dreskir
10-31-2001, 09:40 AM
Did any of you catch Nova last week? Sorry for the long post - but
heres some of the transcript - Chk it out - this is cool. Dr.
Ramachandran is a genious.
*******************************
John Sharon has temporal lobe epilepsy.
JOHN SHARON: The seizures involve my person and my soul and my
spirit, all of it. When I get one of those feelings my whole body
just tingles and I just, oh...that's that.
NARRATOR: John's epileptic seizures are essentially an electrical
storm in his temporal lobes when a group of neurons starts firing at
random, out of sync with rest of his brain.
Recently John experienced one of his worst episodes to date. He'd
gone out to the desert with a girlfriend, and they'd both got very
drunk, with disastrous results. John was suddenly hit by a volley of
seizures, each one lasted about five minutes and involved violent
convulsions that left him unconscious. Eventually, John managed to
get a call through to his father who drove out to the desert to bring
him home.
JOHN SHARON: On the way home, him and I got just into some
philosophical questions about everything. And I just would not shut
up once I...on the way home I was going and going. It was like I was
wired.
NARRATOR: When John's seizures came to an end he was exhausted but he
felt omnipotent.
JOHN SHARON: I went running down the streets screaming that I was
God. And then this guy came out and I just, like, pelvic thrust at
him and his wife, and I was like, "You want to f--ing bet, I ain't
God?"
JOHN SHARON: I kind of just looked at him, cool and calm, and
apologized to him, and like, "No. No one's going to call the police."
Like, I didn't say this last part, but I'm thinking to myself, "No
one's going to call the police on God!"
NARRATOR: John had never been religious, yet the onset of his
seizures brought on overwhelming spiritual feelings.
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: It has been known for a long time that some
patients with seizures originating in the temporal lobes have intense
religious auras, intense experience of God visiting them. Sometimes
it's a personal god, sometimes it's a more diffuse feeling of being
one with the cosmos. Everything seems suffused with meaning. The
patient will say, "Finally I see what it's really about, Doctor. I
really understand God. I understand my place in the universe, in the
cosmic scheme." Why does this happen and why does it happen so often
in patients with temporal lobe seizures?
NARRATOR: Ramachandran met John shortly after the episode in the
desert. He was still feeling the extreme highs and lows that follow
his seizures. Ramachandran was about to witness the emotional
intensity that John endures.
JOHN SHARON: I have been in so much pain that I'd rather be shot to
death, whipped to death...
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Also joy?
JOHN SHARON: Yes. I've been in so much joy that I would rather be
left alone, man. Take everything away and just let me sit there and
have that much joy. I feel like I can float and stuff sometimes, you
know?
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Okay.
JOHN SHARON: It's, like, the best.
JOHN SHARON, SR.: ...but in regards to atrocities, disasters, things
like that...anywhere and everywhere...wrongs done to other people.
JOHN SHARON: Oh my God. And you know what? I am so right in my own
head, I know I could go out there and get people to follow me. Not
like these whackos with sheets on their heads, not like those
idiots...but now it's just the new generation of the prophets. And
were all the prophets people who were flopping around on the ground,
is that what this whole message was, the gift from the gods, this
whole time?
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: That's possible, isn't it? Yes?
JOHN SHARON: I've never been religious, ever. People say, "No, you
can't see into the future...unh unh." That's what that gift is, but
you've got to pay for it by getting slammed around.
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Now, why do these patients have intense religious
experiences when they have these seizures? And why do they become
preoccupied with theological and religious matters even in between
seizures?
One possibility is that the seizure activity in the temporal lobes
somehow creates all kinds of odd, strange emotions in the person's
mind...in the person's brain. And this welling up of bizarre emotions
may be interpreted by the patient as visits from another world, or
as, "God is visiting me." Maybe that's the only way he can make sense
of this welter of strange emotions going on in his brain. Another
possibility is that this is something to do with the way in which the
temporal lobes are wired up to deal with the world emotionally. As we
walk around and interact with the world, you need some way of
determining what's important, what's emotionally salient and what's
relevant to you versus something trivial and unimportant.
How does this come about? We think what's critical is the connection
between the sensory areas in the temporal lobes and the amygdala,
which is the gateway to the emotional centers in the brain. The
strength of these connections is what determines how emotionally
salient something is. And therefore, you could speak of a sort of
emotional salience landscape, with hills and valleys corresponding to
what's important and what's not important. And each of us has a
slightly different emotional salience landscape. Now, consider what
happens in temporal lobe epilepsy when you have repeated seizures.
