Consciousness research increasingly joins laboratory testing, survey science and lived contemplative practice. Helané Wahbeh works in that space, studying noetic experiences, telephone telepathy, channelling and other anomalous capacities while trying to connect rigorous measurement with questions people actually bring to everyday life and spiritual practice.
- In telephone telepathy trials, guesses exceeded conservative chance levels only when the design tested telepathy rather than precognition.
- Genetic relatedness and ordinary communication frequency predicted better caller identification, while emotional closeness and physical distance did not.
- Wahbeh’s Noetic Signature Inventory models psi-related experience across twelve factors and maps how such experiences vary across populations.
Life and Career
Helané Wahbeh was born in California in 1972. Her interest in psi began with childhood psi experiences and a family background that included trance channeling on her mother’s side.1Personal communication from Wahbeh, 8 October 2026). While working as a meditation researcher at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU), she was invited to join the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) Future of Meditation Research workgroup, where she first encountered parapsychology as a formal scientific field. She left her full-time academic post to join the IONS staff in 2015.
Wahbeh has served as the IONS Director of Research since 2017. She is also an adjunct assistant professor of neurology at OHSU. She trained as a naturopathic physician at the National College of Natural Medicine (now the National University of Natural Medicine) and later obtained a Master of Clinical Research at OHSU; her early work centred on mindfulness meditation for veterans with PTSD. She was president of the Parapsychological Association from 2021 to 2023 and continues to serve on its board. She is an associate editor for Scientific Reports and is co-editing the forthcoming Handbook of Parapsychology.
Her research covers mind-body medicine, channeling and mediumship, noetic experiences and extended human capacities; she has published more than 110 peer-reviewed papers. She is the author of The Science of Channeling,2Wahbeh (2022). which presents research on channeling together with practical guidance for a general audience.
Research on Psi
Telephone Telepathy
Wahbeh and the IONS team carried out experiments in which 177 participants tried to use psi to identify a person calling on the telephone. Trials were designed to distinguish between either telepathy or precognition, with callers chosen before or after guesses, respectively. Telepathic trials significantly exceeded chance even when a more conservative test was used that accounted for a response bias (50.4% vs. 45% p = 0.02), whereas precognitive trials did not exceed chance (31.9% vs. 33.3%). Genetic relatedness notably impacted accuracy, with 25% genetic relatedness being linked with 2.88 times higher odds of identifying the caller (p = 0.04). Communication frequency, which indicated how frequently the caller and callee communicated on a regular basis, correlated positively (p = 0.03) with correctly identifying the caller, while emotional closeness and physical distance between the caller and callee did not significantly affect outcomes. Although the telepathy results favoured the psi hypothesis, the failure to find psi in more stringent precognition testing leaves open more conventional explanations like cheating and sensory leakage.3Wahbeh et al. (2024).
Consistency in Psi Ability
Wahbeh, Arnaud Delorme and Dean Radin developed an online platform to identify individuals with potential psi talent, testing 1,014 participants across eight psychophysics tasks including remote viewing, card guessing, and psychokinesis. In Phase 1, statistically significant above-chance performance was observed in remote viewing (p = 0.0012) and card tasks (p = 0.0008), with overall performance across tasks showing significance (p = 0.0001). The top fifty performers were retested in Phase 2, where remote viewing (p = 0.0284) and psychokinesis (p = 0.0347) showed above-chance trends, though these did not withstand Bonferroni correction. Personality correlations revealed that conscientiousness was positively associated with performance in the full sample (p = 0.05) but negatively in the selected group (p = 0.02), while agreeableness positively correlated with remote viewing performance (p = 0.03).4Delorme, Wahbeh, & Radin (2025).
A related study examined more than 25 million trials from a forced-choice clairvoyant task on the same online platform.5Wahbeh et al. (2026b). At the group level, much of the observed pattern could be reproduced by optional stopping (participants deciding when to end a run), as a matched Monte Carlo simulation showed. However, what drives participants’ stopping decisions is not known, so it remains an open question whether optional stopping is purely a behavioural artefact or could itself reflect psi, for example if participants sense when they are performing well. Within the top 2.6 % of users, optional stopping remained the strongest and most consistent predictor of hit rates. Small, context-dependent associations were also noted with belief in psi, prior precognitive experience and meditation practice. The study highlights both the potential and the methodological difficulties inherent in large-scale online psi research.
