09: God and the Limbic System

There could be many diagnoses to why an 8 year old would experience seizures, it could be chemically induced, the child could be epileptic, and a more recent, undeniably bizarre idea, God could be speaking to the child. In the case of patients such as Paul, after an experience of an epileptic seizure, it is possible that they feel as if they’ve spoken to or have become one with God. Paul also has eureka moments in which he remembers all detains of a particular situation. But how could this be and what does it mean? Do humans have a direct link to God in our brains? Does God select who has this link? Are there other pathways at play that make the patient feel as if they’ve become one with God without actually having done so?

To discuss this topic in great detail, more information on an area of the brain called the limbic system is needed, however for this article, it is sufficient to know that the limbic system deals a great deal with the experience and expression of emotion.

There are four working theories in this chapter that attempt to explain this God experience.

1) God really does visit these people.

2) These patients experience all sorts of odd, inexplicable emotions, as if a cauldron had boiled over, perhaps their only recourse is to seek ablution in the calm waters of religious tranquility.

3) The third explanation invokes connections between sensory centers (vision and hearing) and the amygdala, (that part of the limbic system specialized in recognizing the emotional significance of events in the external world.)

4) Human beings have actually evolved specialized neural circuitry for the sole purpose of mediating religious experience.

The first theory cannot directly be tested yet, so it cannot be readily accepted or dismissed, it stays a possibility. The second seems improbable since other neurological disorders leave emotions disturbed, and these patients often do not seek God the same way Paul does. The third and fourth theories, however, seem to hold more value. If there is some form of rewiring or strengthening in the current connections in the brain through the pathway that is responsible for emotion, it is possible that things that don’t generally evoke emotion (seeing a strangers face passing by on the subway) do evoke emotion in patients like Paul. If everything feels as if it is deeply significant, one may have the feeling that they have become one with the world and everything in it. The last theory involves a different branch of science, “evolutionary psychology.” This theory is not yet dismissed and may still be tested.

Calling these patients sick would be a misterm, if they really can connect with God, then there is nothing sick about them. By extension, “treating” them may not need to occur. Some patients may also not want to be treated, even though we do not currently have a treatment.