Author(s)

Javier Alvarez-Rodriguez

Servicio de Psiquiatría, Complejo Asistencial Universitario, León, Spain.

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.

Glutamate Hypothesis of Schizophrenia, Kindling, Learning, Long Term Potentiation, Memory, Mysticism, Neuropsychopharmacological Drugs, Partial Seizures, Reflex Epilepsies

Alvarez-Rodriguez, J. (2014) Psychic Neuronal Hypersynchronies: A New Psychiatric Paradigm?. Health, 6, 2089-2099. doi: 10.4236/health.2014.616242.