[1][2] Kelly's research interests include cognitive neuroscience and mind–body dualism, with a focus on phenomena (for example, from parapsychology and the paranormal) that challenge the current neuroscientific view of mind.
[5] During this time he published various papers on experimental, methodological, and theoretical topics in parapsychology, as well as a book, Computer Recognition of English Word Senses (with P. J.
[5] From 1988 to 2002 he worked with a large neuroscience group at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, conducting EEG and fMRI studies of human somatosensory cortical adaptation to natural tactile stimuli.
[5] By 2018 he had returned to his central long-term research interest—the application of modern functional neuroimaging methods to detailed psychophysiological studies of altered states of consciousness and psi in exceptional subjects.
[7] In 2007, Kelly, along with his wife, Emily Williams Kelly, and Adam Crabtree, Alan Gauld, Michael Grosso, and Bruce Greyson, published a book titled Irreducible Mind, in which they attempt to bridge contemporary cognitive psychology and mainstream neuroscience with "rogue phenomena", which the authors argue exist in near-death experiences, psychophysiological influence, automatism, memory, genius, and mystical states.