Telepathy describes the purported transfer of information on thoughts or feelings between individuals by means other than the five classical senses. The term was coined in 1882 by the classical scholar Fredric W. H. Myers, a founder of the Society for Psychical Research, specifically to replace the earlier expression thought transference. A person who is able to make use of telepathy is said to be able to read the minds of others. Telepathy, along with psychokinesis forms the main branches of parapsychological research, and many studies seeking to detect and understand telepathy have been done within the field.

Telepathy is a common theme in fiction and science fiction, with many superheroes and supervillains having telepathic abilities. Such abilities include both sensing the thoughts of others, and controlling the minds of other people. Transhumanists believe that technologically enabled telepathy, called techlepathy, will be the inevitable future of humanity, and seek to develop practical, safe devices for directly connecting human nervous systems.

Within the field of parapsychology, telepathy is considered to be a form of extra sensory perception or anomalous cognition in which information is transferred through Psi. It is often categorized similarly to precognition and clairvoyance. Various experiments have been used to test for telepathic abilities. Among the most well known are the use of Zener cards and the Ganzfeld experiment. Zener cards are cards marked with five distinctive symbols. When using them, one individual is designated the sender and another the receiver. The sender must select a random card and visualize the symbol on it, while the receiver must attempt to determine that symbol using Psi. Statistically, the receiver has a 20% chance of randomly guessing the correct symbol, so in order to demonstrate telepathy, they must repeatedly score a success rate that is significantly higher than 20%. If not conducted properly, this method can be vulnerable to sensory leakage and card counting. When using the Ganzfeld experiment to test for telepathy, one individual is designated the receiver and is placed inside a controlled environment where they are deprived of sensory input, and another is designated the sender and is placed in a separate location. The receiver is then required to receive information from the sender. The exact nature of the information may vary between experiments.

Parapsychology describes several different forms of telepathy, including latent telepathy and precognitive telepathy.

Latent Telepathy, formerly known as deferred telepathy, is described as being the transfer of information, through Psi, with an observable time lag between transmission and receipt.

Precognitive Telepathy is described as being the transfer of information, through Psi, about the future state of an individual's mind.

The field which studies certain types of paranormal phenomena such as telepathy is called parapsychology. There is a consensus among parapsychologists that some instances of telepathy are real. Skeptics say that instances of apparent telepathy are explained as the result of fraud or self delusion and that telepathy does not exist as a paranormal power. Parapsychologists and skeptics agree that many of the instances of more popular psychic phenomena, such as mediumism, can be attributed to nonparanormal techniques such as cold reading. Magicians such as Ian Rowland and Derren Brown have demonstrated techniques and results similar to those of popular psychics, but they prefer psychological explanations instead of paranormal ones. They have identified, described, and developed complex psychological techniques of cold reading and hot reading.

A technique which shows statistically significant evidence of telepathy on every occasion has yet to be discovered. This lack of reliable reproducibility has led skeptics to argue that there is no credible scientific evidence for the existence of telepathy at all. Skeptics also point to historical cases in which were discovered flaws in experimental design and occasional cases of fraud. Parapsychologists such as Dean Radin, president of the Parapsychological Association, argues that the statistical significance and consistency of results shown by a meta analysis of numerous studies provides evidence for telepathy that is almost impossible to account for using any other means.


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