CHARLOTTESVILLE, VA (CVILLE RIGHT NOW)- A team at the University of Virginia School of Medicine’s Division of Perceptual Studies released its findings regarding a trend found in 1,600 studied cases of purported reincarnation. 

“This project is about very young children who spontaneously start talking about what seems like the past-life memory,” Dr. Saeedeh Sadeghi told Cville Right Now. “Researchers investigated some of these children over the past decades, what they said, and saw if a deceased person matches the child’s memories.” 

Of the 1,678 reported case the study looked at since 1967 – children from diverse backgrounds and cultures – the researchers found a median period of 16 months elapsed between the birth of a child who reported evidence of reincarnation and the death of a person whose details seemed to match statements made by the child. 

According to Sadeghi, in more than 70% of the cases, researchers found and identified a deceased person who matched the child’s statements. 

The goal of the study was to test earlier reports done on this data that seemed to suggest a shorter intermediate time between the death of a person and the birth of a child who makes statements regarding memories or life details that seemingly had nothing to do with their own if the death was unnatural, sudden, or violent, such as a car accident or an unexpected illness. 

The team added the variables of the expectation of the death, the age at death, and the violence of the death. 

According to their research, Sadeghi and her team confirmed that the intermission time for unexpected, unnatural, or violent deaths was twelve months, compared to 21 for deaths that were expected. 

They also added other psychological factors, like the abilities of each subject to recall their memories, and cultural factors, such as whether they come from a family that believes in reincarnation.  Testing the cultural variable also served to test an ongoing hypothesis that reincarnation is purported as a social construct. 

“We wanted to see if the correlation that we saw within intermission time and mode of death can be somehow explained by these factors,” Sadeghi said. 

“[The effect] was actually stronger in families whose religions did not support reincarnation,” Dr. Philip Cozzolino said.  “These results do not support the idea that social beliefs are driving this pattern.” 

“It makes it much harder to justify or explain through ordinary processes,” Sadeghi said. “Why should this effect be stronger when belief is eliminated?” 

Sadeghi believes that though the study does not prove reincarnation is real, it does merit further study. 

“My next projects are moving towards looking into mechanisms of these children’s past life memories, seeing how their everyday life memories are different from other children,” Sadeghi said.  “Do they have a better memory or worse memory?  Are they better or worse in discriminating real from imaginary?” 

“We hope this work encourages researchers to look beyond individual cases and ask whether there are broader patterns that can be tested systematically,” Dr. Marieta Pehlivanova said.