The Fits Of Divinity

THE epileptic ecstasy that sometimes grips the intensely religious may have roots in biology, claim scientists. Vilayanur Ramachandran and his colleagues from the University of California at San Diego have found that people with temporal lobe epilepsy often become obsessively religious. It could be because seizures boost neural connections to the amygdala, the emotional arbiter of the brain, so that everything takes on a special meaning. Or, seizures might alter neural circuits that deal with religious experience.

Ramachandran studied people with TLE, highly religious volunteers and people whose religious status was unknown. The subjects were shown words including neutral ones such as "wheel", plus sexual and violent words along with religious words.

Result: Only sexual words gave the apparently non-religious sweaty palms while sexual and religious words excited the religious. But the TLE patients were disproportionatley aroused by religious words. Ramachandran speculates that the seat of religious experience is in the temporal lobe.