Dopamine, Paranormal Belief, and the Detection of Meaningful Stimuli

Abstract

Dopamine, paranormal belief, and the detection of meaningful stimuliKrummenacher, P; Mohr, C; Haker, H; Brugger, P Krummenacher, P; Haker, H; Brugger, P (2010 Abstract ■ Dopamine (DA) is suggested to improve perceptual and cognitive decisions by increasing the signal-to-noise ratio. Somewhat paradoxically, a hyperdopaminergia (arguably more accentuated in the right hemisphere) has also been implied in the genesis of unusual experiences such as hallucinations and paranormal thought. To test these opposing assumptions, we used two lateralized decision tasks, one with lexical (tapping left-hemisphere functions), the other with facial stimuli (tapping right-hemisphere functions). Participants were 40 healthy righthanded men, of whom 20 reported unusual, "paranormal" experiences and beliefs ("believers"), whereas the remaining participants were unexperienced and critical ("skeptics"). In a between-subject design, levodopa (200 mg) or placebo administration was balanced between belief groups (double-blind procedure). For each task and visual field, we calculated sensitivity in the placebo group. Criterion analyses revealed that believers favored false alarms over misses, whereas skeptics displayed the opposite preference. Unexpectedly, under levodopa, these decision preferences were lower in both groups. We thus infer that levodopa (1) decreases sensitivity in perceptual-cognitive decisions, but only in skeptics, and (2) makes skeptics less and believers slightly more conservative. These results stand at odd to the common view that DA generally improves signal-to-noise ratios. Paranormal ideation seems an important personality dimension and should be assessed in investigations on the detection of signals in noise. ■

Paranormal psychic believers and skeptics: a large-scale test of the cognitive differences hypothesis

“…Krummenacher, Mohr, Haker, & Brugger, 2010;Rogers et al, 2009;Watt & Wiseman, 2002). Overall we found evidence that skeptics outperformed believers on four measures that require some form of analytical thinking: (1) the logic subscale of the Shipley Institute of Learning Scale, which required them to complete patterns of words, letters, and numbers; (2) the remote associations task, which required the identification of a nonpresented word that was related to three presented words; (3) the rejection of conspiracies on the conspiracy questionnaire, suggesting that skeptics engage in more critical or analytical thinking about these kinds of conspiracies than do believers; and (4) the argument evaluation task, which requires critical thinking about the quality of arguments made during a hypothetical debate.…”

“…Some research suggests that paranormal believers are more likely to identify patterns in noise or draw meaningful connections between unrelated events (Blackmore, 1992;Krummenacher et al, 2010;Rominger, Weiss, Fink, Schulter, & Papousek, 2011). For example, when presented with images composed of visual noise, Blackmore and Moore (1994) found that psychic believers were significantly more likely to see patterns in the noise than skeptics (see also Riekki et al, 2013;van Elk, 2013).…”

The “Creative Right Brain” Revisited: Individual Creativity and Associative Priming in the Right Hemisphere Relate to Hemispheric Asymmetries in Reward Brain Function

“…Specifically, both madness (i.e., psychosis) and genius (i.e., high creativity) have been linked to a hyperactive RH, where facilitated formation of abnormal associations could stimulate both delusional and creative ideas (Bracha 1989;Leonhard and Brugger 1998;Pizzagalli et al 2001;Taylor et al 2002;Krummenacher et al 2010). This notion is supported by studies showing that individuals expressing positive schizotypical traits, that is, schizophrenia-like thought patterns and perceptions including odd beliefs, paranormal thoughts, and unusual perceptual experiences, display increased associative processing Mohr et al 2001Mohr et al , 2006, specifically in the RH, as assessed through a lateral semantic priming task , and increased creativity (Leonhard and Brugger 1998;Weinstein and Graves 2002;Folley and Park 2005;Nettle and Clegg 2006;Acar and Sen 2013).…”

Expectancy-Induced Placebo Analgesia in Children and the Role of Magical Thinking

“…Dopaminergic activity has also been associated with personality traits such as reward susceptibility (18), which partially predicts the magnitude of PA (18,19). More recently, the personality dimension of magical thinking (MT), which is thought to be related to dopaminergic function (20), has been implicated in modulating expectation-related lateralized PA in healthy adults (21). MT -the belief that one can bring about a circumstance or event by thinking about it or wishing for it -is a fundamental dimension of a child's thinking (22,23).…”

“…MT -the belief that one can bring about a circumstance or event by thinking about it or wishing for it -is a fundamental dimension of a child's thinking (22,23). MT in healthy adults has been frequently associated with enhanced meaning attribution (20) and it has been shown to facilitate associative, possibly right hemisphericmediated processing (24,25). Indeed, a right hemisphere dominance has been suggested for MT (26) and for pain processing -albeit with inconsistent findings (27,28).…”