Psi Experiences Among Scientists
Wahbeh and colleagues carried out a study of the prevalence of psi experiences among scientists and engineers, to test the idea that this would be lower among a section of the population especially characterized by rational thinking.6Wahbeh et al. (2018). Invitations to participate in a survey on the frequency of ‘unique human experiences’ were accepted by 1216 individuals drawn from three categories of American adults: the general population, scientists and engineers, and members of IONS (categorized as paranormal ‘enthusiasts’). Of these, 899 completed the survey. Some 93% of the scientists and engineers claimed to have had at least one meaningful experience, comparable to those in the ’general population’ group (94%), and only slightly fewer than the enthusiasts (99%). Once potentially normal experiences attributable to empathy and intuition were excluded, the figures were still high at around 89% for both groups. The possibility of self-selection was mitigated by the fact that the purpose of the study was masked and that having begun to complete it, only a quarter of the scientists and engineers dropped out, compared with 42% and 32% of the general population and enthusiasts respectively. The authors conclude that ‘experiences that could be termed “psychic” are reported by scientists and engineers to a surprisingly large degree, especially in light of academic bias against the existence and investigation of such experiences’.7Wahbeh et al. (2018).
Noetic Signature
To examine everyday experiences of psi, Wahbeh and colleagues analysed first-person accounts from 521 adults and identified five broad themes: ways of engagement, ways of knowing, types of information, ways of affecting, and ways of expressing.8Wahbeh, Fry, Speirn et al. (2022). From this analysis they developed the Noetic Signature Inventory (NSI), a 44-item self-report questionnaire comprising 12 factors. These include general intuition, knowing others’ minds (telepathy), knowing the future (precognition), healing, and apparent communication with non-physical beings.9Wahbeh, Fry & Speirn (2022). Confirmatory factor analysis supported the 12-factor structure.10Wahbeh & Kriegsman (2025). Normative data from nearly 3,900 participants indicated higher scores on several factors among women and among respondents identifying with multiple ethnicities; the 12-factor model continued to provide the best fit.11Wahbeh, Glick & Kriegsman (2025). The NSI is available to individuals at nsi.noetic.or and is free of charge to researchers to use in their studies (email [email protected] for more information).
Genetics and Psi
Wahbeh conducted a case-control study comparing the genomes of thirteen individuals claiming psychic abilities (or having family members with such abilities) to ten controls without such claims, finding preliminary evidence of genetic differences, discovering significant genetic differences where psychics possessed the original form of a chromosome seven region while controls had a mutated version. This finding raises intriguing questions about potential genetic underpinnings of psychic experiences, suggesting a possible biological component to what has traditionally been considered purely subjective phenomena.12Wahbeh et al. (2021b).
A 2026 follow-up drew on direct-to-consumer genetic data from 102 adults who reported psychic experiences.13Wahbeh et al. (2026a). Most had their first experience before age 24, and 82% reported family members with similar experiences. A machine-learning analysis identified 212 genetic variants associated with psychic experience scores. The strongest was in ARHGEF18, a gene involved in calcium-dependent dendritic growth; others mapped to genes involved in calcium signalling, brain structure and oestrogen pathways. These findings are preliminary and need replication in larger, more diverse samples.
Mind-to-Mind
Working with Sitara Taddeo, Delorme and Radin, Wahbeh developed a multi-phase screening procedure to identify adult pairs who reported repeated mind-to-mind experiences. These pairs were then tested on a remote intention-discrimination task conducted by videoconference.14Wahbeh et al. (in press). In each trial one partner (the Intender) either directed focused intention toward the other or performed a control activity, while the second partner (the Perceiver) attempted to judge which condition was occurring. The partners then exchanged roles. Across 100 pairs, 92 of 200 Perceiver blocks (46 %) exceeded chance expectation, against approximately 75 expected under the null hypothesis (p = .01, one-tailed). Performance differed substantially among individuals and pairs. Exploratory analyses revealed no associations with psychological traits, relationship variables, genetic relatedness or physical distance. The highest-scoring pairs are currently under more detailed investigation in a BIAL-funded follow-up study.
