Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Part Two: You Were Born Telepathic, Then You Forgot. Dr. Diane Hennacy Explains The Science Behind a Savant Telepathy Test That Scored 97% Accuracy, And Why She Thinks We All Still Have It.

Starting point is 00:00:00 Hi, I'm I'm Biallic. And I'm Jonathan Cohen. And welcome to our breakdown. Today we're speaking with Dr. Diane Hennessey. This is part two of our conversation. She's a neuropsychiatrist and consciousness researcher. You might know her from the research she did on the telepathy tapes. She graduated from Johns Hopkins, taught at Harvard.

Starting point is 00:00:23 She brings a scientific rigor to the study of anomalous phenomena. We're going to be speaking to her today about the near-death adjacent experiences that she had when she was a young woman. where does consciousness go in the dream state? What dreams should we be paying attention to? And what are some shared traits found among individuals who report psychic abilities that might reveal more about what the brain is actually capable of? We're also going to be talking about acquired savant syndrome and the extraordinary abilities that can emerge after neurological changes as well as the role of the gut microbiome in autism. Enjoy part two of our conversation with Dr. Diane Hennessey. I got to meet one of the non-speaking individuals. He's 18 and got to spend some time with him here socially, not, you know, in a interview setting.

Starting point is 00:01:15 And I noticed that there was, you know, a poetic nature to his communication. He was typing on his own. And what I was thinking is like, is this what kind of all of our inner voices sound like, right? it's thinking more in kind of imagery and emotion. And I think also to, you know, speaking evolutionarily, like this is very recent, like desks and computers and, you know, phones and things like that. For most of human history, this is not how we lived, right? We lived close to nature.

Starting point is 00:01:52 We had, yes, a lot of rituals and folk tales and, you know, religious beliefs that many people don't hold to. but the structure of kind of the development of humans as we know it, right, of our species, was one that was very tied to things that do not need to be written down or understood in a linear fashion. Time itself, the fabric of reality, you know, for thousands of years, traditions have talked about this is a projection, right? This is a shadow on the cave. Plato, right? The only way you live is by dying, you know, all these kind of notions, that's actually.

Starting point is 00:02:30 our state of nature. And we then place this on it and we meet these individuals with exceptional abilities that honestly are very in tune with the way a lot of our human history was relating. A hundred percent. Yeah, I would say that really a lot of what they're doing is helping us to remember what we all used to be capable of. And And that we have been talked out of it. We've been educated out of it. While the brain is still plastic and developing, instead of, you know, working on these kinds of abilities,

Starting point is 00:03:15 we've been, in fact, telling children, oh, no, you know, that's impossible or, you know, that's just your imagination or whatever. And, you know, and everybody wants to fit in, right? I mean, most people want to fit in. And socially, you want to fit in, and you're subject to peer pressure. And so you don't want people to think you're stupid or crazy or this or that. And so that stuff all goes underground. And it doesn't get reinforced.

Starting point is 00:03:46 Our educational system became all about memorizing stuff that was totally irrelevant. Kids have been bored out the wazoo. And now with AI coming out, it's just like, well, why, should I even do my homework, you know? And it's like, you know, you better not cheat just for the principle of it. Let's just face the facts. You know, AI can process language extremely well. What we need to be doing is educating ourselves as a society to be operating out of a higher level of consciousness because the output of AI depends upon the user using it. AI will respond to the intelligence of the user.

Starting point is 00:04:35 And so the more sophisticated, you know, your questions are, the better answers you get from AI, you know, and so we need to be working on getting back to, you know, being, you developing our intuition, developing our, you know, more holistic, you know, processing skills, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And AI can handle the stuff that we've been, you know, traditionally, you know, been focusing on in schools. Let, let kids play again. Let them, you know, experience the arts. Let them experience the real world in a way in which they're not, they're not being told what to think. They're discovering what is. What do you think the existence of telepathy in the people that you study means for the rest of us?

Starting point is 00:05:24 Is it that we have all just moved away from this ability? Is it re-accessible to the masses? What's your perspective on this as a potential signal for everyone else to recognize that it may be possible for them? I really fully believe that this thing we're calling telepathy, is there in all of us as infants, and it's how we acquire language so easily. We're downloading language. Well, yeah, I mean, think about how rapidly a small child picks up language. And we historically have not been sitting there with a picture book, you know,

Starting point is 00:06:06 pairing the sounds coming out of, you know, my mouth with the picture, you know, and saying it over and over and over and over again. And now we move on to the next picture and I say it over and over and over. or again. Instead, the kid just hangs around all these people that are just talking and interacting the world and they're figuring out the context. They're figuring out what all this language means without being told, without having a dictionary. And so I think that it's because of the shared consciousness and the synchronization that the information about what it's about is paired with the sounds themselves, which then, you know, without having to study the rules of grammar or the,

