Neuroscience, Selflessness, and Spiritual Experience

Explaining the Science of Transcendence

Brick Johnstone,Daniel Cohen

• Editorial: Academic Press
• Año: 2019
• ISBN:
  9780081022191
• Categoría: Biowissenschaften
• Categoría: Neurowissenschaft

Neuroscience, Selflessness, and Spiritual Transcendence conveys the manner by which selflessness serves as a neuropsychological and religious foundation for spiritually transcendent experiences. The book combines neurological case studies and neuroscience research with religious accounts of transcendence experiences from the perspective of both the neurosciences and the history of religions. Chapters cover the subjective experience of transcendence, an historical summary of different philosophical and religious perspectives, a review of the neuroscience research that describes the manner by which the brain processes and creates a self, and more.

The book presents a model that bridges the divide between neuroscience and religion, presenting a resource that will be critical reading for advanced students and researchers in both fields.

• Creates a common focus on selflessness as a reliable construct for use by all disciplines interested in the basis of spiritual experience
• Links neuroanatomical data with religious texts from multiple faith traditions to describe the necessity of selflessness for spiritual experience and transformation
• Highlights disorders in neurological functioning that result in disorders of the self

Section II

The “Self” and Selflessness

Chapter 3

Disorders of the Self

Abstract

Over the past century, there has been increased recognition that the brain processes information specific to the “self.” Before the advent of functional neuroimaging technologies, it was necessary to study unique cases of neurological injury to determine brain-behavior relationships. This chapter presents case studies of individuals with “disorders of the self” that have primarily been associated with right hemisphere injury/disease. Case studies are presented in the context of disorders of the physical self (e.g., left-sided neglect, anosognosia, and asomatognosia) and disorders of the psychological self (e.g., Capgras, Fregoli’s, and Cotard’s syndromes; schizophrenia; depersonalization disorder; and dissociative identity disorder).

Keywords

Self; Right hemisphere/parietal lobe; Anosognosia; Asomatognosia; Capgras syndrome; Fregoli’s syndrome; Cotard’s syndrome; Schizophrenia; Dissociative identity disorder; Depersonalization disorder

Outline

• 1 “No Longer Gage”
• 2 Tan Tan
• 3 The Man Without a Memory
• 4 Brain Disorders and the “Self”
• 5 Losing the Left Side
• 6 Clock Drawing
• 7 Whose Arm Is That?
• 8 Know Thyself
• 9 Mirror, Mirror, …
• 10 Imposters
• 11 Whose Thought Is That?
• 12 The Self and Other Psychiatric Conditions
• 13 Disordered Self (or Selflessness)?

Selflessness is a quality of consciousness that can be subjectively discovered.

(Harris, 2007)

One of the more interesting methods used to understand how the brain processes information related to the self is to study individuals with unusual and very focal brain disorders. It has been argued that it is only by looking at the “abnormal” brain that we can truly understand how the normal brain functions. Several popular books describe such unique cases, including the Man Who Mistook his Wife for a Hat (Sacks, 1985); Patient H.M.: A Story of Memory, Madness, and Family Secrets (Dittrich, 2016); An Odd Kind of Fame: Stories of Phineas Gage (MacMillan, 2002); and Dueling Neurosurgeons (Kean, 2015). These books tend to be a bit more interesting than more sterile academic articles and provide a novel way to learn how the brain works. Furthermore, how can anyone not be interested in reading about a man who mistook his wife for a hat?

In this chapter, we discuss unique neurological cases that have improved our understanding of the neuropsychological foundations of memory, language, and executive skills and in particular how these cases help us better understand how the brain processes information related to creating a “self.”

1 “No Longer Gage”

During the first half of the 19th century, brain functions were often studied through the “science” of phrenology. It was believed that different cognitive abilities and personality traits could be best inferred by evaluating the bumps on one’s head (see Fig. 1). Although phrenology persisted for some time, knowledge regarding relationships between the frontal lobes and behaviors unexpectedly advanced in 1848 due to the misfortunes of a railroad worker who happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Fig. 1 Phrenology pamphlet from 1841.

Phineas Gage was 25 years old when he incurred a very serious, focal brain injury while working on the railroad. He was tamping explosives when an unexpected explosion resulted in a three and one-half foot iron rod (i.e., basically a metal javelin) exploding up through his jaw and left eye orbit, passing through his left frontal lobe, and out the top of his head. Miraculously, he never lost consciousness, but shortly following his injury, it was reported that “Mr. G. got up and vomited; the effort of vomiting passed out about half a teacupful of the brain, which fell upon the floor” (Bigelow, 1850; as cited in MacMillan, 2002, p. 448).

