Perhaps it might be worth getting in contact with Rupert Shelldrake. One doesn't have to agree with him but he's just good at thinking up novel experiments in this sort of area.
Once I was talking to a bunch of graphic designers, and the subject of childhood nightmares came up. The nightmares were all rather abstract but texture changes seemed to be the most common. The none visual arts people, didn't have a clue what was being talked about. Then there was the trouble at school moments, where everyone had a teacher that grabbed a perspective drawing, done by a six year old, and took it to the head teacher. As kids, these people saw the art work of the other kids as just being different from theirs. So they assumed that they were in trouble.
Another point that came up was on the nature of the "zone." All the arts people saw it as being a dialogue, rather than some sort of strange hypnogogic state. Again they had just assumed that everyone knew this state. When told that it was a foreign and slightly scarey concept to most people, they all thought that they were having their collective leg pulled.
(Edit) A very practical point. All of the astronauts who went to the Moon, reported some sort of paradigm shift. A manned mission to Mars is going to take some time, and the crew are going to be in orbit, and they will have the final say on the landing site.
Who, is the safest pair of hands, to pilot the lander?