Starting point is 00:06:53 you know, the analysis of language, they just acquire it. It kind of makes me think like, why don't we have more cases of people who all of a sudden know languages that they shouldn't know or haven't been exposed to, you know, the incidence of savant abilities that you've experienced, in some ways you would almost expect there to be more of those if the mechanism works by the information exists all around us and we're simply tapping into it. Well, sometimes, you know, from injury or from stroke or from, you know, very interesting neurosurgical procedures, things get revealed. But I'll let Dr. Hennessey speak to that. Yeah, yeah. I mean, so we have something called Acquired Savant Syndrome where somebody, you know,

Starting point is 00:07:38 is like, you know, example of that is Jason Padget. It was beat up on his way home from a karaoke bar. And he went from being a salesman with no interest in mathematics to a mathematician who sees fractals all over the place. And there are people who develop front of temporal dementia, you know, in which they're actually losing brain tissue and their frontal and temporal lobes who start developing these, you know, musical and artistic talent. there's a doctor who was struck by lightning, who all of a sudden became this amazing composer and became obsessed with music. And so, you know, so acquired savant syndrome does exist, which, you know, suggests there's this like kind of latent potential. And then you have to ask him, well, what's happening there? And so something's happening that's basically disrupting the filters. So you have our sensory system that is only picking up, you know, a certain bandwidth of, you know,

Starting point is 00:08:43 and then you have the brain, which is, you know, through, you know, like the thalamus and, you know, the frontal lobes. You know, it's excluding a lot. It's just like, no, no, no, no, no, too much, too much, too much. And so what it's doing is it's locking us down into that which is relevant to the here and now and survival. because if you were accessing all of the kinds of information that these individuals, like I work with, access because they don't have good filters, then you're not real functional. What we need is the ability to know how to, you know, turn the filters, you know, like a dim switch, you know, turn it up and turn it down. Right, like all of the things that we think of that make it possible to sit here and have this conversation without me freaking out that there's clothing on my body, right? We've talked about this before.

Starting point is 00:09:43 Or like, if you tune in, which, you know, any good somatic therapist will make you do this, like feel your seat in your chair, right? There's a whole set of sensory information that is constantly being received, right? Like all of these things. And when you see or if you have a special needs child or know anybody who is special. special needs. That is one of the things that you notice is that there's a distractibility. There's often a lot of fidgeting. There's a lot of, you know, self-stimulation that is required. Those are things to try and regulate this lack of filtration. And for those of us who have ADHD, right, that inability to stop scanning, right? That inability, I mean, I have this, right?

Starting point is 00:10:25 Like, if there is a distract, I can usually come back, but I will pick up on every single thing. that's a difference in filtration. So imagine that on this kind of scale. But when that is released, look at all that's available. And for anyone who's had, you know, psychedelic experiences, transcendental experiences,

Starting point is 00:10:45 when you lift that veil, right? When that ego is allowed to lift up, we get a taste of what that's like to be open to a different experience of consciousness. Yes, and it doesn't make any sense to me that someone who's filter, to reduce doesn't just get overwhelmed by the clothes on their body? I mean, these autistic children, they can't stand the tags on the clothes.

Starting point is 00:11:11 They, you know, they're super, some of them run around naked, you know, because they can't turn off that sensation. And, you know, they don't sleep well because they even can't do it at sleep. You know, so it's, you know, it's called censorigating, you know, that ability. Miami-Bialx breakdown is supported by Stewart Fails to Save the Universe. What? We are so excited about Chuck Lurie's new Big Bang Theory spinoff. It's called Stewart Fails to Save the Universe and its companion podcast. On the Stewart Fails to Save the Universe podcast, join hosts Friends of ours, Felicia Day and Will Wheaton. They unpack each episode right after it airs on HBO Max. Stuart Fails to Save the Universe is all about Stuart Bloom, the guy who ran the comic book shop on the Big Bang Theory. Well, now he has to restore reality after he breaks a device which accidentally causes a multiverse Armageddon. Each week on the podcast, hear from the series creators, writers, executive producers like Chuck Lorry, Bill Prady, and Zach Penn. You'll also hear from cast

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Starting point is 00:14:00 That's Q-U-I-N-C-E.com slash breakdown for free shipping and 365-day returns. Quince.com slash breakdown. Mine B' Alex Breakdown is supported by Tumble. You know, finding the right rug for our home was more difficult than I thought it should be. An expensive rug makes you constantly afraid that, like, it's going to get stained. We've got dogs, we've got cats, and just like living our normal life. We knew that stains were going to be inevitable. But standard washable rugs, honestly, they can look cheap.

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Starting point is 00:15:43 the fact that they can all of a sudden have an injury of some kind that reduces the filter and then get a very specific skill set. Like all of a sudden you see fractals. That to me is like a little. little boggling because it's like it's not that their filter had a tiny hole and magically fractals went into the hole it's like there was some major damage to an entire region and instead of them you know having the code of reality pulled back and now seeing you know random letters like people do in DMT where they you know the laser experiment where now I'm like staring at the wall

Starting point is 00:16:22 and I'm seeing the fabric of reality and I'm totally overwhelmed and non-functional like I would think if you get a blunt force trauma to your filtering system, it's not just going to give you one magical ability. It's going to, like, it's just, it's hard for me to understand the mechanistic thing that's happening. You know, what we're dealing with is like a really elaborate super highway network of information that goes in a lot of different directions. And while there's not a lot of variability, meaning most of us have very similar brains, there are going to be individual differences.

