The Future of the Mind (32 page)

9
ALTERED STATES OF CONSCIOUSNESS

She was just an illiterate peasant girl who claimed to hear voices directly from God. But Joan of Arc would rise from obscurity to lead a demoralized army to victories that would change the course of nations, making her one of the most fascinating, compelling, and tragic figures in history.

During the chaos of the Hundred Years’ War, when northern France was decimated by English troops and the French monarchy was in retreat, a young girl from Orléans claimed to have divine instructions to lead the French army to victory. With nothing to lose, Charles VII allowed her to command some of his troops. To everyone’s shock and wonder, she scored a series of triumphs over the English. News rapidly spread about this remarkable young girl. With each victory, her reputation began to grow, until she became a folk heroine, rallying the French around her. French troops, once on the verge of total collapse, scored decisive victories that paved the way for the coronation of the new king.

However, she was betrayed and captured by the English. They realized what a threat she posed to them, since she was a potent symbol for the French and claimed guidance directly from God Himself, so they subjected
her to a show trial. After an elaborate interrogation, she was found guilty of heresy and burned at the stake at the age of nineteen in 1431.

In the centuries that followed, hundreds of attempts have been made to understand this remarkable teenager. Was she a prophet, a saint, or a madwoman? More recently, scientists have tried to use modern psychiatry and neuroscience to explain the lives of historical figures such as Joan of Arc.

Few question her sincerity about claims of divine inspiration. But many scientists have written that she might have suffered from schizophrenia, since she heard voices. Others have disputed this fact, since the surviving records of her trial reveal a person of rational thought and speech. The English laid several theological traps for her. They asked, for example, if she was in God’s grace. If she answered yes, then she would be a heretic, since no one can know for certain if they are in God’s grace. If she said no, then she was confessing her guilt, and that she was a fraud. Either way, she would lose.

In a response that stunned the audience, she answered, “If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” The court notary, in the records, wrote, “Those who were interrogating her were stupefied.”

In fact, the transcripts of her interrogation are so remarkable that George Bernard Shaw put literal translations of the court record in his play
Saint Joan
.

More recently, another theory has emerged about this exceptional woman: perhaps she actually suffered from temporal lobe epilepsy. People who have this condition sometimes experience seizures, but some of them also experience a curious side effect that may shed some light on the structure of human beliefs. These patients suffer from “hyperreligiosity,” and can’t help thinking that there is a spirit or presence behind everything. Random events are never random, but have some deep religious significance. Some psychologists have speculated that a number of history’s prophets suffered from these temporal lobe epileptic lesions, since they were convinced they talked to God. The neuroscientist Dr. David Eagleman says, “
Some fraction of history’s prophets, martyrs, and leaders appear to have had temporal lobe epilepsy. Consider Joan of Arc, the sixteen-year-old girl who managed to turn the tide of the Hundred Years’ War because she believed (and convinced the French soldiers) that she was hearing voices from Saint Michael the archangel, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Margaret, and Saint Gabriel.”

This curious effect was noticed as far back as 1892, when textbooks on
mental illness noted a link between “religious emotionalism” and epilepsy. It was first clinically described in 1975 by neurologist Norman Geschwind of Boston Veterans Administration Hospital. He noticed that epileptics who had electrical misfirings in their left temporal lobes often had religious experiences, and he speculated that the electrical storm in the brain somehow was the cause of these religious obsessions.

Dr. V. S. Ramachandran estimates that 30 to 40 percent of all the temporal lobe epileptics whom he has seen suffer from hyperreligiosity. He notes, “
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 is all really about, Doctor. I really understand God. I understand my place in the universe—the cosmic scheme.’ ”

He also notes that many of these individuals are extremely adamant and convincing in their beliefs. He says, “I sometimes wonder whether such patients who have temporal lobe epilepsy have access to another dimension of reality, a wormhole of sorts into a parallel universe. But I usually don’t say this to my colleagues, lest they doubt my sanity.” He has experimented on patients with temporal lobe epilepsy, and confirmed that these individuals had a strong emotional reaction to the word “God” but not to neutral words. This means that the link between hyperreligiosity and temporal lobe epilepsy is real, not just anecdotal.

Psychologist Michael Persinger asserts that a certain type of transcranial electrical stimulation (called transcranial magnetic simulation, or TMS) can deliberately induce the effect of these epileptic lesions. If this is so, is it possible that magnetic fields can be used to alter one’s religious beliefs?

In Dr. Persinger’s studies, the subject places a helmet on his head (dubbed the “God helmet”), which contains a device that can send magnetism into particular parts of the brain. Afterward, when the subject is interviewed, he will often claim that he was in the presence of some great spirit. David Biello, writing in
Scientific American
, says, “
During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence, or the wonder of the universe.” Since this effect is reproducible on demand, it indicates that perhaps the brain is hardwired in some way to respond to religious feelings.

Some scientists have gone further and have speculated that there is a “God gene” that predisposes the brain to be religious. Since most societies have created a religion of some sort, it seems plausible that our ability to respond to religious feelings might be genetically programmed into our genome. (Meanwhile, some evolutionary theorists have tried to explain these facts by claiming that religion served to increase the chances of survival for early humans. Religion helped bond bickering individuals into a cohesive tribe with a common mythology, which increased the chances that the tribe would stick together and survive.)

Would an experiment like the one using the “God helmet” shake a person’s religious beliefs? And can an MRI machine record the brain activity of someone who experiences a religious awakening?

To test these ideas, Dr. Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal recruited a group of fifteen Carmelite nuns who agreed to put their heads into an MRI machine. To qualify for the experiment, all of them must “have had an experience of intense union with God.”

