Neuroimaging Findings in Extrasensory Perception Research: A Prisma-Informed Descriptive Synthesis Publisher Pubmed



Batouli S A H ; Parsa M ; Safdari S ; Radin D I
Source: Explore Published:2026

Abstract

Extrasensory perception (ESP) research has used neuroimaging and neurophysiological methods to examine whether anomalous information-transfer tasks are associated with measurable brain activity. In light of recent critical work on this literature, the present article was reframed as a PRISMA-informed descriptive synthesis rather than as evidence for a unified neural signature of ESP. The review focuses on ESP-related paradigms, including telepathy, clairvoyance or hidden-target perception, remote viewing or anomalous cognition, precognition or presentiment, and selected distant-stimulation or receiver-response studies when explicitly framed as ESP, psi, or anomalous information transfer.The revised search used PubMed and ScienceDirect as reproducible database sources and supplemented these searches with an author-held topic-specific archive, citation searching, manual reference-list screening, and cross-checking against Acunzo et al. (2026). Studies were eligible when they reported empirical human data, used a neuroimaging or neurophysiological method, and included an explicit ESP-related or anomalous information-transfer task. Psychokinesis, distant healing, mediumship, survival-related research, ordinary hyperscanning, and altered-state studies without an ESP task were excluded from the primary synthesis.The final qualitative synthesis included 92 reports/studies. The review summarizes study paradigms, modalities, reported brain regions or electrode-level findings, behavioral or task-outcome context, and methodological limitations. Most studies used EEG/ERP, with fewer fMRI, fNIRS, SPECT, PET, and optical-topography reports. Findings involved posterior scalp or occipital activity, frontal, parietal, temporal, medial temporal, limbic, inter-brain, and receiver-response measures. Null, weak, and non-specific findings were retained and explicitly summarized.Overall, the literature is heterogeneous in design, modality, statistical approach, behavioral reporting, anatomical specificity, and methodological quality. Therefore, the findings are interpreted as descriptive patterns of reported results rather than as evidence for a single neural correlate of ESP. No formal meta-analysis was conducted because the studies did not provide sufficiently comparable paradigms, neural endpoints, or effect-size structures. Quantum, non-local, and filter/transmission interpretations are treated only as speculative frameworks for future empirical testing. © 2026 Elsevier Inc. All rights are reserved, including those for text and data mining, AI training, and similar technologies.