Starting point is 00:16:55 but we're not talking, and they've done these experiments. They're like, if you remove the thalamus, that's not what we're talking about. We're talking about other systems, and there's, you know, Dr. Hennessy obviously can speak to this better than I can in terms of linguistic centers in particular. But, you know, there's a lot of mystery here, but we're not talking about, like, what happens if you remove the filtration system. It's not that. Yeah, I would say, yeah, I would just say that the filtering system is reduced. And, you know, and I think that, you know, it probably relates to, it's so similar to what people report who do psychedelics like ayahuasca and psilocybin. People who do those psychedelics, they report synesthesia.

Starting point is 00:17:40 All of these kids have synesthesia. Okay. You know, they're pairing, you know, colors with, you know, with letters or numbers or, you know, seeing oras around animals or people. There's over 60 forms of it. And so they have, you know, one or more forms of synesthesia. You see that with psychedelics. They experience, they're taught, they have something called time blindness where, you know, where they, the past, present, in the future all seem like they coexist.

Starting point is 00:18:07 That's another thing that people say. They're, their sense of where they are in their body, you know, or even their body's integrity and where they begin or, you know, you know, where, you know, where their boundaries are, you know, between them and what's out here. That gets really blurred. And telepathy is something that people report on psychedelics, you know, shared consciousness. And so it's like there's, and if you look at where does psychedelics work, you know, where do they operate? They work on the 5HT2A receptors and the thalamus, which are, and in the frontal cortex, that's the filtering gating system.

Starting point is 00:18:49 And so these kids, I believe, and I've got a new nonprofit Institute, Hennessy Institute, and one of the things I'm doing is I'm really looking at, you know, this from a scientific standpoint, to understand, you know, what's different about, I believe, the issues in their gut. You know, I think the gut biome is actually affecting their triptophan metabolism and causing them to have, you know, compounds that are acting on these, you know, receptors that the psychedelics do. But, you know, it's not, you know, it basically what is doing, you know, in reducing their filters. You know, but, you know, the question to me, what is an interesting question, which is what you raised, John, then is, you know, why is it that somebody gets a specific savant skill?

Starting point is 00:19:45 You know, it's easier for me to understand when it's just like there's no very little filters. and it's like you're seeing all of this stuff, you know. But but why, you know, why certain specific ones? And I don't really have the immediate answer for that, but I'm really, really interested in it. Can you tell us more about what you think is happening in the gut? What is causing, you know, someone who is autistic like that to have that expression? Or what are you researching in the gut specifically? I think that's a whole area because some people will claim that, you know, they've seen,

Starting point is 00:20:19 massive improvements with fecal transplants or other gut repair. Do you think that is a path forward for research? There's a lot you can do before fecal transplant, though. Like a good probiotic for kids on the spectrum can work wonders. Yeah, well, they also have capsules that poop, poop capsules, you know, that some people, you know, I mean, that sounds gross, so, you know, a lot of people don't. Not to us. When you think about how the gut biome has changed, you know, how you go into some, you know, indigenous culture and, you know, they've got, you know, easily, you know, 10, 15 times the number of organisms that we do. I mean, if not more. And you think about all of the chemicals in our food that are killing off bacteria. And so you're getting this, what we call it, dysbiosis when you have like overgrowth of some. And, um, you.

Starting point is 00:21:13 you know, an undergrowth, you know, representation of others. You've got issues with the gut leaking, you know, because you've got all this inflammation in the gut. And so, so these kids are really, you know, plagued with all of these gut issues. Also huge serotonin receptor distribution in the gut as well. Yes, exactly. There's, I mean, there's serotonin receptors on our, you know, platelets. They're, you know, seroton receptors, you know, in a lot of places, it's not, not just the brain. And then these kids tend to eat very restricted diets. They're so sensitive to taste and smell and this and that. It's just like, you know, so you can imagine their gut biome is even more reduced.

Starting point is 00:21:55 The body's going to make, you know, it's going to continue to metabolize. It works with what it has, okay? You know, and it works with what it has. But unfortunately, the brain's not really getting, you know, the neurotransmitters that it needs. and then it's getting, you know, it's getting, you know, chemicals that might look like triptophan, okay? But it actually, it looks like triptophan, but it actually is something like bufutennon, which has, you know, psychedelic properties because it's, it's more potent than DMT. And so, you know, but it's, you know, it's so, so what I want to do, though, you know, this is a

Starting point is 00:22:39 hypothesis, what I want to do is to study the gut biome in these children. You know, and you can do that by looking at the RNA of the species, you know, just a stool sample. Look at what the, you know, look for any overexpression there. And then also look at their genetics because it's also the way that you break down these, you know. And, you know, so the genetics of neurotransmitter, you know, metabolism or, you know, creation. And then also look at, you know, their metabolites and see, is there, you know, can we look at it as a system, okay? Is it that?

