The Bill Roll Lecture in Parapsychology featuring Dr Diane Hennacy, Fall 2025

Dr. Diane Hennacy delivers the fall 2025 Bill Roll Lecture entitled "Perception Beyond the Interface: Savants, Synesthesia, and the Fabric of Reality."

Diane Hennacy (Powell), MD, is an internationally recognized expert on autism and savant syndrome who trained in neuroscience at Ohio State University. She received her MD and psychiatric training at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine before spending six months at the Institute of Psychiatry in London doing child psychiatry with Sir Michael Rutter in 1987. She was on faculty at Harvard Medical School, is serving for the third time on the Board of the Parapsychological Association, and has contributed chapters to AAPS’ Is Consciousness Primary? and the Oxford University Handbook of Psychology and Spirituality. Her 2008 book The ESP Enigma (Walker) received an award from the LA Festival of Books and has been translated into German, Portuguese, and Finnish. Her experimental research for the past thirteen years has focused on autistic children who reportedly exhibit anomalous cognition and was featured in the popular podcast “The Telepathy Tapes.” For the past twenty years she has also been working towards a theory for consciousness that has led her to a radical theory for brain functioning that is grounded in cutting-edge science and will be the subject of her next book.

"Perception Beyond the Interface: Savants, Synesthesia, and the Fabric of Reality"

Abstract:
Dr. Diane Hennacy explores the extraordinary perceptual abilities of autistic savants—individuals who, despite profound challenges, display islands of genius that challenge conventional neuroscience. Drawing on case studies and emerging theories, this talk considers whether savants may access a deeper layer of reality, one that typical perception filters out. The discussion will touch on synesthesia, anomalous cognition, and the provocative question of whether our perceived world is a constructed interface within a larger informational system—raising implications for simulation theory and the nature of consciousness itself.

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