Sibling Telepathy?

For those of you who have siblings, do you ever feel like you can read each others mind? My sister and I always jokingly say that we have “sister telepathy” when we finish each others sentences or we wear the same outfit on the same day. Although we joked about it, we would always just assume that things like that were just a coincidence. I never thought that siblings could actually telepathically send messages to one another because we have been taught that the only ways to communicate are with our five senses. I was interested in learning if it is possible to communicate by sending thoughts to someone else and I found some studies that tested telepathy between siblings. Maybe my sister and I can relay messages through our thoughts after all.

telepathy

People first became interested in telepathy because twins started to share their experiences of “crisis telepathy.” An example of crisis telepathy is that one twin reported agonizing pain on the left side of her body, then later she found out that at the exact moment she experienced the pain, her twin sister had gotten in a car crash. For some people, anecdotes such as this one is enough evidence to convince them that telepathy exists, but unfortunately there is no scientific evidence to prove this yet.

Most of the studies that have been conducted to test if telepathy exists involve testing telepathy in twins. A study done by a Swedish psychologist was reported by ABC News. Twins were randomly chosen to participate in the experiment. All of the twins that were chosen had reported that they had experienced crisis telepathy at some point in their life. In the study, one twin was hooked up to a four channel polygraph machine that measures physiological changes in the body. The other twin was exposed to physical surprises such as dipping their hands into a bucket of ice. The goal is to see if physiological changes occur in the twin who is not exposed to the physical surprises. There was no final proof found, but the results did encourage a follow up experiment. Even though some twins did show evidence of telepathy, there can be many additional explanations to the results such as genetics, coincidence, and empathy.

Personally, I think that it is near impossible to ever prove if telepathy is real. I do not think we can choose to mentally send a message to one another but in time of need our bodies can sense a message from our siblings. This relates back to the ‘crisis telepathy’ that I mentioned earlier. I think that it is more common that our bodies receive messages from one another in moments of crisis. Overall, I think that in most instances the best reasoning would be that it happens by chance. I hope that we can eventually create new technology that allows us to further our research on this topic. I would love for it to be proven that sibling telepathy can happen. It would be very interesting if we could purposely send a message through our minds instead of it just happening in moments of crisis.

What do you guys think about telepathy? Do you think it could be real? I want to hear your opinions and feel free to share any stories you have relating to telepathy! I know that a lot of people have had some experience and they assume that they have telepathy! Also, if anyone is a twin I’d love to hear your experiences since it is more likely to occur in twins!

3 thoughts on “Sibling Telepathy?

  1. Alyssa Mackenzie Inman

    This is actually a fantastic and fascinating topic that hits pretty close to home for me. My brother and I are 21 months apart and I can honest call him my best friend. We are those siblings that always win when playing games just because we hardly need to speak to know exactly what the other is thinking. I agree with Jenna, that this is not telepathy, but more like knowing each other very well. I do believe that twins are different, and I can’t speak from personal experience but my closest family friends are twins and they are always telling us how they swear they have telepathy, but I guess we’ll never know!

  2. Jenna Rae Stoklosa

    I have an older brother, and there are times when the family will be together and all we have to do is look at each other and know exactly what the other is thinking. I would not consider this to be telepathy, I would consider this to be us being familiar with each other and since we know each others personalities well, we can sense what the other is thinking. I agree that it will be very hard to prove if telepathy can actually happen or if its more just a persons intuition. It will take many different experiments and tests to try and prove whether telepathy is true or not.

  3. Katherine Noelle Loughrey

    I wrote a post earlier about twin telepathy, and I saw similar findings as you at http://www.noetic.org/noetic/issue-twenty-one-april/twin-telepathy-and-the-illusion-of-separation/, I think it’s an interesting concept that is difficult to be described by science. I myself and my twin sister have experienced moments where we feel more than just empathetic for each other, where if one of us is upset it is often difficult for the other to feel okay even if we aren’t directly affected. Also, sometimes I can read her mind” or know what she wants before she does. Personally, I attribute this more to having practiced reading each other’s body language and having a close relationship because we were always together. Although, it is curious if being in the womb together affects twins in any other ways psychologically after labor.

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