiological response to a stimulus. It appears to resemble precognition (consciously knowing something is going to happen before it does), but PAA specifically refers to unconscious physiological reactions as opposed to conscious premonitions. Though it is possible that PAA underlies the conscious experience of precognition, experiments testing this idea have not produced clear results. The first part of this paper reviews the evidence for PAA and examines the two most difficult challenges for obtaining valid evidence for it: expectation bias and multiple analyses. The second part speculates on possible mechanisms and the theoretical implications of PAA for understanding physiology and consciousness. The third part examines potential practical applications.

Electrophysiology of Intuition: Pre-stimulus Responses in Group and Individual Participants Using a Roulette Paradigm

This study used electrophysiological measures of pre-stimulus effects that can occur prior to an unknown future event as an indicator of nonlocal intuition. Intuition in this context is considered as a process by which information normally outside the range of conscious awareness is detected at the cellular level by the heart, the brain, and the autonomic nervous system. This study extends the findings of previous experiments demonstrating that aspects of our physiology can respond to an emotionally engaging stimulus before it is actually experienced. The study evaluated a revised version of a roulette protocol, which included two pre-stimulus segments and included an analysis of the individual participant's data over eight separate trials in addition to a group-level analysis. We also assessed the potential effects of the moon phase on the pre-stimulus response outcomes and participant winning and amount won ratios. Data were collected under controlled laboratory conditions from 13 participants in 8 separate sessions using a modified version of a gambling paradigm protocol based on roulette. Half of the experimental sessions were conducted during the full moon phase and half during the new moon phase. Within each trial a total of three segments of physiological data were assessed. There were two separate pre-stimulus periods, pre-bet (4 sec) and postbet (12 sec), and a post-result period (6 sec). Participants were told that they were participating in a gambling experiment and were given an initial starting kitty and told they could keep any winnings over the course of 26 trials for each of the eight sessions. The physiological measures included the electrocardiogram (ECG), from which cardiac inter-beat-intervals (heart rate variability, HRV) were derived, and skin conductance. Before the participants participated in the first session, they completed the Cognitive Styles Index questionnaire, which assesses analytical vs intuitive styles. Overall, the results indicate that the revised protocol provides an effective objective measure for detecting a pre-stimulus response, which reflects a type of nonlocal intuition. We found significant differences between the win and loss responses in the aggregated physiological waveform data during both pre-stimulus segments, which provides important information about nonlocal intuition. On average, we detected a significant pre-stimulus response starting around 18 seconds prior to participants knowing the future outcome. Interestingly, there was not a strong overall relationship between the pre-stimulus responses and the amount of money the participants won or lost. We also found a significant difference in both pre-stimulus periods during the full moon phase but not in the new moon phase. The results suggest that the protocol is a reliable means of prompting physiological detection of pre-stimulus effects and can be used in future studies investigating aspects of nonlocal intuition. The findings also suggest that if participants had been able to become more attuned to their internal physiological responses, they would have performed much better on the betting choices they made.

Coherence: a novel nonpharmacological modality for lowering blood pressure in hypertensive patients

This study examined the efficacy of teaching emotional self-regulation techniques supported by heart rhythm coherence training (emWave Personal Stress Reliever) as a means to quickly lower blood pressure (BP) in patients diagnosed with hypertension. Previous studies have demonstrated systemic reductions in BP in both high stress populations and patients diagnosed with hypertension using this approach, but to the best of our knowledge, an investigation of their ability to produce immediate reductions in BP had not been published in the medical literature. The study was a randomized controlled design with 62 hypertensive participants who were divided into three groups. Group 1 was taking hypertensive medication, was taught self-regulation technique, and used heart rate variability coherence (HRVC) training devices. Group 2 was not yet taking medication and was trained in the same intervention. Group 3 was taking hypertensive medication but did not receive the intervention and was instructed to relax between the BP assessments. An analysis of covariates was conducted to compare the effectiveness of three different interventions on reducing the participants' BP. The use of the self-regulation technique and the HRVC-monitoring device was associated with a significantly greater reduction in mean arterial pressure in the two groups who used the intervention as compared with the relaxation-plus-medication group. Additionally, the group not taking medication that used the intervention also had a significantly greater reduction in systolic BP than the relaxation- plus-medication group. These results suggest that self-regulation techniques that incorporate the intentional generation of positive emotions to facilitate a shift into the psychophysiological coherence state are an effective approach to lowering BP. This approach to reducing BP should be considered a simple and effective approach that can easily be taught to patients to quickly lower their BP in stressful situations. The technique should be especially useful when hypertensive patients are experiencing stressful emotions or reactions to stressors. It is possible that the BP reductions associated with the use of the technique leads to a change in the physiological set-point for homeostatic regulation of BP. Further studies should examine if large scale implementations of such heart-based coherence techniques could have a significant impact on reducing risk of mortality and morbidity in hypertensive patients.

