Epilepsy and Ecstatic Experiences: The Role of the Insula.
Brain Sciences October 22, 2021 Fabienne Picard, Peter Bossaerts, Fabrice Bartolomei
Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy where the seizure aura is a blissful state of mental clarity and certainty, often described as religious or mystical. Over the last decade, evidence has located the symptomatogenic zone for this experience in the dorsal anterior insula. The neurocognitive hypothesis proposes that the feeling of mental clarity arises from suppression of interoceptive prediction errors and unexpected surprise from internal or external signals, which are normally processed by the dorsal anterior insula. This mimics a perfect prediction of the world, inducing certainty. Ecstatic epilepsy thus serves as a model for the anterior insula's role in uncertainty and surprise.