Starting point is 00:23:21 And look at behaviors. And if you see that, oh, they've got over an expression of these organisms, yes, you do see too much of this and not enough of that. And we link it with this behavior. So it's actually, you know, it would revolution. solutionize psychiatry to approach it that way. But it's a lot of work to do all of that analysis. But what it would do is it would bring psychiatry into the rest of the field of medicine, where we're not just looking at something and saying, oh, that's a syndrome. We're going to lump all

Starting point is 00:23:55 those kids together, you know, because we know there's something, you know, they regress, their behavior is abnormal. And, you know, we're just going to put them on these drugs that affect a lot of things and don't really get to the root problem. I'm like, no, let's get to the root problem. Because there's some kids who, you know, they had parents who really aggressively worked on trying to heal their gut. And the kid was then able to live, you know, a life where they were able to actually go to college

Starting point is 00:24:23 and get a job. And, yeah. Yeah, this is something that is very important to me and Jonathan. We definitely talk about this a lot. And, you know, there was a lot of, you know, I don't want to get into sort of like the intricate politics of these conversations. However, when there were doctors, this is pre-Make America healthy again. You know, my kids are 20 and 17. So when my first was born and when my second were born,

Starting point is 00:24:50 this was a lot of the conversation about what are we feeding our kids and why are we seeing this rise in attachment disorders, in sensory processing disorders? Why is everyone being diagnosed autistic, right? All of this stuff was happening. And we talk about this a lot. People often don't want to hear that there are behavioral features, not just in children, but in adults as well, that can be significantly altered by the foods that you eat and removing foods that you ought not eat, right? And we were raised, you know, so many of us on the standard American diet, the sad diet, right? That's actually the acronym, right? It's the sad diet. And, you know, people are like, oh, if you're autistic, there's nothing you can do.

Starting point is 00:25:33 and then people started being accused of, you know, curing autism. And the idea is, first of all, to remove a lot of these boxes and to understand that there's a really elaborate system that can change a variety of behaviors. And, you know, all those hippie parents who are like, we don't eat food dyes and everybody laughed at them. Like, you're ridiculous, you're absurd. All of a sudden, there's now a conversation about should we be ingesting, right?

Starting point is 00:25:59 These poisonous dyes. Why has Europe banned them? for dozens of years in some cases. And we're still just like eating genetically modified DNA like in our breakfast cereal. Different story. But there was one thing that I wanted to ask you, there is a population of individuals

Starting point is 00:26:15 who really love this research. And when the telepathy tapes came out, which featured some of the work, the incredible work that you do, a lot of people lost their ever-loving minds because they finally felt, heard, and understood. And these were not necessarily people who would fit,

Starting point is 00:26:32 the autism diagnoses that we're talking about, but a huge swath of people who would be diagnosed as neurodivergent or hippies or out there or people who believed in spirits and ghosts and angels and, you know, all these things. Many of those people felt so seen by the telepathy tapes. Can you explain the larger impact of the work that you do? Because it's fascinating to learn about the brain and all the incredible things it does. But can you explain this larger impact that you have been part of that has changed the way a lot of people understand consciousness and how we function? Yeah, thank you for that question, because I don't want people to get the impression that what I'm saying is that these are the only kids that can do this, okay? I mean, I get, I get emails,

Starting point is 00:27:25 you know, and, you know, have people come up to me when I speak at a conference all the time. of people thanking me, saying, boy, your work is really, you know, validating, you know, what my experience has been about. I've had to be silent. They're not silent because they don't have the ability to speak. They've been silenced because we live in a society that pathologizes these experiences. And, oh, you know, or, you know, pathologizes them either psychiatrically or demonizes them out of religion, you know, oh, you must be possessed by demons, right? And so, so whatever it is, you know, the dogma is, you know, that makes somebody feel like they're going to be a pariah. They stay silent.

Starting point is 00:28:07 And so the reason why I focused on the autistic individuals is not because I thought that they were the only ones. It was because of that statement in science that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. And we already have, you know, well over 120 years of the type of experiments looking at people, that have these kinds of abilities and showing that, yeah, it's statistically significant, you know, and this is, you know, commonly reported, you know, and it's part of many cultural conditions and yada, yada, yada, yada, yada, but extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. I'm just like, well, who is it that can do it? Who can come forward and provide the extraordinary evidence if anybody could do it? It would be one of these end of

Starting point is 00:29:00 That's where I'm coming from. Can you tell us about your personal, supernatural experiences? You had, I guess, what would be called a near-death-adjacent or a death-adjacent experience at 13? I have an older brother who, you know, one of his favorite things to do growing up was to, you know, do things to antagonize a little sis, right? So one of the things he did was he and his friend took me out in a canoe on the river without life jackets or any of that.