Energy dialogue technique in healing and health: relieving side effects and thyroid dysfunction in a male with hemophilia receiving pegylated interferon and ribavirin treatment for hepatitis C virus--an anecdotal case study

This article describes the use of energy dialogue technique (EDT), a healing intervention that provides awareness of imbalances in the energetic field that affect patients' health and guide the practitioner to sense and direct the frequency, vibration, intention, awareness, or consciousness to correct these imbalances. The authors document the effectiveness of this technique as it was used to treat side effects of the medical intervention for hepatitis C in a male with hemophilia. Following EDT, the client's symptoms of fatigue and pain improved by 30% to 40%; moreover, thyroid function returned to normal. The authors suggest that EDT be studied and explored for inclusion as a treatment modality.

Predictive physiological anticipation preceding seemingly unpredictable stimuli: a meta-analysis

This meta-analysis of 26 reports published between 1978 and 2010 tests an unusual hypothesis: for stimuli of two or more types that are presented in an order designed to be unpredictable and that produce different post-stimulus physiological activity, the direction of pre-stimulus physiological activity reflects the direction of post-stimulus physiological activity, resulting in an unexplained anticipatory effect. The reports we examined used one of two paradigms: (1) randomly ordered presentations of arousing vs. neutral stimuli, or (2) guessing tasks with feedback (correct vs. incorrect). Dependent variables included: electrodermal activity, heart rate, blood volume, pupil dilation, electroencephalographic activity, and blood oxygenation level dependent (BOLD) activity. To avoid including data hand-picked from multiple different analyses, no post hoc experiments were considered. The results reveal a significant overall effect with a small effect size [fixed effect: overall ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.15-0.27, z = 6.9, p < 2.7 × 10(-12); random effects: overall (weighted) ES = 0.21, 95% CI = 0.13-0.29, z = 5.3, p < 5.7 × 10(-8)]. Higher quality experiments produced a quantitatively larger effect size and a greater level of significance than lower quality studies. The number of contrary unpublished reports that would be necessary to reduce the level of significance to chance (p > 0.05) was conservatively calculated to be 87 reports. We explore alternative explanations and examine the potential linkage between this unexplained anticipatory activity and other results demonstrating meaningful pre-stimulus activity preceding behaviorally relevant events. We conclude that to further examine this currently unexplained anticipatory activity, multiple replications arising from different laboratories using the same methods are necessary. The cause of this anticipatory activity, which undoubtedly lies within the realm of natural physical processes (as opposed to supernatural or paranormal ones), remains to be determined.

