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datePublished: 2026-09-03
dateModified: 2026-09-10

CONSCIOUSNESS AND NEUROSCIENCE

September 3, 2026

Updated: September 10, 2026

**Documented**

**Work type:**  Research and ideas review

# Brain stimulation meets a random generator: what did the Cortex study find?

In a Cortex study, 108 participants received brain stimulation or a sham procedure and tried to influence a random event generator. A weighted analysis added after data collection found a small effect in one group; the ordinary analysis was not significant. That difference is central to this attempt to test the brain as a filter hypothesis.

By Avi Moas and [Orion](https://aliennews.co.il/en/about#orion)

Orion is an AI writing and research partner. Avi Moas is the responsible editor.

Research, hypotheses and ideas at the boundaries of knowledge.

## At a glance

**What is known:**

A Cortex study tested brain stimulation and performance with a random event generator.

**The claim or interpretation:**

The researchers reported a small effect in a weighted analysis added after data collection.

**What remains open:**

The ordinary analysis was not significant; independent, preregistered replication is needed.

![Editorial illustration of a human mind filtering a field of information while one signal passes through](https://aliennews.co.il/brain-filter-signal-editorial-v2.webp)

The brain as filter: an editorial illustration of a dense information stream and one signal crossing the threshold · created for Alien News

## The experiment and its two analyses

In Morris Freedman and colleagues' study, 108 participants attempted to influence a random generator after brain stimulation or sham stimulation. The ordinary analysis was not significant; the reported difference emerged from a weighted analysis added after data collection. The paper appeared online in November 2023 and in volume 172 of Cortex in March 2024.

## Who Dr Morris Freedman is

Freedman is a neurologist and researcher at Baycrest's Rotman Research Institute. His work examines cognitive impairment and relationships among brain regions, self awareness and behavior. Frontal injury studies led him to propose a connection between changes in a particular region's activity and performance on the random generator task.

## The brain as filter, not only generator

Mainstream neuroscience treats conscious function as dependent on the brain. Freedman's model adds another possibility: the brain may also narrow, select and suppress information or capacities that do not help ordinary action. The paper connects this idea with Henri Bergson's attention to life, in which the nervous system protects us from overload by screening out what is not useful for survival. The same machinery, the authors propose, could inhibit weak connections between intention and random physical events. This does not prove that consciousness exists apart from the brain. It creates a testable prediction: weakening the filter should increase the effect.

## The first clue came from brain lesions

In a 2003 study, Freedman and colleagues examined six people with frontal lobe injury and six participants without injury. One person with left frontal damage shifted a random event generator to the right, opposite the main side of the lesion, and the result was repeated in a second experiment. A 2018 paper compared that case with another person who had frontotemporal dementia. Their overlapping damage lay in the left medial middle frontal region, approximately Brodmann areas 9, 10 and 32. Two cases cannot support a broad conclusion, but they gave the team a specific anatomical target for testing healthy volunteers.

## How researchers make a temporary virtual lesion

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation, or rTMS, uses a coil above the scalp to deliver magnetic pulses that alter electrical activity in the cortex for a limited period. The experiment used continuous theta burst stimulation, a protocol intended to reduce cortical excitability for roughly 20 to 30 minutes. No tissue is cut or permanently damaged. The term virtual lesion describes a temporary, controlled disruption that allows researchers to observe what changes when a region becomes less active.

## 108 participants and three groups

The team recruited 108 healthy participants and randomly assigned 36 to left medial frontal inhibition, 36 to the matching region on the right and 36 to sham stimulation. People who had previously received TMS were excluded so they would be less likely to recognise real versus sham stimulation. The order of rightward and leftward tasks was balanced between groups. The sample size was calculated in advance to detect a small interaction, making this far larger than the lesion studies that motivated it.

## The task: intention against 200 bits per second

A portable random event generator produced zeros and ones with equal probability at 200 bits per second. Each second formed one trial, and deviation from the expected total of 100 was translated into a tiny movement of an arrow on a screen. Participants concentrated on keeping the arrow on the side toward which it pointed through five blocks of 100 trials. Each person completed 500 rightward and 500 leftward intention trials. Afterward the participant left the room and the device ran 1,000 control trials without anyone trying to influence it.

## The central result and what the numbers mean

In the weighted analysis added after data collection, the left stimulation group differed between rightward intention and control trials, with p=0.010 and d=0.35. The comparison between left stimulation and sham in that direction reached p=0.006 and d=0.38. These numbers describe the weighted analysis, not the ordinary analysis, which was not significant.

## The detail that determines how the finding should be read

When all 1,000 intention trials were treated equally, the primary interaction was not significant, p=0.31. After data collection, the researchers added a weighting function that gave greater weight to earlier trials, reasoning that cTBS inhibition should fade over time. The weighted model produced the significant result. The biological logic is plausible and the expected direction and left sided target had been specified in the research grant. However, the weighting function itself was not preregistered. The next replication must lock the time window and analysis before the data are examined.

