Laboratory Place

"If it is real it will be revealed; if it is fake, we'll find the mistake."

Motto of the Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health

The Laboratory for Advances in Consciousness and Health (LACH) was created to investigate the role of human consciousness and its potential applications for personal, societal, and global health.

As described on our website www.lach.web.arizona.edu, LACH focuses on advances in human consciousness emerging from the process of scientific discovery. However, LACH is especially concerned with investigating specific research topics whose controversial findings require, to various degrees, a transformation in human consciousness. Because the discovery of seeming anomalies in science often raises challenging questions concerning the need for substantial changes in perception, understanding, and wisdom, LACH includes eight specific consciousness research programs that are controversial in society as well as in mainstream scientific disciplines including psychology:

Funding for the laboratory comes from various sources, including private foundations and individual donors as well as, for selective projects, the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) of the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

We invite you to visit www.lach.web.arizona.edu for information about the laboratory.


Brief History of Laboratory Activities

I have had the privilege to direct a number of basic and applied laboratories and research clinics over the course of my academic career. I provide a brief history below:

Clinical Psychophysiology Unit
In the early 1970's, I directed a team of scientists exploring the possibility of applying Darwin's theories of facial expression and emotion to the measurement of depression and anxiety in patients suffering from affective disorders. At that time I was an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Harvard. The Clinical Psychology Unit was located in the Erich Lindemann Mental Health Center of the Massachusetts General Hospital. We discovered that when people imagined being in different emotional states, their facial muscles generated tiny facial patterns that were invisible to the naked eye (but were recordable with sensitive electromyograms). The facial muscles patterns were correlated with depression and anxiety and tracked responses not only to antidepressant medication but placebos as well. The research was funded by the FDA and also by NIMH (the National Institute of Mental Health). Our findings were published in mainstream journals including Science and Psychosomatic Medicine.

Yale Psychophysiology Center
In the late 1970's through the mid 1980's, I directed a team of scientists and students exploring various areas of mind-body medicine, including EEG and physiological correlates of repression and self-deception, meditation and stress management, and EEG and physiological responses to various aromas believed to have therapeutic applications (termed aromatherapy). At that time I was a Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at Yale. The research was funded by NSF (the National Science Foundation), NIMH, and NHLBI (the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute). Our findings were published in mainstream journals including Psychophysiology and Journal of Behavioral Medicine.

Yale Behavioral Medicine Clinic
During this same time period, Dr. Hoyle Leigh, a professor of Psychiatry at Yale, and I co-founded the clinic to foster an integration "biopsychosocial" approach to the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. We employed the Patient Evaluation Grid (PEG) and a team of physicians, psychologists, nurses, and social workers, to examine health and illness from an integrative perspective. Various mind-body questions were addressed by the clinic and published in mainstream journals including The American Journal of Psychiatry and Psychosomatic Medicine.

Human Energy Systems Laboratory
In the mid 1990's through mid 2000, I directed a team of scientists and students exploring the potential role of energy in psychology and medicine. Unlike my previous research, which was cutting edge yet mainstream, this research was controversial and even "bleeding edge." We addressed questions such as (1) can humans detect the energy and intentions of others, (2) can energy be measured electronically, and (3) does energy have implications for the nature of consciousness and even the possibility of survival of consciousness after physical death? The research was funded primarily through private foundations and individual donors. Though these studies employed mainstream and well accept experimental designs and statistical analyses, the findings were deemed too controversial by reviewers to be accepted by mainstream journals. Our findings were published in peer reviewed journals including Journal of Scientific Exploration and Alternative Therapies in Health and Medicine.

Center for Frontier Medicine in Biofield Science
From 2003 - 2007, I had the privilege to direct an interdisciplinary center funded by NCCAM (National Center for Complimentary and Alternative Medicine) from NIH (National Institutes of Health). The team of scientists participating in the center included biophysicists, biostatisticians, psychophysiologists, research physicians (including surgeons and psychiatrists), PhD nurses, and research-oriented healers. We conducted a series of experiments examining the effects of Reiki, Johrei, and other energy healing techniques on ecoli bacteria, biophoton emission in plants, microvascular leakage in rats, and patients recovering from cardiac surgery. Though some of our experiments allowed for carefully controlled double-blind designs, the findings were again too controversial for mainstream journals. Our findings were published in peer reviewed journals including Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine and Journal of Scientific Exploration.