Abstract
Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy linked to the anterior insula in which patients experience a blissful state with a unique set of symptoms, including a feeling of physical well-being, mental clarity, a sense of oneness with the universe, and time dilation. In this chapter, we reflect on how these symptoms coincide with our current knowledge of the insula’s functions and explore how this stunning natural model can further inform our understanding of the insula’s role in the sentient self, uncertainty and surprise monitoring, and metacognitive feelings.
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Notes
- 1.
For an example using speech listening, see Caucheteux et al. (2023).
- 2.
One should allow for the possibility that surprise includes the situation where the world is less uncertain than in one’s “virtual model of the world.” This may prompt the agent to change the world to have more “excitement.”
- 3.
As such, the AIns operates like the adapter in the Model Reference Based Adaptive Control (MRAC) model in engineering (Nguyen 2018), sending modulatory signals when it receives input that is surprising compared to what is expected based on the reference model.
- 4.
In meditation, non-dualistic traditions assert that ultimate reality is a unified whole, and any apparent separations or distinctions are illusion. This view seems to have been shared by Albert Einstein who wrote “A human being experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness” (1950’s letter to Robert Marcus).
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We thank Prof. Peter Bossaerts (University of Cambridge) for very fruitful discussions, and Dr. Nathalie Mella (University of Geneva) for helpful comments.
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Sooter, N.M., Seragnoli, F., Picard, F. (2024). Insights from Ecstatic Epilepsy: From Uncertainty to Metacognitive Feelings. In: Current Topics in Behavioral Neurosciences. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/7854_2024_528
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