Research on Channelling
Surveying Trance Channellers
In a report published in 2020, Wahbeh describes the results of an online survey of trance channellers – people who claim to be able to connect to a deceased individual when in an altered state. A trance channeler is someone who goes into a trance state at will (the depth of the trance may vary), and the disincarnate entity or spirit uses the channeler’s body with permission to communicate directly through the channeler’s voice, body movements and so on, rather than the channeler receiving information mentally or otherwise and then relaying what is being received.15Wahbeh, Cannard, Okonsky & Delorme (2019).
Mental health factors, personality characteristics and subjective experience data were collected from 83 participants. Results indicated that most held a ‘spiritual rather than religious’ worldview and developed channelling ability in middle age. Channelers generally fell within normal mental-health ranges. Dissociation scores were sometimes slightly elevated but remained well below clinical thresholds.16Wahbeh & Radin (2018); Wahbeh & Butzer (2020). Against sceptical assertions, most did not demonstrate any psychotic or dissociative tendencies compared to the normal population: survey respondents reported similar scores to the general population on most personality factors, including psychological absorption and empathy. Channellers showed high levels of belief in life after death, non-local consciousness and telepathy, and tended to view their experiences in a positive light, impacting positively on general wellbeing.17Wahbeh & Butzer (2020).
Trance Channelling
Wahbeh conducted multiple studies on trance channelling, first examining the phenomenology of channellers who demographically resembled the general population but exhibited high belief in paranormal phenomena and reported receiving anomalous information, with potential environmental effects suggested by random number generator data variations between channelling and control sessions.18Pederzoli et al. (2021a).
In subsequent research with Cannard and Delorme,19Wahbeh et al. (2019). physiological measurements (EEG, ECG, GSR) showed minimal differences during channelling despite participants’ subjective experiences of altered states, though voice analyses indicated genuine consciousness shifts. Meanwhile, a follow-up EEG study revealed distinctive neurological patterns where trance states displayed increased frontal beta and gamma power compared to mind-wandering states that showed increased frontal delta and theta power, suggesting trance involves heightened mental silence.20Wahbeh et al. (2023b).
Wahbeh and colleagues have extended this line of research in several further studies. Together with Speirn, Pederzoli and Tressoldi she presented identical science questions to channelers in the United States and Italy under both channeling and non-channeling conditions; the responses differed according to state.21Wahbeh et al. (2023). A case study conducted with Taddeo and Glick demonstrated that a scientist with no previous experience of the practice was able to learn trance channeling after structured training.22Wahbeh et al. (2025). Wahbeh and Glick also conducted the first prospective investigation of trance-channeled material attributed to extraterrestrial intelligences and reported moderate to high semantic correspondence among independent channelers.23Wahbeh & Glick (2026a); Wahbeh & Glick (2026b).
Michael Duggan
Works Cited
Carpenter, L., Cannard, C., Wahbeh, H., & Radin, D. (2021). Carpenter, L., Cannard, C., Wahbeh, H., & Radin, D. (2021). Psychophysical interactions with photons: Three exploratory studies with unexpected results. [Full text.] Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 85/1, 31-48. Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 85/1, 31-48.
Delorme, A., Cannard, C., Radin, D., & Wahbeh, H. (2020). Accuracy and neural correlates of blinded mediumship compared to controls on an image classification task. [Summary.] Brain and Cognition 146, art. 105638.
Delorme, A., Wahbeh, H., & Radin, D. (2025). Testing the robustness of accurate intuitive abilities and assessment of reproducibility with a group of potentially talented individuals. [Abstract.] Journal of Consciousness Studies 32/1-2, 26-49.
Pederzoli, L., Tressoldi, P., & Wahbeh, H. (2021). Channeling: A non-pathological possession and dissociative identity experience or something else? [Full text.] Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry 46/2, 161-69.
Sagher, A., Butzer, B., & Wahbeh, H. (2019). The characteristics of exceptional human experiences. [Abstract.] Journal of Consciousness Studies 26/11–12, 203–37.
Sheldrake, R. (2014). Telepathy in connection with telephone calls, text messages and emails. [Abstract.] Journal of the International Society of Life Information Science 32/1, 7-15.
Wahbeh, H. (2022). The Science of Channeling: Why You Should Trust Your Intuition and Embrace the Force That Connects Us All. Oakland, California, USA: Reveal Press.
