Ganzfeld Protocol

experimentNo. 0071categoryLabs & sensesrecordingpendingdataCC BY 4.0

The fly, as receiver, sits under red light with fly-scaled halved ping-pong balls over its eyes while a sender fly views a seeded target picture in another room. A pick among four candidates is then recorded.

Setup

• Six stages over 88 s: fitting the diffusers, red light and noise, seeded target draw, 30 s sending period, judging four candidates, reveal and tally.
• A seeded draw selects four pictures from a pool of eight and one target; presentation order is shuffled separately.
• Trial / seed control from 1 to 500; field light red (classic), white or amber.
• Participants: the receiver, an experimenter fly and a sender fly; headphone noise is described, not reproduced.

Measurement

• The receiver's canonical retina sits inside the half-balls and receives a near-uniform field; the target appears only on the sender's monitor and never reaches the receiver's retina.
• During live playback the pick is the total measured spikes in four readout groups (LC10a, LC4 + LPLC2, HS + H2, DNa02) during judging, modulo 4; otherwise it is the seeded, pre-programmed pick.
• The running hit count is compared with the 25% chance expectation using a Wilson interval and a binomial chance range.

Limitations

• The expected hit rate is 25% by construction.
• The measured pick is arbitrary with respect to the target.
• The model receives luminance only; field light colour is not delivered as colour.

Sources

• Bem & Honorton (1994), Psychological Bulletin