Psychic Neuronal Hypersynchronies: A New Psychiatric Paradigm?

Abstract

This paper deals with certain psychic automatisms that appear suddenly in the consciousness of the subject in a passive or automatic way and that usually are diagnosed as psychiatric symptoms or manifestations of an epileptic partial seizure. These mental automatisms are described in many writings by mystics, philosophers, literates, composers, and many different great artists and creators from human history, but they did not confer any pathological value on these experiences. The analysis of the epileptogenic activity gives us arguments to propose that these automatic experiences are due to neuronal circuits physiologically adapted to fire in a hypersynchronous way. With these data we enunciate an innovative hypothesis: these psychic experiences are manifestations of an adaptive neuronal network for which we propose the term psychic hypersynchrony. Finally, we discuss the consequences of this hypothesis, especially in the epileptic, psychiatric, and neuropsychopharmacologic fields.

Hypersynchronic Mental Automatisms: An Innovative Psychiatric Hypothesis Reaffirming Its Validity for Fifteen Years

“…The apparition of this spontaneous and growing flow of scientific information congruent with hyperic hypothesis constitutes the first basis or argument supporting it. This gradual investigative process was described in detail in previous publications [1]- [3] and now we summarize it as follows:…”

“…Besides déjà vu and other paramnesias and hypermnesias, mystics of different religions and countries describe the following psychic automatisms: autoscopies; crises of depersonalization and/or derealization; irresistible suicidal and blasphemous impulsions; sudden fits of inhibition and melancholy, often alternating with periods of joyous exaltation; auditory and visual hallucinations or pure cognitions accompanied of the conviction of having acquired an irrefutable knowledge, phenomena that are exactly the same as what Jaspers calls primary perceptions and delusions [9]. All these psychic manifestations have been described in detail in the papers above referenced [1]- [3].…”

The Hypothesis of <i>Hyperia</i> from the Perspective of Neuronal Plasticity

“…Such experiences present always the next phenomenological characteristics: distortion of experienced inner time, automatic nature, great intensity, and strong feeling of strangeness [4]. Recently, we proposed to term them Hipersyncronic Mental Automatisms (HMAs) [5].…”

Psychiatric Symptoms of Epileptic Nature: An Old Hypothesis in Light of Current Psychopharmacologic Advances

“…This phenomenon is always experienced with the same phenomenological features: distortion of inner time, automat-ic character, great intensity, and strong feeling of strangeness. We have been investigating the epileptic origin of these experiences along these years, and recently we proposed to term them Hipersyncronic Mental Automatisms (HMAs) [5].…”