ReviewBrain sciences2021
Epilepsy and Ecstatic Experiences: The Role of the Insula.
Review in Brain sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
8 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 17 citations in OpenAlex.
- Common and Distinct Neural Mechanisms Underlying Risk Seeking and Risk Aversion: Evidence From the Neuroimaging Meta-Analysis.Human brain mapping · 2025Pooled it
- Convergent and selective representations of pain, appetitive processes, aversive processes, and cognitive control in the insula.Nature communications · 2026Article
- 5-MeO-DMT: An atypical psychedelic with unique pharmacology, phenomenology & risk?Psychopharmacology · 2025Review
- Insights from Ecstatic Epilepsy: From Uncertainty to Metacognitive Feelings.Current topics in behavioral neurosciences · 2025Review
- "Amity Seizures": A previously unreported semiology localizing to a circuit between the right hippocampus and orbitofrontal area.Epilepsy & behavior reports · 2024Article
- Overwhelmed by beauty and faith: review on artistic and religious travelers' syndromes.Frontiers in behavioral neuroscience · 2024Review
- Ecstatic or Mystical Experience through Epilepsy.Journal of cognitive neuroscience · 2023Article
- Neuro-functional modeling of near-death experiences in contexts of altered states of consciousness.Frontiers in psychology · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ecstatic epilepsy is a rare form of focal epilepsy in which the aura (beginning of the seizures) consists of a blissful state of mental clarity/feeling of certainty. Such a state has also been described as a "religious" or mystical experience. While this form of epilepsy has long been recognized as a temporal lobe epilepsy, we have accumulated evidence converging toward the location of the symptomatogenic zone in the dorsal anterior insula during the 10 last years. The neurocognitive hypothesis for the genesis of a mental clarity is the suppression of the interoceptive prediction errors and of the unexpected surprise associated with any incoming internal or external signal, usually processed by the dorsal anterior insula. This mimics a perfect prediction of the world and induces a feeling of certainty. The ecstatic epilepsy is thus an amazing model for the role of anterior insula in uncertainty and surprise.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.