Genomic correlates of self-reported psychic experiences: An exploratory analysis

Psychic experiences are widely reported across cultures, yet their potential biological underpinnings remain poorly understood. Survey research suggests such experience may run in families, raising the possibility of genetic contributions. This study explored associations between genomic variation and self-reported psychic experiences.

Participants (N = 102) were English-speaking adults with at least one psychic experience and access to direct-to-consumer genetic data. Self-report measures assessed psychic experiences, paranormal beliefs, mental health, and personality. Raw genetic microarray files were standardized, quality-controlled, and analyzed using a Random Forest classifier to distinguish participants with low versus high psychic experience scores. Feature importance was assessed using permutation-based out-of-bag error, with p-values estimated from 200,000 random permutations and corrected using the false discovery rate (FDR).

Participants were predominantly educated Caucasian females from the United States, reporting high paranormal beliefs and moderate levels of psychic experiences. Most first experiences occurred before age 24, and 82% reported family members with similar experiences. Genomic analysis identified 212 single-nucleotide polymorphisms significantly associated with psychic experience scores (FDR < 0.05). The strongest association was observed for rs10410488, mapping to ARHGEF18, a gene involved in calcium-dependent dendritic growth. Other significant RSIDs mapped to genes implicated in calcium signaling, brain structure, microtubule dynamics, estrogen pathways, and retinoic acid signaling.

This exploratory study identified candidate genetic variants associated with self reported psychic experiences, but these findings should be considered preliminary. Future research with larger, more diverse cohorts and refined analytic methods will be essential to clarifying the genetic and neurobiological underpinnings of psychic phenomena.