Starting point is 00:29:35 And I had never been taught how to swim. And I was screaming, I can't swim, I can't swim. And my brother, he thought it was funny. His friend thought it was funny. They tipped the canoe. And I went down and I was drowning. And I had a life review. I mean, at the time I didn't know what to call it,

Starting point is 00:29:59 but it was just like my life just kind of flashed before my eyes. And yet I also had this peaceful kind of acceptance that, oh, I'm dying, you know, and I know my mother will be upset. But, you know, it's, you know, I just won't come home for dinner. And then the next thing I know, you know, somebody who had witnessed it, went in, who had worked as a lifeguard and just happened to be down the river that afternoon. He went in, found me and rescued me and saved my life.

Starting point is 00:30:29 And it wasn't until years later that I heard the saying, you know, life review and near-death experience. And I was like, oh, so that's what that was. And so then I go to this conference where some, you know, Phyllis, PMH Atwater is talking about her research on near-death experiences. and she's studied thousands of people, including children. And I'm listening to her lecture, and she puts up this list of characteristics of people who have had a near-death experience. And I'm looking at that list. And these are some of them are psychological, and some of them are actually physical in nature.

Starting point is 00:31:23 And I'm looking at this list. And it's like, I don't know, about 16 things or so. I'm looking at it. I'm going, damn, I have practically every one of those. And so I spoke with her afterwards. And but what's interesting is that I didn't develop all of those until I had my second experience. But that was not one in which I would, you know,

Starting point is 00:31:53 it was dying, you know, or died. was brought back to life. And that one, it was that it was while I was applying to medical school and I was crossing the street and somebody, you know, came down the one-way street the wrong way. And, you know, and the last thing I remember is stepping off the curb and the next thing I remember is coming to in a hospital on a neurosurgery floor with a severe concussion. And I'd been unconscious for several hours. And I had no idea, I have no recall of what happened during those several hours.

Starting point is 00:32:35 But I felt somehow profoundly different. And that profound difference that I felt, I was like, I was just like scratch my hand. I was like, what is this I feel? I don't know. I don't even know what to label this thing. And then I was like, oh, my God. It's like I believe in God. And I was like, well, wait a minute, how can I believe in God?

Starting point is 00:32:59 You know, because I was raised an atheist. I was raised with no religion at all. I'm like, how can I believe in God? You know, and then I remembered that the night before, when I was in this advanced math class, this woman sitting next to me said, oh, where are you going to graduate school and math? And I said, I'm not going to graduate school in math. She said, oh, but you're so talented. You're really gifted math.

Starting point is 00:33:20 How could you throw away your gift that God gave you? And I said, oh, you believe in God? I said, you got this foreign math and you believe in God. She said, you've got this far in math that you don't believe in God. And we got into this discussion. And I ended up saying, oh, I wish I believed in God, but it'll never happen. And then it's the next morning that I get knocked unconscious. And then I have this feeling.

Starting point is 00:33:43 But I had nothing to connect it with. But it was after that experience that I saw that there were a lot of similarities with, you know, with the sequelae of, of near-death experiences. My and B. Alex breakdown is supported by Superpower. We all know what it's like to leave a doctor's appointment feeling like you are leaving with more questions than answers. There's no real data, there's no game plan. This has happened to me so many times, especially when I was starting my perimenopause journey.

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Starting point is 00:39:08 That's Forkfulmeals.com slash breaker. Use the promo code breaker for 50% off. Thanks to Forkful for sponsoring this episode. So when you come back, it's just this feeling that shifts. You don't have any, you know, memories that surface after the fact of being there. I had no memories at all. And so, you know, after I finished my medical training, then I spent time studying all of these different spiritual traditions to see if there was anything that could,

Starting point is 00:39:42 you know, some kind of framework that would fit. And, you know, I was looking for, universals, you know, are there any things that all religions believe in, et cetera, et cetera, et et cetera. So it's really, you know, it brought me into, you know, things like Buddhism and the Vedantas and looking basically at Eastern traditions. There were people from those traditions that physicists from the early 1900s were meeting with on a regular basis because they saw that they were describing the same reality. And so because of my background in mathematics and, you know, and doing, you know, biophysics and my brother being a physicist and all of that, it made sense to me that they came from, you know, these different, you know, totally different backgrounds, but, you know,

Starting point is 00:40:41 one of them, you know, hard science, mathematics, you know, physics, you know, and then the other one, you know, the ultimate, you know, intuitive mystic path. And they're describing reality the same way, which is the same way that these autistic individuals I work with describe reality. So that's kind of what I've done with it in a nutshell. Can we talk a little bit about dreams and precognition? Have you done any research into either the symbols and meanings of dreams or people being able to access the larger field of information through dreams?

