Religious conversion in an older male with longstanding epilepsy

Autor: William B. Barr, Anli Liu, Casey Laduke, Siddhartha Nadkarni, Orrin Devinsky
Jazyk: angličtina
Rok vydání: 2022
Předmět:
Zdroj: Epilepsy & Behavior Reports, Vol 18, Iss , Pp 100524- (2022)
Druh dokumentu: article
ISSN: 2589-9864
DOI: 10.1016/j.ebr.2022.100524
Popis: Religious experiences in epilepsy patients have provoked much interest with suggestions that hyperreligiosity is associated with temporal lobe seizures. Extreme varieties of religious behavior may be more frequent in epilepsy patients during ictal activity or during post-ictal psychotic episodes. We report a 75 year-old man with epilepsy who developed a progressive decline in cognition and behavior following a religious conversion 15 years earlier. He subsequently developed religious delusions of increasing severity and symptoms of Capgras syndrome. Brain imaging revealed bilateral posterior cortical atrophy, chronic right parieto-occipital encephalomalacia, and right mesial temporal sclerosis. Electroencephalograms and neuropsychological testing revealed initial right temporal lobe abnormalities followed by progressive frontal and bilateral dysfunction. The case highlights how a history of seizures, superimposed on sensory deprivation and a progressive impairment of right posterior and bilateral anterior brain function, may have contributed to religious conversion, which was followed by dementia and delusions involving religious content.
Databáze: Directory of Open Access Journals