Ecstatic seizures
[1][4][2][6] It has been theorized that ecstatic seizures caused by activation of the insula may be due to a temporary block of prediction errors associated with uncertainty and negative affect.
[1][7][2][8] Conceptual and neurological parallels have been drawn between ecstatic seizures and other intensely positive or mystical experiences, for instance with drugs like MDMA ("ecstasy") and psychedelics, as well as with moving musical enjoyment and deep states of meditation.
[2] The symptoms variably include feelings of increased self-awareness, mental clarity, certainty, feelings of "unity with everything that exists" (including the external environment), intense positive affect, a sense of intense serenity or bliss, mystical, spiritual, or religious experiences, physical well-being, a sense of "hyper-reality", and time dilation, among others.
[2] The key and essential definitional criteria of ecstatic seizures include:[1] The state seems to primarily involve an absence of doubts or uncertainty rather than a primary intense positive emotion.
[1][5] A description of Russian novelist Fyodor Dostoevsky's ecstatic auras by his close friend Nikolay Strakhov was published as follows:[17][18] For several brief moments, I feel a contentedness which is unthinkable under normal conditions and unimaginable for those who have not experienced it.
[20] There have been cases of epileptic individuals willingly self-inducing ecstatic or pleasurable seizures via exposure to known provoking epileptogenic stimuli, like flickering or flashing television screens.
[4][2] Additionally, several instances of reproducible ecstatic-like seizures have been induced during presurgical evaluation with electrical brain stimulation to the dorsal anterior insula.
[1] It is thought that vast activation of the anterior insula is needed for generation of ecstatic seizures, which may underlie the few cases that have been observed with electrical brain stimulation.
[8] It has been theorized that ecstatic seizures, including feelings of certainty, clarity, trust, well-being, serenity, and inner peace, may be due to a temporary blockade of interoceptive prediction error generation and associated negative emotions.
moments—that is, sudden understanding of a previously incomprehensible problem and associated joy, elation, and satisfaction—for instance discovering the cause of a difficult software bug in computer code.
[1][23] Ecstatic seizures have been related to the subjective experiences of drugs of misuse, such as psychostimulant euphoriants and entactogens, like amphetamines, cocaine, and methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA; "ecstasy"), as well as psychedelic hallucinogens, like ayahuasca (dimethyltryptamine), psilocybe mushrooms (psilocybin), and peyote (mescaline).
[1][10][2][3][5] As an example, Alexander Shulgin, who discovered the subjective effects of MDMA, described his first experience with the drug as follows: "I feel absolutely clean inside, and there is nothing but pure euphoria.
"[24][25] Activation of the anterior insula may be involved in the positive feelings evoked by the previously mentioned drugs of misuse, similarly to ecstatic seizures.
[1][9] Besides the insula, the dopamine reward system of the ventral tegmental area and striatum or nucleus accumbens have also been found to be activated by musical moments.
[4][2] The dorsal anterior insula has been proposed as a potential novel therapeutic target for treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders like severe depression, for instance through non-invasive intermittent brain stimulation techniques.
[16] This could be an alternative to the novel field of psychedelics for these conditions, under the assumption that transient mystical experiences could result in long-lasting therapeutic psychological benefits.
[1][5][37][38][39][18] This has been attributed to limited documentation of the seizures, which is in turn related to the fact that people with the auras are often reluctant to talk about the experiences and refrain from communicating them.
[5][2][4][1] This is due to the ineffability of the experiences or inability to convey them in words, their extremely abnormal nature (termed "hallucination of emotion"), and fears of being seen as being mentally deranged or as having psychiatric disorders.
[5][2][4][1] The ability to communicate the subjective experience of ecstatic auras is also highly dependent on a person's intelligence, power of introspection, and vocabulary.
[20] Ecstatic seizures have been especially studied, reviewed, and brought greater attention to by Swiss neuroscientist Fabienne Picard and her colleagues beginning in 2009 and continuing to the present.