Starting point is 00:41:16 and or people who have or seemingly have pre-cognitive experiences, either in dreams or otherwise. I've been interested in dreams for a long time. You know, dreams are a window to the, you know, unconscious. And, you know, and so, and analyzing dreams, that's something that I do. You know, I was practicing psychotherapist for 40 years. And I'm, you know, very much into, you know, Jungian, you know, psychology and understanding archetypes when I was like writing my book, The ESP Enigma, you know, one of the things that I asked myself, you know, as kind of as a thought experiment, was, you know, what, you know,

Starting point is 00:41:59 what is, what would be the, you know, the shared physiology that, you know, that basically seems to be, you know, common to those who report psychic abilities the most, yeah. And, and, and so, you know, I ran into this literature that talked about how that it's during dreaming sleep that lots of individuals, countless individuals have had precognitive experiences, even though they wouldn't call themselves psychic ordinarily. But in the dreaming state, you know, they had these abilities. And then I found out about the dream research that had been done, you know, by parapsychologists. And, um, I, I was like, well, what is the functional brain imaging, you know, tell us about the dream state? And I looked at it and what I saw was that the left hemisphere, which is, you know, the language, you know, logical based hemisphere during dreaming sleep, it's not, it's not dominant the way it is in waking life.

Starting point is 00:43:08 You know, the activity there is reduced and it's the right hemisphere that's dominant, which is the intuitive. of install processing side. And then the other thing is during dreaming sleep, the frontal lobes, which, you know, play a role in our expectations, the frontal lobes are also reduced. You know, their frontal lobes are reduced in ADD, you know, and in small children. And, you know, in terms of their activity,

Starting point is 00:43:39 that, you know, they're not totally hooked up to the rest of the brain in children. And so I was just like, oh, and children report these abilities, you know, and some people outgrow them. And then I thought about, oh, well, Savant syndrome, you know, oh, that's like, you know, increased pattern recognition, you know, right hemisphere, you know, visual spatial broadcasting, you know, visual, you know, right hemisphere, where are their deficits? Oh, in language, you know, and it's so I just come seeing this pattern over and over again, and I presented it at the Science of consciousness conference back in 2005, you know, that basically, you know, what you're seeing with these savants, you know, and, you know, and with psychic abilities is the reversal of the

Starting point is 00:44:19 usual waking state brain dominance, you know, of what, you know, which areas are the most active. And so then when I thought, you know, well, who is it that then, you know, would be most likely to in a waking state express that kind of reverse dominance. And I'd say, oh, it would be autistic children and other things about them. Like, you know, you find perfect pitch in them more frequently. So you've got a high fidelity. So even though you've got reduced filtering of signal, I mean reduced filtering of, you know, information,

Starting point is 00:44:57 you have higher fidelity of signal. And you have this ability for them to become oftentimes really just kind of hyper-focused on one thing. So just all of these different characteristics that I knew would make them the most likely candidates. I have a very strong passion for the Premonitions Bureau, which was a book by Sam Knight about this entire field of study, largely based out of the UK, that was trying to figure out why certain people, most of whom were. in mental health facilities, right, and had been locked up and deemed unable to function in the real world. The Premonitions Bureau was two psychiatrists in particular who were collecting information to try and figure out why certain people had premonitions about all sorts of things. Many of them did not happen, but some of them did with such specificity. And this is something

Starting point is 00:45:57 that Elizabeth Crone, when she was struck by lightning as a young mother just on her married way in Texas in the late 80s, when she returned from her near-death experience, this was one of the things that started happening. And she was a non-believer in things like oras, the next life, after death communication, and she started getting images. She said they were not nightmares and they were not dreams. But when she was in that kind of theta state, she was receiving very specific information, which she started timestamping, a lot of things that she saw did not come true. some of the things came true with a specificity that can only be described as that information was out there, right? And she was able to pull it.

Starting point is 00:46:40 That's what, you know, is so interesting. And, you know, your research and all of the work that you've done, you know, has been such an important focus and cornerstone for opening this conversation, not just in autism, but in the larger understanding of how the brain works. And what happens when it doesn't work the way we think it should? Yeah. Well, thank you. She walked so we could run, Jonathan. She walks so well. I think maybe the most common experience people have is like dreaming of someone.

Starting point is 00:47:12 And then that person will be like either you call or you email, you haven't messaged in a long time. And you're like, oh, I can't believe I'm talking to you. Oh, I kind of even forgot. I had this dream about you a couple of weeks ago. And I think people wonder, like, is that a form of telepathic communication where we've left our waking consciousness? and then we're wandering around this other world in some way and communicating. Rather than thinking of it, because when you start, you know, when you label things like that as telepathy, then people want to know, well, what's the mechanism?

Starting point is 00:47:43 You know, how's that, you know, la, la, la, la. And people get all caught up in that kind of thing. The way that I would say is that I really believe that we are all part of a greater whole. okay and you know and so that you know there there is this interconnectedness that that that kind of experience reminds us that we you know that there is that kind of interconnectedness it doesn't have to be a signal going from one to the other it's more that we're part of the same you know like tribe or social security yeah network yeah yeah we're part of the same thing. Do you think there are any dreams that are maybe more poignant to pay attention to?

