The belief in telepathy is deeply rooted in many of us, and not only science fiction fans. Mothers ring their daughters thousands of miles away, and their daughters say, "How did you know? I was just thinking of you". We walk into a room and we just get a feeling about someone: it is as if we knew what they were thinking, and what they would say next.
So is telepathy just wishful thinking, born out of our wish to be close to our loved ones and not feel that they have minds that will be for ever closed to us? Or is it a more general feeling?
We all know that we can be feeling down in the dumps, but if we meet friends we can be cheered up by their obvious cheerfulness even if they don't say anything: their good cheer can be contagious. This kind of contagion can occur without us even being aware of it - and if we become aware of it, we may back away from it. If, for example, we think: "It's all very well for them to be happy. They don't know what it's like to be me" then we can block the good cheer from changing our mood. It can even make it worse. At a more basic level, if we experience ourselves as not belonging to the group, the contagion effect may not work. We may even deny it. We may say to a friend who says to us, "You soon cheered up", that we were not really feeling cheerful at all, but just didn't like to spoil the party.
Current neuroscience is demonstrating that many emotions can spread from brain to brain, and these emotions can be complex ones, amounting to what we might call emotional attitudes or dispositions. In one study, a spirit of cooperation was engendered when people marched in step. It was if moving in physical synchrony led to other kinds of harmonious actions.
Some of the founding studies in this field used fMRI scans of two people who were being scanned simultaneously whilst interacting with each other. Whether or not the protagonists trust each other influences what happens, but in the trust condition, the brain state of one of them is mirrored by the brain state of the other. But more direct contagion occurs when emotions are transmitted. The same areas of the brain are active when a person experiences an emotion as when another person registers the facial expression. People who see another person in pain have activity in those brain areas that are also active when being in pain. So there is a transfer of brain states, which can lead to the transfer, or contagion, of feelings too-that is, if we allow it. There is nothing magical or even mysterious about this.
Telepathy means feeling at a distance, but when most of us think of it, we do not just mean feeling at a distance. We mean that we can know what someone is thinking, too. Recent research suggests that nonverbal communication and linking one brain to another might be able to achieve that, too. Imagine you are walking along, and around you people start looking up with a worried or intrigued expression. Do you feel an itch to stop, and look up, too?!