The global coherence initiative: creating a coherent planetary standing wave

The much anticipated year of 2012 is now here. Amidst the predictions and cosmic alignments that many are aware of, one thing is for sure: it will be an interesting and exciting year as the speed of change continues to increase, bringing both chaos and great opportunity. One benchmark of these times is a shift in many people from a paradigm of competition to one of greater cooperation. All across the planet, increasing numbers of people are practicing heart-based living, and more groups are forming activities that support positive change and creative solutions for manifesting a better world. The Global Coherence Initiative (GCI) is a science-based, co-creative project to unite people in heart-focused care and intention. GCI is working in concert with other initiatives to realize the increased power of collective intention and consciousness. The convergence of several independent lines of evidence provides strong support for the existence of a global information field that connects all living systems and consciousness. Every cell in our bodies is bathed in an external and internal environment of fluctuating invisible magnetic forces that can affect virtually every cell and circuit in biological systems. Therefore, it should not be surprising that numerous physiological rhythms in humans and global collective behaviors are not only synchronized with solar and geomagnetic activity, but disruptions in these fields can create adverse effects on human health and behavior. The most likely mechanism for explaining how solar and geomagnetic influences affect human health and behavior are a coupling between the human nervous system and resonating geomagnetic frequencies, called Schumann resonances, which occur in the earth-ionosphere resonant cavity and Alfvén waves. It is well established that these resonant frequencies directly overlap with those of the human brain and cardiovascular system. If all living systems are indeed interconnected and communicate with each other via biological, electromagnetic, and nonlocal fields, it stands to reason that humans can work together in a co-creative relationship to consciously increase the coherence in the global field environment, which in turn distributes this information to all living systems within the field. GCI was established to help facilitate the shift in global consciousness from instability and discord to balance, cooperation, and enduring peace. A primary goal of GCI is to test the hypothesis that large numbers of people when in a heart-coherent state and holding a shared intention can encode information on the earth's energetic and geomagnetic fields, which act as carrier waves of this physiologically patterned and relevant information. In order to conduct this research, a global network of 12 to 14 ultrasensitive magnetic field detectors specifically designed to measure the earth's magnetic resonances is being installed strategically around the planet. More important is GCI's primary goal to motivate as many people as possible to work together in a more coherent and collaborative manner to increase the collective human consciousness. If we are persuaded that not only external fields of solar and cosmic origins but also human attention and emotion can directly affect the physical world and the mental and emotional states of others (consciousness), it broadens our view of what interconnectedness means and how it can be intentionally utilized to shape the future of the world we live in. It implies that our attitudes, emotions, and intentions matter and that coherent, cooperative intent can have positive effects. GCI hypothesizes that when enough individuals and social groups increase their coherence baseline and utilize that increased coherence to intentionally create a more coherent standing reference wave in the global field, it will help increase global consciousness. This can be achieved when an increasing number of people move towards more balanced and self-regulated emotions and responses. This in turn can help facilitate cooperation and collaboration in innovative problem solving and intuitive discernment for addressing society's significant social, environmental, and economic problems. In time, as more individuals stabilize the global field and families, workplaces, and communities move to increased social coherence, it will lead to increased global coherence. This will be indicated by countries adopting a more coherent planetary view so that social and economic oppression, warfare, cultural intolerance, crime, and disregard for the environment can be addressed meaningfully and successfully.

Electrocortical activity prior to unpredictable stimuli in meditators and nonmeditators

Advanced meditators occasionally report experiences of timelessness, or states of awareness that seem to transcend the usual boundaries of the subjective present. This type of experience was investigated in eight experienced meditators and eight matched controls by measuring 32 channels of EEG before, during, and after exposure to unpredictable light and sound stimuli. The experiment postulated that if some aspect of consciousness extends beyond the present moment, then prestimulus electrocortical signals should differ depending on stimuli that were about to be selected by a truly random process, and that if such experiences were catalyzed through meditation practice, then prestimulus differences should be more apparent in meditators than in nonmeditators. Each of the 32 EEG channels was baseline adjusted on each trial by the electrical potential averaged between two- and one-second prestimulus, then for each channel the average potential was determined from one-second prestimulus to stimulus onset. The resulting means across subjects in each group were compared by stimulus type using randomized permutation procedures and corrected for multiple comparisons. Within the control group, no EEG channels showed significant prestimulus differences between light versus sound stimulus conditions, but within the meditator group five of 32 channels resulted in significant differences (P < .05, two tailed). Comparisons between control and meditator groups showed significant prestimulus differences prior to audio tone stimuli in 14 of 32 channels (P < .05, two tailed, of which eight channels were P < .005, two tailed). This outcome successfully replicates effects reported in earlier experiments, suggesting that sometimes the subjective sense of awareness extending into the future may be ontologically accurate.

Compassionate intention as a therapeutic intervention by partners of cancer patients: effects of distant intention on the patients' autonomic nervous system

OBJECTIVE

This double-blind study investigated the effects of intention on the autonomic nervous system of a human "sender" and distant "receiver" of those intentions, and it explored the roles that motivation and training might have in modulating these effects.