Starting point is 00:48:34 Like they signify a pattern of like, hey, be aware of this or this may indicate more prophetic intention. What should people be aware of? When you have a dream that has a certain quality to it, there's, there's a, when a, when a dream is, when a dream has a certain like leaves you with like a strong, you know, like feeling, okay? I think it's important to pay attention to that and I try to, you know, remember, you have to think about your dream immediately. I mean, you know, because it'll slip into the ether if you don't. And because when it leaves that profound of an impression on you,

Starting point is 00:49:18 there's information in that dream. Now, the information in that dream, you have to unpack it because some of it could be purely symbolic and not be a, you know, a representation of something literally that's going to happen in the future. Sometimes it is representation of things that literally happen in the future. I mean, there are a number of people that have these dreams that then later on, they're in the circumstances that that dream was about, and they are able to handle the situation better. Like there's this famous guy who, you know, kept having this recurrent dream of, you know,

Starting point is 00:50:02 being in a laboratory where somebody's, you know, had a chemical accident where, like, you know, this chemical, you know, land in their eyes. And you've got to act that, you know, to prevent, you know, yourself from losing your sight, you know. And it was one of those things where you had that dream enough time that he was able to act, you know, immediately. It was practice, right? His brain was practicing. Exactly. Exactly. Because what. what we practice in our dreams, we can implement it. It builds whatever that is the same way that doing it in real life can do it. And so I think that if a dream is recurrent or it leaves some kind of impression on you,

Starting point is 00:50:39 you really need to analyze it, record it, and start to learn more about your specific dreaming pattern. You know, because some people, their dreams tend to be more symbolic, you know. And learn more about, you know, the symbolism, there's a certain amount of symbolism that, you know, we all share. But there's a certain amount of symbolism that's a bit idiosyncratic. So you have to figure out, you know, what the symbols mean for you. So it's a real art. It's one of my favorite things to do as a psychoanalyst. You began studying autism, you know, in the 1980s.

Starting point is 00:51:15 I think the prevalence of autism was one in 10,000. you know, setting overdiagnosis aside, setting this gigantic umbrella aside, right, where a lot of people who, you know, we used to, we're not, we don't call it high functioning anymore, but, you know, in terms of the different kinds, right, of individuals and different kinds of challenges and abilities that we see, you know, the estimate is more like one in 30. And as you said, it used to be a very unusual thing to encounter, in particular non-speaking. individuals. And now, you know, this is not just because of overdiagnosis. And some of the rise, you know, and you've talked about this, increased C-section rates, ultrasound during pregnancy,

Starting point is 00:52:01 dietary changes, which you've talked about, that affect the microbiome. Even, you know, Wi-Fi, electromagnetic field, widespread chemical exposure, also the ingestion, right, of all of these chemicals and genetically modified fragments. I wonder if you can kind of close out here by contrasting, right, all of the things that we may be doing that are contributing to this increase and also conversely, this incredible opening we have because of these things to understand different ways of processing information. It's giving us such a window, right, into consciousness. Can you talk a little bit about that complexity of how we may be, you know, in some cases, creating an environment that is, you know, really making all of these challenges present,

Starting point is 00:52:50 but it's also an opening to try and understand better how we get here. Yeah, I mean, I think that there's so many ways in which these individuals, these autistic individuals are really a gift to humanity. and one of the reasons why I say that is because they you can look at, you know, what are they teaching us? They're teaching us about, you know, they're showing us evidence for innate human abilities that we've forgotten and that have been literally suppressed. Okay. So, you know, that's just a real, you know, plus for humanity, right? they're showing us, you know, other ways in which we can, you know, process information,

Starting point is 00:53:40 and a lot of them, you know, want to contribute to science. And they have, you know, this ability to have insights into things that, you know, that have helped scientists already. And so, you know, yet at the same time, they're very much. medically ill, most of the ones, the ones with severe autism. I mean, you know, they have a lot of physical pain. They, you know, a lot of gut issues, headaches, you know, just, you know, they get overstimulated easily, you know, so there's a lot, there's a real downside for them in their experience. And I truly believe that the two don't have to go together. And so when people talk, they put down parents who want to see, you know, their children get better.

Starting point is 00:54:40 They get upset, you know, they're like, oh, you know, you're talking about curing autism and they put them down. And it's not, the way I would say it is it's not the autism from the standpoint of neurodivergency that needs to be cured. In fact, we need it. Okay. I welcome it. it's their medical comorbidities that needs to get addressed so that they can be having more of the kinds of lives that, you know, so they can be freed from that and have the life that they want to live. We're so grateful, you know, to get to talk to you and to get to learn more about your work and your path and all of the incredible research, you know, that has obviously been brought to so many people's attention. because of the telepathy tapes, but your body of work is obviously so much more vast and diverse,

Starting point is 00:55:36 and we're just so grateful we got to speak with you. Yeah. Well, thank you. It's been a pleasure. Thank you, Dr. Hennessy. Do you need me to explain a little bit about the brain? Do you want a brain lesson? I think you're picturing the brain as this sort of like... There's a dam? Yeah. And then that's how the filter stays out, and then you hit it, and then a whole gush of water comes through. but sometimes only the fractals. I'm glad that my answer was the same as a real, you know, practicing person who does these things because we don't really know. It's always the answer.

