Epilepsy and Ecstatic Experiences: The Role of the Insula.
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Publication Date
2021-10-22Journal Title
Brain Sci
ISSN
2076-3425
Publisher
MDPI AG
Volume
11
Issue
11
Language
eng
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
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Picard, F., Bossaerts, P., & Bartolomei, F. (2021). Epilepsy and Ecstatic Experiences: The Role of the Insula.. Brain Sci, 11 (11) https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11111384
Abstract
Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy in which the aura (beginning of the seizures) consists of a blissful state of mental clarity/feeling of certainty. Such a state has also been described as a "religious" or mystical experience. While this form of epilepsy has long been recognized as a temporal lobe epilepsy, we have accumulated evidence converging toward the location of the symptomatogenic zone in the dorsal anterior insula during the 10 last years. The neurocognitive hypothesis for the genesis of a mental clarity is the suppression of the interoceptive prediction errors and of the unexpected surprise associated with any incoming internal or external signal, usually processed by the dorsal anterior insula. This mimics a perfect prediction of the world and induces a feeling of certainty. The ecstatic epilepsy is thus an amazing model for the role of anterior insula in uncertainty and surprise.
Keywords
Anterior Insula, Predictive Coding, Active Inference, Interoception, Certainty, Ecstatic Epilepsy, Mental Clarity, Ecstatic Aura
Identifiers
PMC8615543, 34827383
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.3390/brainsci11111384
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/332442
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