From: Smigrodzki, Rafal (SmigrodzkiR@MSX.UPMC.EDU)
Date: Tue Dec 18 2001 - 10:59:52 MST
Michael Wiik wrote:
past anomalies out of individual human histories. Hence my understanding
that a) almost everyone has had some sort of unexplainable psychic
experience, and b) these have failed to be reproduced in laboratory
settings.
### Count me as an anomaly - I do not recall ever having any "psychic"
experiences. I have sometimes feelings of deja vu, mild epiphanies, brief
unexplained happiness or sadness, minor sensory glitches (illusion of a
small buglike object moving in the periphery of vision, a sense of time
skipping when I am driving while tired) but I interpret these as minor
malfunctions of my brain, entirely within the normal range.
I do meet patients with anatomically defined CNS abnormalities who describe
subjective experiences identical to experiences which were evoked by direct
electrical stimulation of exposed cerebral cortex. Sometimes I can find a
direct correspondence between the structural abnormality seen on MRI and the
described experience. Many patients with epilepsy have various emotionally
laden episodes, some of which sound very much like "spirituality", and their
occurrence is correlated with electrical evidence of seizures on EEG. As
many as 1/3 of our inpatients are verifiably lying about whatever they
experience, as shown by objective neurological tests (EEG, VER, SSEP, EMG,
and the neurological exam).
Working as a neurologist teaches you to be a skeptic. Even if your Bayesian
priors are skewed towards serious belief in supernaturalism, the daily
repetition of experiments giving results compatible with the opposite
attitude should lead you to snap out of it.
In the absence of a verifiable and unequivocal physical manifestation of a
God/ancestor spirit/time-travelling Mind, etc. I feel entirely justified in
interpreting reports of supernaturality as evidence of electrical
malfunctions.
Rafal
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