DESIGN

Skin conductance level was measured in each member of a couple, both of whom were asked to feel the presence of the other. While the receiving person relaxed in a distant shielded room for 30 minutes, the sending person directed intention toward the receiver during repeated 10-second epochs separated by random interepoch periods. Thirty-six couples participated in 38 test sessions. In 22 couples, one of the pair was a cancer patient. In 12 of those couples, the healthy person was trained to direct intention toward the patient and asked to practice that intention daily for three months prior to the experiment (trained group). In the other 10 couples, the pair was tested before the partner was trained (wait group). Fourteen healthy couples received no training (control group).

OUTCOME MEASURES

Using nonparametric bootstrap procedures, normalized skin conductance means recorded during the intention epochs were compared with the same measures recorded during randomly selected interepoch periods, used as controls. The preplanned difference examined the intention versus control means at the end of the intention epoch.

RESULTS

Overall, receivers' skin conductance increased during the intention epochs (z = 3.9; P = .00009, two-tailed). Planned differences in skin conductance among the three groups were not significant, but a post hoc analysis showed that peak deviations were largest and most sustained in the trained group, followed by more moderate effects in the wait group, and still smaller effects in the control group.

CONCLUSIONS

Directing intention toward a distant person is correlated with activation of that person's autonomic nervous system. Strong motivation to heal and to be healed, and training on how to cultivate and direct compassionate intention, may further enhance this effect.

Effects of Intentionally Enhanced Chocolate on Mood

OBJECTIVE

A double-blind, randomized, placebo-controlled experiment investigated whether chocolate exposed to "good intentions" would enhance mood more than unexposed chocolate.

DESIGN

Individuals were assigned to one of four groups and asked to record their mood each day for a week by using the Profile of Mood States. For days three, four and five, each person consumed a half ounce of dark chocolate twice a day at prescribed times. Three groups blindly received chocolate that had been intentionally treated by three different techniques. The intention in each case was that people who ate the chocolate would experience an enhanced sense of energy, vigor, and well-being. The fourth group blindly received untreated chocolate as a placebo control. The hypothesis was that mood reported during the three days of eating chocolate would improve more in the intentional groups than in the control group.

SUBJECTS

Stratified random sampling was used to distribute 62 participants among the four groups, matched for age, gender, and amount of chocolate consumed on average per week. Most participants lived in the same geographic region to reduce mood variations due to changes in weather, and the experiment was conducted during one week to reduce effects of current events on mood fluctuations.

RESULTS

On the third day of eating chocolate, mood had improved significantly more in the intention conditions than in the control condition (P = .04). Analysis of a planned subset of individuals who habitually consumed less than the grand mean of 3.2 ounces of chocolate per week showed a stronger improvement in mood (P = .0001). Primary contributors to the mood changes were the factors of declining fatigue (P = .01) and increasing vigor (P = .002). All three intentional techniques contributed to the observed results.

CONCLUSION

The mood-elevating properties of chocolate can be enhanced with intention.

State of the science: intuition in nursing, a generation of studying the phenomenon

A systematic review of nursing literature was conducted to determine the state of the science with respect to the use of intuition in nursing practice and nursing education. The Cumulative Index for Nursing and Allied Health database was used to identify the priority population. From this database, 45 research articles that were written in English, published in nursing journals, and that contained the word intuition in the title and/or abstract and in which intuition was a major term were analyzed. Findings show that, to date, most studies are descriptive, exploratory in design. Nurses affirm that intuition is salient to expertise in clinical practice and should be carefully taught to students and novice nurses.

Anomalous Anticipatory Skin Conductance Response to Acoustic Stimuli: Experimental Results and Speculation About a Mechanism

OBJECTIVES

The primary aim of this study was to conduct a replication, simplification, and extension of similar previous studies that claimed anomalous anticipatory skin conductance responses prior to various stimuli and to provide sufficient protocol and analysis details in order to foster additional replications. A secondary aim was to provide a testable model in order to understand the observed results.

DESIGN

We used standard skin conductance measures and techniques to search within 50 participants for responses prior to 1-second duration, 97-dB acoustic stimuli, compared to prior to silent controls. We used an interstimulus interval randomly and uniformly distributed between 30 and 50 seconds.

OUTCOME MEASURES

The dependent variable was the difference between proportions of 3.5-second prestimulus intervals prior to acoustic stimuli and prior to silent controls that contained a fully formed, nonspecific skin conductance response (ns-SCR). The null hypothesis was that the proportion difference should be zero.

