Wahbeh Helané, Radin Dean, Yount Garret, Woodley Of Menie Michael A, Sarraf Matthew A, Karpuj Marcela V
Research Department, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA, USA.
Research Department, Institute of Noetic Sciences, Petaluma, CA, USA.
Explore (NY). 2022 May-Jun;18(3):264-271. doi: 10.1016/j.explore.2021.02.014. Epub 2021 Mar 1.
It is commonly believed that psychic ability, like many mental and physical traits, runs in families. This suggests the presence of a genetic component. If such a component were found, it would constitute a biological marker of psychic ability and inform environmental or pharmacologic means of enhancing or suppressing this ability.
A case-control study design was used to evaluate differences between psychic cases and non-psychic controls. Over 3,000 candidates globally were screened through two online surveys to locate people who claimed they and other family members were psychic. Measures of relevance to the claimed abilities (e.g., absorption, empathy, schizotypy) were collected and based on those responses, individuals with indications of psychotic or delusional tendencies were excluded from further consideration. Eligible candidates were then interviewed and completed additional screening tests. Thirteen individuals were selected as the final "psychic cases," and ten age-, sex-, and ethnicity-matched individuals with no claims of psychic ability were selected as controls. DNA from the saliva of these 23 participants was subjected to whole-exome sequencing. Two independent bioinformatics analyses were blindly applied to the sequenced data, one focusing exclusively on protein-coding sequences and another that also included some adjacent noncoding sequences.
Sequencing data were obtained for all samples, except for one in the control group that did not pass the quality controls and was not included in further analyses. After unblinding the datasets, none of the protein-coding sequences (i.e., exons) showed any variation that discriminated between cases and controls. However, a difference was observed in the intron (i.e., non-protein-coding region) adjacent to an exon in the TNRC18 gene (Trinucleotide Repeat-Containing Gene 18 Protein) on chromosome 7. This variation, an alteration of GG to GA, was found in 7 of 9 controls and was absent from all psychic cases.
The most conservative interpretation of these results is that they result from random population sampling. However, when the results are considered in relation to other lines of evidence, the results are more provocative. Further research is justified to replicate and extend these findings.
人们普遍认为，与许多心理和身体特征一样，通灵能力在家族中具有遗传性。这表明存在遗传因素。如果发现这样的因素，它将构成通灵能力的生物学标记，并为增强或抑制这种能力的环境或药理学方法提供依据。
采用病例对照研究设计来评估通灵病例与非通灵对照之间的差异。通过两项在线调查对全球3000多名候选人进行筛选，以找出那些声称自己和其他家庭成员具有通灵能力的人。收集与所声称能力相关的测量指标（如专注度、同理心、精神分裂症倾向），并根据这些回答，将有精神病或妄想倾向迹象的个体排除在进一步考虑之外。然后对符合条件的候选人进行访谈并完成额外的筛选测试。选择了13名个体作为最终的“通灵病例”，并选择了10名年龄、性别和种族匹配且未声称具有通灵能力的个体作为对照。对这23名参与者唾液中的DNA进行全外显子组测序。对测序数据盲目应用两种独立的生物信息学分析，一种专门关注蛋白质编码序列，另一种还包括一些相邻的非编码序列。
除对照组中有一个样本未通过质量控制且未纳入进一步分析外，所有样本均获得了测序数据。在对数据集进行解密后，没有任何蛋白质编码序列（即外显子）显示出区分病例和对照的任何变异。然而，在7号染色体上TNRC18基因（含三核苷酸重复序列的基因18蛋白）的一个外显子相邻的内含子（即非蛋白质编码区）中观察到了差异。这种变异，即GG变为GA，在9名对照中的7名中发现，而所有通灵病例中均未出现。
对这些结果最保守的解释是，它们是随机人群抽样的结果。然而，当将这些结果与其他证据线索联系起来考虑时，结果更具启发性。有理由进行进一步的研究来重复和扩展这些发现。