Needless to say, it was a serious injury that left Mr. Gage blind in the left eye for the rest of his life. He reportedly recovered well from an intellectual standpoint, which was astounding to his peers and physicians, especially given the serious nature of his injury. Prior to his injury, Mr. Gage was described as “… a most efficient and capable foreman … a shrewd, smart business man, very energetic and persistent in executing all his plans of operation” (Harlow, 1868; as cited in MacMillan, 2002, p. 90). However, following his injury, Mr. Gage’s friends, family, and coworkers all noticed him to exhibit atypical behaviors and significant changes in his personality. After his injury, he was described by his physician as follows:

The equilibrium or balance, so to speak, between his intellectual faculties and animal propensities, seems to have been destroyed. He is fitful, irreverent, indulging at times in the grossest profanity (which was not previously his custom), manifesting but little deference for his fellows, impatient of restraint or advice when it conflicts with his desires, at times pertinaciously obstinate, yet capricious and vacillating, devising many plans of future operations, which are no sooner arranged than they are abandoned in turn for others appearing more feasible. A child in his intellectual capacity and manifestations, he has the animal passions of a strong man … In this regard his mind was radically changed, so decidedly that his friends and acquaintances said he was “no longer Gage”.

(Harlow, 1868; as cited in MacMillan, 2002, p. 92–93)

This case made it increasingly clear that individuals are prone to be impulsive by nature but that the frontal lobes “inhibit” these impulses. It is now routinely understood by rehabilitation professionals that individuals with acute frontal lobe injuries can be impulsive/disinhibited and often say whatever is on their mind (e.g., they will tell you in no uncertain terms what they think of you when they do not want to do any more rehabilitation) or act on their first impulse in a given situation (e.g., help themselves to the food on their roommate’s plate). Mr. Gage was one of the first case studies that clearly indicated that the frontal lobes and not the location of bumps on the head as phrenology had asserted are related to the regulation of behaviors and emotions and intrinsically linked to one’s personality (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2 Phineas Gage's skull. Source: García-Molina, A. (2012). Phineas Gage and the enigma of the prefrontal cortex (Phineas Gage y el enigma del córtex prefrontal), Neurología (English ed.), Vol. 27, Issue 6, pp. 370–375. Copyright Elsevier.

2 Tan Tan

About the same time as Mr. Gage’s case helped to clarify the role of the frontal lobes in inhibiting impulses, in the mid-1800s, a series of unusual cases in France helped to clarify the neurological foundations of expressive language. Mr. Leborgne (who is better known as “Tan Tan” for reasons that will become clear) was a young man in Paris who was hospitalized for intractable seizures. At age 30, he suddenly lost the ability to speak, other than to say “Tan Tan” (thus his nickname). He was noted to have generally intact cognitive abilities in all other areas, including the ability to comprehend everything that was stated to him. After approximately 20 years, he developed paralysis of the right arm and leg and was eventually treated by Dr. Paul Broca who had interests in the neurological origins of language. After Tan Tan’s death, Dr. Broca conducted an autopsy and found a large lesion in the posterior inferior frontal gyrus, which he concluded was related to Tan Tan’s specific and significant weaknesses in expressing himself.

Not long after, Dr. Broca treated another patient, an 84-year-old man named Lazare Lelong. He had dementia and ultimately lost the ability to speak, except for five words. Upon his death, an autopsy indicated a lesion in essentially the same region as found in Tan Tan (i.e., the posterior inferior frontal gyrus). Dr. Broca used these cases to conclude that expressive language abilities could be associated with a specific cerebral area. Since that time, the region for expressive language located in the left frontal lobe has been universally recognized as Broca’s area.

3 The Man Without a Memory

Whereas the neurological foundations of language and inhibitory control were beginning to be understood as early as the mid-19th century, the neurological foundations of memory were not well understood until the 1950s. The most eminent memory researcher at that time, Karl Lashley, conducted extensive memory research with rats and concluded that memory was related to the entire brain and could not be associated with any specific brain region. However, the case of Henry Gustav Molaison (known as Patient HM until his identity was published after his death in 2008) radically changed the understanding of the nature of memory.

Mr. Molaison is thought to have incurred a brain injury at age 7 when he was struck by a car when riding his bike. He developed seizures at age 10 that became intractable, developing into a generalized epilepsy that involved his entire brain. As is common for individuals with uncontrollable seizures, Mr. Molaison was eventually unable to work or live independently. At age 27, he agreed to have neurosurgery to remove his bilateral medial temporal lobes (i.e., primarily involving his hippocampus), which was determined to be the brain region where his seizures originated. It was thought that by removing the area where the seizures originated, his seizures would hopefully be eliminated or at least reduced.

At that time, the neuropsychological abi...

Índice

• Cover image
• Title page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Acknowledgements
• Section I: The Nature of Transcendence
• Section II: The “Self” and Selflessness
• Section III: Selflessness as The Key to Transcendence
• Section IV: Applications of Selflessness
• References
• Index