What might be going on is an indiscriminate strengthening of all
these pathways. It's a bit like water flowing down rivulets along the
cliff surface. When it rains repeatedly there's an increasing
tendency for the water to make furrows along one pathway and this
progressive deepening of the furrows artificially raises the
emotional significance of some categories of inputs. So instead of
just finding lions and tigers and mothers emotionally salient, he
finds everything deeply salient. For example, a grain of sand, a
piece of driftwood, seaweed, all of this becomes imbued with deep
significance. Now, this tendency to ascribe cosmic significance to
everything around you might be akin to what we call a mystical
experience or a religious experience.
NARRATOR: For Ramachandran, John's story is the basis of one of his
most intriguing and controversial theories. Could there be a
specialized area of the brain that drives human beings to seek
religion?
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: A few years ago, the popular press inaccurately
quoted me as having claimed that there is a God center or a "G-spot"
in the temporal lobes. Now, this is complete nonsense. There is no
specific area in the temporal lobe concerned with God. But it's
possible there are parts of the temporal lobes whose activity is
somehow conducive to religious belief. Now this seems unlikely, but
it might be true. Now, why might we have neural machinery in the
temporal lobes for belief in religion? Well belief in religion is
widespread. Every tribe, every society has some form of religious
worship. And maybe the reason it evolved, if it did evolve, is that
it is conducive to the stability of society, and this may be easiest
if you believe in some sort of supreme being. And that may be one
reason why religious sentiments evolved in the brain.
JOHN SHARON: The only reason I probably would get rid of the seizures
and epilepsy, because I've never even seen them, is because of my
family, because of him. I would keep them for those visions, because
of the way I see the world falling into place and things like that.
It's a wild little place to be stuck in there. It also seems like a
key and right now I haven't learned how to get to the key
without...use the key without those seizures. If I was told that I
would never have a chance to have that key again, sorry, I'm going to
hold on to that thing.
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Just because some patients with temporal lobe
seizures have intense religious experiences, this does not in any way
invalidate that experience for that patient. In fact, it can very
often enrich the patient's life enormously. And it poses a dilemma
very often for the physician, because what right do we have to treat
the patient with medication or with surgery, thereby, in some
instances, depriving him of these valuable experiences? To me the
exciting thing is that subjects like God and religion can now be
actually addressed by us scientists. We can begin to ask questions
about religion and God and begin to approach these questions by
listening to these patients--by talking with them and by studying
them.
NARRATOR: It is a tragic irony that today's breakthroughs in our
understanding of the human brain are made possible by the misfortune
of brain injury. For centuries, philosophers have labored to
understand God, consciousness and the mysteries of human nature. Now
perhaps science will have its chance.
heres some of the transcript - Chk it out - this is cool. Dr.
Ramachandran is a genious.
*******************************
John Sharon has temporal lobe epilepsy.
JOHN SHARON: The seizures involve my person and my soul and my
spirit, all of it. When I get one of those feelings my whole body
just tingles and I just, oh...that's that.
NARRATOR: John's epileptic seizures are essentially an electrical
storm in his temporal lobes when a group of neurons starts firing at
random, out of sync with rest of his brain.
Recently John experienced one of his worst episodes to date. He'd
gone out to the desert with a girlfriend, and they'd both got very
drunk, with disastrous results. John was suddenly hit by a volley of
seizures, each one lasted about five minutes and involved violent
convulsions that left him unconscious. Eventually, John managed to
get a call through to his father who drove out to the desert to bring
him home.
JOHN SHARON: On the way home, him and I got just into some
philosophical questions about everything. And I just would not shut
up once I...on the way home I was going and going. It was like I was
wired.
NARRATOR: When John's seizures came to an end he was exhausted but he
felt omnipotent.
JOHN SHARON: I went running down the streets screaming that I was
God. And then this guy came out and I just, like, pelvic thrust at
him and his wife, and I was like, "You want to f--ing bet, I ain't
God?"
JOHN SHARON: I kind of just looked at him, cool and calm, and
apologized to him, and like, "No. No one's going to call the police."
Like, I didn't say this last part, but I'm thinking to myself, "No
one's going to call the police on God!"
NARRATOR: John had never been religious, yet the onset of his
seizures brought on overwhelming spiritual feelings.
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: It has been known for a long time that some
patients with seizures originating in the temporal lobes have intense
religious auras, intense experience of God visiting them. Sometimes
it's a personal god, sometimes it's a more diffuse feeling of being
one with the cosmos. Everything seems suffused with meaning. The
patient will say, "Finally I see what it's really about, Doctor. I
really understand God. I understand my place in the universe, in the
cosmic scheme." Why does this happen and why does it happen so often
in patients with temporal lobe seizures?
NARRATOR: Ramachandran met John shortly after the episode in the
desert. He was still feeling the extreme highs and lows that follow
his seizures. Ramachandran was about to witness the emotional
intensity that John endures.
JOHN SHARON: I have been in so much pain that I'd rather be shot to
death, whipped to death...
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Also joy?