Originally, Dr. Beauregard had hoped that the nuns would have a mystical communion with God, which could then be recorded by an MRI scan. However, being shoved into an MRI machine, where you are surrounded by tons of magnetic coils of wire and high-tech equipment, is not an ideal setting for a religious epiphany. The best they could do was to evoke memories of previous religious experiences. “God cannot be summoned at will,” explained one of the nuns.

The final result was mixed and inconclusive, but several regions of the brain clearly lit up during this experiment:

•  The caudate nucleus, which is involved with learning and possibly falling in love. (Perhaps the nuns were feeling the unconditional love of God?)

•  The insula, which monitors body sensations and social emotions. (Perhaps the nuns were feeling close to the other nuns as they were reaching out to God?)

•  The parietal lobe, which helps process spatial awareness. (Perhaps the nuns felt they were in the physical presence of God?)

Dr. Beauregard had to admit that so many areas of the brain were activated, with so many different possible interpretations, that he could not say
for sure whether hyperreligiosity could be induced. However, it was clear to him that the nuns’ religious feelings were reflected in their brain scans.

But did this experiment shake the nuns’ belief in God? No. In fact, the nuns concluded that God placed this “radio” in the brain so that we could communicate with Him.

Their conclusion was that God created humans to have this ability, so the brain has a divine antenna given to us by God so that we can feel His presence. David Biello concludes, “
Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them.” Dr. Beauregard concluded, “
If you are an atheist and you live a certain kind of experience, you will relate it to the magnificence of the universe. If you are a Christian, you will associate it with God. Who knows. Perhaps they are the same thing.”

Similarly, Dr. Richard Dawkins, a biologist at Oxford University and an outspoken atheist, was once placed in the God helmet to see if his religious beliefs would change.

They did not.

So in conclusion, although hyperreligiosity may be induced via temporal lobe epilepsy and even magnetic fields, there is no convincing evidence that magnetic fields can alter one’s religious views.

MENTAL ILLNESS

But there is another altered state of consciousness that brings great suffering, both to the person experiencing it and to his or her family, and this is mental illness. Can brain scans and high technology reveal the origin of this affliction and perhaps lead to a cure? If so, one of the largest sources of human suffering could be eliminated.

For example, throughout history, the treatment of schizophrenia was brutal and crude. People who suffer from this debilitating mental disorder, which afflicts about 1 percent of the population, typically hear imaginary voices and suffer from paranoid delusions and disorganized thinking. Throughout history, they were considered to be “possessed” by the devil and were banished, killed, or locked up. Gothic novels sometimes refer to the strange, demented relative who lives in the darkness of a hidden room or
basement. The Bible even mentions an incident when Jesus encountered two demoniacs. The demons begged Jesus to drive them into a herd of swine. He said, “Go then.” When the demons entered the swine, the whole herd rushed down the bank and drowned in the sea.

Even today, you still see people with classic symptoms of schizophrenia walking around having arguments with themselves. The first indicators usually surface in the late teens (for men) or early twenties (for women). Some schizophrenics have led normal lives and even performed remarkable feats before the voices finally took over. The most famous case is that of the 1994 Nobel Prize winner in economics, John Nash, who was played by Russell Crowe in the movie
A Beautiful Mind
. In his twenties, Nash did pioneering work in economics, game theory, and pure mathematics at Princeton University. One of his advisers wrote him a letter of recommendation with just one line: “This man is a genius.” Remarkably, he was able to perform at such a high intellectual level even while being hounded by delusions. He was finally hospitalized when he had a breakdown at age thirty-one, and spent many years in institutions or wandering around the world, fearing that communist agents would kill him.

At present, there is no precise, universally accepted way to diagnose mental illness. There is hope, however, that one day scientists will use brain scans and other high-tech devices to create accurate diagnostic tools. Progress in treating mental illness, therefore, has been painfully slow. After centuries of suffering, victims of schizophrenia had their first sign of relief when antipsychotic drugs like thorazine were found accidentally in the 1950s that could miraculously control or even at times eliminate the voices that haunted the mentally ill.

It is believed that these drugs work by regulating the level of certain neurotransmitters, such as dopamine. Specifically, the theory is that these drugs block the functioning of D2 receptors of certain nerve cells, thereby reducing the level of dopamine. (This theory, that hallucinations were in part caused by excess dopamine levels in the limbic system and prefrontal cortex, also explained why people taking amphetamines experienced similar hallucinations.)

Dopamine, because it is so essential for the synapses of the brain, has been implicated in other disorders as well.
One theory holds that Parkinson’s disease is aggravated by a lack of dopamine in the synapses, while Tourette’s syndrome can be triggered by an overabundance of it. (People
with Tourette’s syndrome have tics and unusual facial movements. A small minority of them uncontrollably speak obscene words and make profane, derogatory remarks.)

More recently, scientists have zeroed in on another possible culprit: abnormal glutamate levels in the brain. One reason for believing these levels are involved is that PCP (angel dust) is known to create hallucinations similar to those of schizophrenics by blocking a glutamate receptor called NMDA. Clozapine, a relatively new drug for schizophrenia that stimulates the production of glutamate, shows great promise.

However, these antipsychotic drugs are not a cure-all. In about 20 percent of cases, such drugs stop all symptoms. About two-thirds find some relief from their symptoms, but the rest are totally unaffected. (According to one theory, antipsychotic drugs mimic a natural chemical that is missing in schizophrenics’ brains, but it is not an exact copy. Hence a patient has to try a variety of these antipsychotic drugs, almost by trial and error. Moreover, they can have unpleasant side effects, so schizophrenics often stop taking them and suffer a relapse.)