RESULTS

We found a significant proportion difference of 0.032 (Z = 2.08; effect size = 0.077 +/- 0.037; p(1t) = 0.0018), which is a replication of earlier similar studies.

CONCLUSIONS

We examined and ruled out a number of potential artifacts that might have accounted for this finding. To understand these results, we demonstrated, by Monte Carlo techniques, that a possible explanation is that experimenters may have used their own intuition to initiate experiment runs to somehow sort otherwise random nonspecific skin conductance responses into appropriate bins in order to mimic physiological responses. We found experimental evidence to support this idea as an operational mechanism. If this speculation is confirmed in prospective studies, then this intuition-based mimicking of effects may profoundly impact the interpretation of results from complementary and alternative medical studies that use statistical inference to assess outcomes.

Gut feelings, intuition, and emotions: an exploratory study

OBJECTIVE

Investigate whether the gut feelings of one person, as measured with an electrogastrogram (EGG), respond to the emotions of a distant person.

DESIGN

In a double blind protocol, EGG activity was recorded in an individual relaxing in a heavily shielded chamber while, at a distance, a second person periodically viewed the live video image of the first person along with stimuli designed to evoke positive, negative, calming, or neutral emotions.

SUBJECTS

Twenty-six (26) pairs of healthy adult volunteers.

OUTCOME MEASURES

EGG maximum values recorded while the distant person was exposed to emotional stimuli were compared to similar values recorded during exposure to neutral stimuli.

RESULTS

EGG maximums were significantly larger on average when the distant person was experiencing positive (p = 0.006) and negative (p = 0.0009) emotions, as compared to neutral emotions. Nonparametric bootstrap procedures were employed to evaluate these differences, and the results survive correction for multiple analyses.

CONCLUSIONS

EGG activity increases in response to the emotions of a distant person, beyond the influence of ordinary sensory interactions. Relationships commonly reported between gut feelings and intuitive hunches may share a common, poorly understood, perceptive origin.

Electrophysiological evidence of intuition: Part 2. A system-wide process?

OBJECTIVES

This study aims to contribute to a scientific understanding of intuition, a process by which information normally outside the range of conscious awareness is perceived by the body's psychophysiological systems. The first objective, presented in two empirical reports (Part 1 and Part 2), was to replicate and extend the results of previous experiments demonstrating that the body can respond to an emotionally arousing stimulus seconds before it is actually experienced. The second objective, to be presented in a forthcoming publication (Part 3), is to develop a theory that explains how the body receives and processes information involved in intuitive perception.

DESIGN

The study used a counterbalanced crossover design, in which 30 calm and 15 emotionally arousing pictures were presented to 26 participants under two experimental conditions: a baseline condition of "normal" psychophysiologic function and a condition of physiological coherence. Primary measures included: skin conductance; the electroencephalogram (EEG), from which cortical event-related potentials (ERP) and heartbeatevoked potentials (HBEP) were derived; and the electrocardiogram (ECG), from which cardiac decelerations/ accelerations were derived. These measures were used to investigate where and when in the brain and body intuitive information is processed.

RESULTS

The main findings presented here are: (1) surprisingly, both the heart and brain appear to receive and respond to intuitive information; (2) even more surprisingly, there is compelling evidence that the heart appears to receive intuitive information before the brain; (3) there were significant differences in prestimulus ERPs for calm versus emotional stimuli; (4) the frontal cortex, temporal, occipital, and parietal areas appear to be involved in the processing of prestimulus information; (5) there were significant differences in prestimulus calm/emotional HBEPs, primarily in the coherent mode; (6) there were significant gender differences in the processing of prestimulus information. Especially noteworthy is the apparent interaction between the HBEPs and ERPs in the females, which suggests that the heart modulates the ERP and that females are more attuned to intuitive information from the heart.

CONCLUSIONS

Overall, our data suggest that the heart and brain, together, are involved in receiving, processing, and decoding intuitive information. On the basis of these results and those of other research, it would thus appear that intuitive perception is a system-wide process in which both the heart and brain (and possibly other bodily systems) play a critical role. To account for the study's results, Part 3 will develop a theory based on holographic principles explaining how intuitive perception accesses a field of energy into which information about "future" events is spectrally enfolded.