Wahbeh, H., & Butzer, B. (2020). Characteristics of English-speaking trance channelers. [Abstract.] EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing 16/5, 304-9.
Wahbeh, H., Cannard, C., Kriegsman, M., & Delorme, A. (2023). Evaluating brain spectral and connectivity differences between silent mind-wandering and trance states. [Abstract.] Progress in Brain Research 277, 29-61.
Wahbeh, H., Cannard, C., Okonsky, J., & Delorme, A. (2019). A physiological examination of perceived incorporation during trance. [Full text.] F1000Research 8, 67.
Wahbeh, H., Cannard, C., Radin, D., & Delorme, A. (2024). Who’s calling? Evaluating the accuracy of guessing who is on the phone. [Abstract.] EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing 20/2, 239-47.
Wahbeh, H., Delorme, A., Cannard, C., Rossner, R., Yount, G., & Radin, D. (2026a). Genomic correlates of self-reported psychic experiences: An exploratory analysis. [Abstract.] EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing 22/4, art. 103416.
Wahbeh, H., Carpenter, L., & Radin, D. (2018). A mixed methods phenomenological and exploratory study of channeling. [Abstract.] Journal of the Society for Psychical Research 82/3, 129-48.
Wahbeh, H., Fry, N., & Speirn, P. (2022). The Noetic Signature Inventory: Development, exploration, and initial validation. [Full text.] Frontiers in Psychology 13, art. 838582.
Wahbeh, H., Fry, N., Speirn, P., Hrnjic, L., Ancel, E., & Niebauer, E. (2022). Qualitative analysis of first-person accounts of noetic experiences. [Full text.] F1000Research 10, art. 497.
Wahbeh, H., & Glick, B. (2026a). Qualitative structure and meaning in prospective trance-channeled communications attributed to extraterrestrial intelligences. [Full text.] World Futures, 1-21.
Wahbeh, H., & Glick, B. (2026b). Semantic structure and correspondence in prospective trance-channeled communications attributed to extraterrestrial intelligences. [Full text.] World Futures, 1-17.
Wahbeh, H., Glick, B., & Kriegsman, M. (2025). Investigating individual intuitive expression: Norms and patterns in the Noetic Signature Inventory. [Abstract.] Journal of Consciousness Studies 32/11–12, 121-58.
Wahbeh, H., & Kriegsman, M. (2025). The Noetic Signature Inventory: 12-factor confirmatory factor analysis. [Full text.] Biostatistics and Biometrics Open Access Journal 12/2, 1-6.
Wahbeh, H., Kriegsman, M., Glick, B., Delorme, A., & Radin, D. (2026b). Probing top performers in a forced-choice clairvoyant task. [Full text.] Journal of Anomalistics 26/1, 146-76.
Wahbeh, H., & Radin, D. (2018). People reporting experiences of mediumship have higher dissociation symptom scores than non-mediums, but below thresholds for pathological dissociation. [Full text.] F1000Research 6, art. 1416.
Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Cannard, C., & Delorme, A. (2022). What if consciousness is not an emergent property of the brain? Observational and empirical challenges to materialistic models. [Full text.] Frontiers in Psychology 13, art. 955594.
Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Mossbridge, J., Vieten, C., & Delorme, A. (2018). Exceptional experiences reported by scientists and engineers. [Abstract.] EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing 14/5, 329-41.
Wahbeh, H., Radin, D., Yount, G., Woodley of Menie, M.A., Sarraf, M.A., & Karpuj, M.V. (2021). Genetics of psychic ability — A pilot case-control exome sequencing study. [Abstract.] EXPLORE: The Journal of Science and Healing 18/3, 264-71.
Wahbeh, H., Speirn, P., Pederzoli, L., & Tressoldi, P. (2023). Channelers’ answers to questions from scientists: An exploratory study. [Download PDF.] Journal of Scientific Exploration 37/3.
Wahbeh, H., Taddeo, S., Delorme, A., & Radin, D. (in press). Mind-to-mind: A multi-phase screening approach to interpersonal intention discrimination in selected dyads. Journal of Consciousness Studies. [Manuscript accepted for publication.]
Wahbeh, H., Taddeo, S., & Glick, B. (2025). Can trance channeling be learned? A case study of a scientist’s experience. [Download PDF.] Journal of Scientific Exploration 39/4.