Starting point is 00:56:13 No, but one of the challenges is when we don't know something in science, what we do is we figure out how to test it. And we come up with a hypothesis and we either prove the hypothesis or we disprove the hypothesis. So there is no reliable way to see if we can, you know, Decades, if not centuries of really, really horrible animal research have elucidated a lot of things that we know about the brain, the nervous system, all these things. But it is near impossible and unethical to inflict injuries on humans to see what happens. However, you know, as is true for the entire history of neuroscience in particular, war. War and disease often produce a tremendous. amount of information that you would not get otherwise. And some of these incredible insights into how the brain works would come from very specific injuries from, you know, explosions. Many of the

Starting point is 00:57:15 incredible advances that we've seen in understanding what region of the brain does what, you know, have come. I mean, the mapping of the understanding of the occipital lobe, it came from, you know, bullets piercing through regions of the brain in ways that people were able to be kept alive and report things. Just like the fact that the brain has no pain receptors, right? You can do open brain surgery and poke around and see what happens if we touch this, what happens if we touch that, and you have individual, I mean, there's incredible studies of violinists being asked to play while their brain is exposed to see, right? Also, I was going to tell my dad's favorite joke. What's that?

Starting point is 00:57:57 A guy's going in for brain surgery and he says to the doctor, will I be able to play the piano after this? And the doctor says, of course you will. Don't worry. And the guy says, that's good. I couldn't play before. So here's a question. And I know the research is not possible to do on human beings.

Starting point is 00:58:15 But if all the information is available and some sort of crazy injury could create a savant. What do you mean all the information available in the universe? In the universe. Oh, okay. Okay. Like that's potentially a presupposition to the fact that you get an injury and now you can know a language or are an amazing mathematician or somehow. Like it would not be so crazy to think that you stick a neural link chip in your brain

Starting point is 00:58:43 or a stimulation or some sort of stimulation and control, turn up and down. Okay. So some form of activity and now all of a sudden I'm able to do kung fu. So one of the... that only happens in the matrix. He literally wants to learn Kung Fu. Because he got his brain tickled, and now he knows the language

Starting point is 00:59:01 and you're able to do things. I think that even... So one of the examples we have of this, and I'm sure that there are better ones, but I'm not a current, you know, practicing neuroscience student or neurologist. But, you know, there's something called DBS, deep brain stimulation.

Starting point is 00:59:15 And, you know, it's like a... This was when I was in college. This was already many years ago. And it was like an electrode that was dropped in, I think it was for Parkinson's. and, you know, turning it on, right, would eliminate, I think it was tremors, something like that. But many regions of the brain, I think this is what's important for us all to sort of think about. Many regions of the brain, they're not just on-off switches.

Starting point is 00:59:39 Stimulation, right? If we think about electrical stimulation, because the entire brain is coded by electrical stimulation, right? Meaning the release of neurotransmitter comes from electrical stimulation being propagated down axons and all these things. So the notion that like stimulation would produce one thing is simply not true because you have all these inhibitory circuits. So it could be that stimulation actually shuts things down and everything is connected. It's like the biggest freeway interchange that you can imagine like trillions of times. So it's not always that we know, oh, if we touch this. And sure, there are like amygdala studies where it's like when we press this, the monkey is scared.

Starting point is 01:00:16 Absolutely. But for many of these systems, they are systems especially. when it's anything emotional, you know, that kind of processing and it's linked to hippocampal memory, there's so much variability. Just like an animal that's traumatized will behave differently from an animal that's not traumatized and to one or even humans, right? If you're a person with post-traumatic stress disorder, right, when a fire engine goes by, it's a very different experience than if you don't have post-traumatic stress disorder and a fire engine goes by. It's that kind of thing. The same stimulus is not necessarily going to be replicable for,

Starting point is 01:00:50 from individual to individual. And same with damage. And, you know, I think that's, I'm really glad that she talked about this sort of intricacy because, you know, there's many unnatural things that, that, that we think have led to the rise, you know, in, in autism presentation, especially this, the kind that she's talking about. And at the same time, it has produced this conversation, you know, and this opening for us to understand the brain in ways that we hadn't before. and I'm not going to say that it's, you know, that all the damage we've done to the environment

Starting point is 01:01:24 and to the, you know, placental environment, all these things is in any way positive. But it is fascinating that it's opened up an entire field, you know, that that is giving us more insight into how the brain and the nervous system work, but also like a window into the nature of consciousness and reality. So much to unpack in this episode. It will be a lively conversation over on Substack. If you're interested in checking out the community and connecting. with us and the larger breaker audience come by

Starting point is 01:01:53 Miami-Bi Alex breakdown on Substack. From our breakdown to the one we hope you never have. We'll see you next time. It's Miami-Bi-Ollix breakdown. She's going to break it down for you. She's got a neuroscience PhD or two. One fiction. And now she's going to break down.

Starting point is 01:02:08 It's a breakdown. She's going to break it down.

Mayim Bialik's Breakdown - Part Two: You Were Born Telepathic, Then You Forgot. Dr. Diane Hennacy Explains The Science Behind a Savant Telepathy Test That Scored 97% Accuracy, And Why She Thinks We All Still Have It.

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