Dr. Ian Stevenson [was the] director of the Division of Perceptual Studies, or DOPS, a parapsychology research unit he founded in 1967 within the University of Virginia's school of medicine. The survival of consciousness after death continues to be at the forefront of the division's research. The team has logged hundreds of cases of children who claim to remember past lives. DOPS is a curious institution. There are only a few other labs in the world undertaking similar lines of research. The only other major parapsychology unit in the United States was Princeton's Engineering Anomalies Research Laboratory, or PEAR, which focused on telekinesis and extrasensory perception. That unit was shuttered in 2007. Common features in children who claim to have led a previous life include a verbal precocity and mannerisms at odds with that of the rest of the family. Unexplained phobias or aversions have also been thought to have been transferred over from a past existence. In some cases, extreme clarity besets the remembrances: the names, professions and quirks of a different set of relatives, or the particularities of the streets they used to live on and sometimes even recalling obscure historical events " details the child couldn't possibly have known. The strongest cases, according to the DOPS researchers, have been found in children under the age of 10, and the majority of remembrances tend to occur between the ages of 2 and 6, after which they appear to fade.