JOHN SHARON: Yes. I've been in so much joy that I would rather be
left alone, man. Take everything away and just let me sit there and
have that much joy. I feel like I can float and stuff sometimes, you
know?
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Okay.
JOHN SHARON: It's, like, the best.
JOHN SHARON, SR.: ...but in regards to atrocities, disasters, things
like that...anywhere and everywhere...wrongs done to other people.
JOHN SHARON: Oh my God. And you know what? I am so right in my own
head, I know I could go out there and get people to follow me. Not
like these whackos with sheets on their heads, not like those
idiots...but now it's just the new generation of the prophets. And
were all the prophets people who were flopping around on the ground,
is that what this whole message was, the gift from the gods, this
whole time?
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: That's possible, isn't it? Yes?
JOHN SHARON: I've never been religious, ever. People say, "No, you
can't see into the future...unh unh." That's what that gift is, but
you've got to pay for it by getting slammed around.
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Now, why do these patients have intense religious
experiences when they have these seizures? And why do they become
preoccupied with theological and religious matters even in between
seizures?
One possibility is that the seizure activity in the temporal lobes
somehow creates all kinds of odd, strange emotions in the person's
mind...in the person's brain. And this welling up of bizarre emotions
may be interpreted by the patient as visits from another world, or
as, "God is visiting me." Maybe that's the only way he can make sense
of this welter of strange emotions going on in his brain. Another
possibility is that this is something to do with the way in which the
temporal lobes are wired up to deal with the world emotionally. As we
walk around and interact with the world, you need some way of
determining what's important, what's emotionally salient and what's
relevant to you versus something trivial and unimportant.
How does this come about? We think what's critical is the connection
between the sensory areas in the temporal lobes and the amygdala,
which is the gateway to the emotional centers in the brain. The
strength of these connections is what determines how emotionally
salient something is. And therefore, you could speak of a sort of
emotional salience landscape, with hills and valleys corresponding to
what's important and what's not important. And each of us has a
slightly different emotional salience landscape. Now, consider what
happens in temporal lobe epilepsy when you have repeated seizures.
What might be going on is an indiscriminate strengthening of all
these pathways. It's a bit like water flowing down rivulets along the
cliff surface. When it rains repeatedly there's an increasing
tendency for the water to make furrows along one pathway and this
progressive deepening of the furrows artificially raises the
emotional significance of some categories of inputs. So instead of
just finding lions and tigers and mothers emotionally salient, he
finds everything deeply salient. For example, a grain of sand, a
piece of driftwood, seaweed, all of this becomes imbued with deep
significance. Now, this tendency to ascribe cosmic significance to
everything around you might be akin to what we call a mystical
experience or a religious experience.
NARRATOR: For Ramachandran, John's story is the basis of one of his
most intriguing and controversial theories. Could there be a
specialized area of the brain that drives human beings to seek
religion?
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: A few years ago, the popular press inaccurately
quoted me as having claimed that there is a God center or a "G-spot"
in the temporal lobes. Now, this is complete nonsense. There is no
specific area in the temporal lobe concerned with God. But it's
possible there are parts of the temporal lobes whose activity is
somehow conducive to religious belief. Now this seems unlikely, but
it might be true. Now, why might we have neural machinery in the
temporal lobes for belief in religion? Well belief in religion is
widespread. Every tribe, every society has some form of religious
worship. And maybe the reason it evolved, if it did evolve, is that
it is conducive to the stability of society, and this may be easiest
if you believe in some sort of supreme being. And that may be one
reason why religious sentiments evolved in the brain.
JOHN SHARON: The only reason I probably would get rid of the seizures
and epilepsy, because I've never even seen them, is because of my
family, because of him. I would keep them for those visions, because
of the way I see the world falling into place and things like that.
It's a wild little place to be stuck in there. It also seems like a
key and right now I haven't learned how to get to the key
without...use the key without those seizures. If I was told that I
would never have a chance to have that key again, sorry, I'm going to
hold on to that thing.
V.S. RAMACHANDRAN: Just because some patients with temporal lobe
seizures have intense religious experiences, this does not in any way
invalidate that experience for that patient. In fact, it can very
often enrich the patient's life enormously. And it poses a dilemma
very often for the physician, because what right do we have to treat
the patient with medication or with surgery, thereby, in some
instances, depriving him of these valuable experiences? To me the
exciting thing is that subjects like God and religion can now be
actually addressed by us scientists. We can begin to ask questions
about religion and God and begin to approach these questions by
listening to these patients--by talking with them and by studying
them.
NARRATOR: It is a tragic irony that today's breakthroughs in our
understanding of the human brain are made possible by the misfortune
of brain injury. For centuries, philosophers have labored to
understand God, consciousness and the mysteries of human nature. Now
perhaps science will have its chance.