Why do people believe in the paranormal?
Some recent papers suggest that dopamine generally improves signal-to-noise ratios in the brain (Krummenacher et al, 2010) and that believers favor false alarms over misses. This is in line with an article (Gianotti et al., 2001) that shows believers to adopt a looser response criterion than skeptics when confronted with 'semantic noise'.
Others (Pizzagalli et al, 2000) have found that believers showed relatively higher right hemispheric activation and reduced hemispheric asymmetry of functional complexity. Recently Ken Mogi (2014) showed that belief in the paranormal is associated with the belief in free will.
Please let me know if I am missing some interesting articles on this topic.
On a relative subject. Do you know of any articles that explain paranormal phenomena with neurophysiology? Here are some examples of what I am looking for:
Ness RC: The Old Hag phenomenon as sleep paralysis: a biocultural interpretation. Cult Med Psychiatry 1978, 2(1):15-39.
Cheyne JA, Rueffer SD, Newby-Clark IR: Hypnagogic and hypnopompic hallucinations during sleep paralysis: neurological and cultural construction of the night-mare. Conscious Cogn 1999, 8(3):319-337.
Jalal B, Ramachandran VS: Sleep paralysis and "the bedroom intruder": the role of the right superior parietal, phantom pain and body image projection. Med Hypotheses 2014, 83(6):755-757.
Mobbs D, Watt C: There is nothing paranormal about near-death experiences: how neuroscience can explain seeing bright lights, meeting the dead, or being convinced you are one of them. Trends Cogn Sci 2011, 15(10):447-449.
Lempert T, Bauer M, Schmidt D: Syncope and near-death experience. Lancet 1994, 344(8925):829-830.
"Do you know of any articles that explain paranormal phenomena with neurophysiology?"
You give 5 references to sleep paralysis, near-death experiences and syncope, all of which are sufficiently understood to be categorized as weird and disturbing without being outside the range of natural phenomena. In other words, I don't think they can be considered as paranormal.
I think these phenomena can be traces to malfunctioning of the vestibular system in the inner ear, which guides self-image, spatial mapping, personalization, and is a major controller of the autonomic nervous system. In trying to check out this theory, I find careful examination of personal accounts including the very old literature of these odd expediences and the medical symptoms accompanying them is more useful than the current neurophysiological literature.
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