Sudden Religious Conversions in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

Abstract

The ‘religiosity’ of the epileptic has been recognized since the time of Esquirol (1838) and Morel (1860). These, and later French workers (including Marchand and Ajuriaguerra, 1948), have sought to explain the epileptic's religiosity as being the result of his disability, social isolation and his enhanced need for the consolation of religion. A specific conversion experience after a fit was reported by Howden (1872–73). The patient believed that he was in Heaven. He would appear to have been depersonalized, as it took three days for his body to be reunited with his soul. ‘He maintained that God had sent it to him as a means of conversion, that he was now a new man, and had never before known what true peace was…. He assured me that he was a converted man and that he was convinced he would have no more fits.’ Howden also reported on John Engellerecht who, after many years of depression, attempted suicide and appeared to die. After visiting Hell and Heaven, he cast off his depression, and acquired a state of religious ecstasy accompanied by visual and auditory hallucinations. Boven (1919) mentions a 14-year-old boy who after a seizure ‘saw the good God and the angels, and heard a celestial fanfare of music’. He regards the religiosity of the epileptic character as being due to experiences acquired in the course of an epileptic aura and in the subsequent confusional state. Eventually the patient becomes preoccupied with a cure which he believes depends entirely on God, and this belief is the basis of his euphoria. Boven stresses the intensified piety of the epileptic after a severe seizure.

Reward, salience, and attentional networks are activated by religious experience in devout Mormons

“…A thread of research arising from the pathophysiology of hyperreligiosity in epilepsy and schizophrenia suggested that religious ideation and experience arises from temporal lobe structures (Devinsky & Lai, 2008; Dewhurst & Beard, 1970; Trimble & Freeman, 2006). Other reports have synthesized studies from the literature to suggest a right lateralized network involving amygdala, temporal, and frontal cortex as underlying religious experience (McNamara, 2009b).…”

Religiosity in patients with Parkinson's disease

“…Although no direct test of this hypothesis has yet been conducted, circumstantial evidence is consistent with the prediction. Religiosity-related symptomology is relatively common in disorders that are associated with neo-striatal and limbic-prefrontal alterations such as schizophrenia (Siddle et al 2002), obsessive-compulsive disorder (Tek and Ulug 2001), and certain forms of temporal lobe epilepsy (Dewhurst and Beard 1970; Geschwind 1983). To our knowledge, however, there are no published reports of similar religiosity-related symptomology in Parkinson’s disease (PD) – another prominent disorder of neo-striatal and prefrontal dysfunction (Agid et al 1987; Starkstein and Merello 2002).…”

Out-of-body experiences associated with seizures

“…Sensky (1983a) noted that interest in anomalous subjective states in epilepsy was advanced by Slater and Beard (1963) and Dewhurst and Beard (1970), who specifically studied patients with comorbid psychosis and epilepsy. Of the 7 patients in our study who reported out-of-body experiences, 3 had been diagnosed with depression, 2 others with bipolar disorder, 2 with anxiety, 2 with sleep apnea, and 1 each with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, compulsive skin-picking, alcohol abuse, and cocaine abuse.…”