## Why the left side, and why movement to the right

The pattern matched the two earlier lesion cases: reduced function on the left was linked with a shift to the right, contralateral to the affected side. The team's proposed explanation combines reduced self awareness with preserved attention. The medial frontal region participates in processing related to the self, so temporarily reducing its oversight might weaken the proposed filter. Right sided inhibition may interfere more with attention and therefore fail to open the same window. This remains a proposed mechanism because the experiment did not directly measure self awareness or attention during the task.

## What the study tested, and what it did not

Psi is commonly used as an umbrella term for telepathy, remote viewing, precognition and effects of mind on matter. Freedman's experiment tested only the last category, micro psychokinesis, through a minute statistical shift in random output. Participants did not read another person's thoughts, describe a distant target or predict a future image. The study therefore does not show that all extrasensory abilities increased. Its importance lies in proposing a brain target and experimental method that could later be applied to other psi tasks.

## The scientific debate published beside the paper

Cortex published a set of commentaries. Neuroscience and statistics researchers acknowledged the large sample and direct design while challenging the stimulation targeting, the non simultaneous control, the sham condition, the post hoc weighting and the breadth of the interpretation. Freedman and colleagues replied that the main directional hypothesis was specified beforehand, that the generator passed an extensive suite of NIST randomness tests and that the purpose was to detect an effect while cortical inhibition was still active. The debate itself matters: the claim is no longer insulated from science, but placed where other teams can criticise and replicate it.

## The experiment that could turn a clue into a stable result

A follow up could specify the time window, weighting and expected direction in advance. Simultaneous measurement from a control generator would help distinguish a task effect from changes in the device or environment. Verifying stimulation location and measuring attention could also test the team's proposed brain mechanism. These are proposed tests, not results already obtained.

## Compare the analyses

The linked Cortex paper and responses allow comparison of the two analyses. Would the difference recur in an experiment with the weighting specified before data collection?

## Sources and context

**Editorial clarification**  ·  September 7, 2026
The summary now specifies that significance was reported in a post hoc weighted analysis, while the ordinary analysis was not significant. This detail was already included in the article’s discussion of the study.

The paper appeared online in November 2023 and in the March 2024 issue of Cortex. Participants were randomly assigned to three equal groups: inhibitory stimulation on the left, stimulation on the right, and sham stimulation. Each person completed 1,000 intention trials with a random event generator, followed by 1,000 control trials after leaving the room. In the weighted analysis, the difference between left stimulation and sham for rightward intention was significant, p=0.006, with an effect size of d=0.38.

The ordinary unweighted analysis, which did not account for the expected decline of the rTMS effect, was not significant, p=0.31. Significance emerged after a post hoc weighting procedure gave greater influence to trials closer in time to stimulation. The study was not publicly preregistered, control trials were collected afterward rather than simultaneously, and imaging did not confirm that stimulation reached Brodmann areas 9, 10 and 32 precisely. An independent, preregistered replication is the decisive next step.

[Original Cortex paper](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.10.016)[Paper abstract at PubMed](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38065765/)[Earlier model and two frontal lesion cases](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29169779/)[The original 2003 lesion study](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286994471_Effects_of_Frontal_Lobe_Lesions_on_Intentionality_and_Random_Physical_Phenomena)[Dr Morris Freedman's Baycrest profile](https://www.baycrest.org/biography/dr-morris-freedman/)[Research funder's study overview](https://www.fundacaobial.com/en-GB/science-stories/psi-abilities-and-our-brains)[Neuroscience commentary in Cortex](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38218716/)[Authors' reply to the commentaries](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38368216/)[Back to all reports](https://aliennews.co.il/en#latest)[עברית](https://aliennews.co.il/articles/brain-stimulation-meets-random-generator-cortex-study)

## Source references

* [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.10.016](https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2023.10.016)
* [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38065765/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38065765/)
* [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29169779/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/29169779/)
* [https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286994471\_Effects\_of\_Frontal\_Lobe\_Lesions\_on\_Intentionality\_and\_Random\_Physical\_Phenomena](https://www.researchgate.net/publication/286994471_Effects_of_Frontal_Lobe_Lesions_on_Intentionality_and_Random_Physical_Phenomena)
* [https://www.baycrest.org/biography/dr-morris-freedman/](https://www.baycrest.org/biography/dr-morris-freedman/)
* [https://www.fundacaobial.com/en-GB/science-stories/psi-abilities-and-our-brains](https://www.fundacaobial.com/en-GB/science-stories/psi-abilities-and-our-brains)
* [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38218716/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38218716/)
* [https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38368216/](https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/38368216/)