Scientists find strange connection between seizure and subsequent religious psychosis
How the brain can make a person feel like a new messiah and go to save an entire nation, and why abnormalities in the electrical activity of the brain are so important to scientists.
In the online database of scientific medical articles PubMed, a message has appeared from the Israeli clinic Hadassah (located in Jerusalem, considered one of the largest clinics in the country) about an amazing case of religious psychosis, which calls into question the existing opinion about brain disorders leading to such conditions. The full text of the study is available in Epilepsy & Behavior.
The speech in the message is about a patient of the clinic who, since the age of five, has been suffering from epilepsy of the right temporal lobe of the brain - a not too common type of epilepsy that occurs in one out of five cases. In an attempt to determine what kind of treatment a patient needs, doctors put him through a series of tests, canceling the drugs he was taking that relieved him of seizures or significantly weakened them.
Patients with this type of epilepsy are characterized by seizures of psychosis that occur some time after a seizure of epilepsy.
Despite the large number of works related to this type of epilepsy, the mechanism of such psychoses arising after an epileptic seizure is very little understood. To track them, the patient's head was glued with many electrodes for long-term electroencephalographic monitoring.
The patient, a 45-year-old factory worker, professed Orthodox Judaism, observed all the prescribed rituals, but was not noticed to be excessively religious. During the test with him, as expected, an epileptic seizure occurred with the usual amnesia, and eight hours later, lying in bed and recovering from seizures, the patient suddenly froze, "froze" for several minutes, staring intently to the ceiling, then began to quietly recite prayers, groped for his kippa, put it on his head and continued to pray, more and more earnestly.
Then he suddenly cried out: “It is you, Adonai (one of the names of the Jewish God.)!”, Claiming a little later that God condescended to him and ordered him to bring salvation to the people of Israel.
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Then the man proudly got up, tore off the electrodes, left the room and began to wander around the department, convincing everyone he met to follow him, saying at the same time: "God sent me to you!" Later, when asked about exactly how and from what he was going to save the people of Israel, the patient replied that he had no specific plans, but he was sure that when the time came, God would provide him with the necessary instructions that he and his followers should fulfill on the path to salvation.
A few hours later, the patient was medically withdrawn from psychosis.
Examining the recordings of EEG monitoring up to the moment when the patient tore off the electrodes, scientists found that during the religious ecstasy in the patient's brain, the activity of the phase of electrical oscillations with a frequency of 30-40 hertz increased sharply, and there were no other changes normal condition was not identified. And most importantly,
the source of these fluctuations was the left part of the prefrontal cortex (frontal cortex) of the brain, while all other parts of the brain, including the right temporal lobe, which is responsible for the patient's epilepsy, showed no changes.
As already mentioned, psychoses that occur after epileptic seizures have been very little studied, however, judging by the data available today, such psychoses should be associated with precisely those parts of the brain that cause epilepsy, and these areas should give them the beginning. However, nothing of the kind was observed in the "messiah".
In general, the prefrontal cortex is a zone full of mysteries, promising many surprises for scientists. It can be compared to the main headquarters of the brain, which is responsible, in particular, for planning, working memory, organization and mood of a person. Many researchers consider it "a region for sober assessment of decisions." He, as it turns out, has to do with their "epileptic" assessment.
The authors of the article emphasize that it is, of course, premature to draw conclusions based on observations of just one patient, but they are confident that the results of their research will help other scientists to finally understand one of the many mysteries of the brain.