It's hard to fathom how our subjective lives can be rooted in the spongy flesh of brain matter. Yet the reality of the brain-mind link was made stark half way through the last century by the Canadian neurosurgeon Wilder Penfield. Before conducting neurosurgery on epilepsy patients he stimulated parts of their brains directly with an electrode, triggering in them subjective sensations that varied according to the source of stimulation.
In a new case study, a team of Swiss and French neurologists followed a similar strategy during brain surgery with a 23-year-old female patient. She has temporal lobe epilepsy and experiences "ecstatic auras" before seizure onset. During these periods she has "intense feelings of bliss and well-being", a floating sensation in her stomach, enhanced senses and time appears to contract.
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Feelings of bliss created through precise targeting of brain stimulation
