Altered sense of self during seizures in the posteromedial cortex
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America July 16, 2021 J. Parvizi, R. Braga, A. Kucyi et al. 59 citations
Electrical stimulation of the posteromedial cortex (PMC) can induce a temporary sense of self-dissociation—a distorted awareness of one's body in space and feeling like an outside observer to one's own thoughts. A patient with seizures originating in the right dorsal posterior cingulate cortex (Brodmann area 31) reported this reproducible experience at seizure onset. Stimulating the seizure zone or a homotopical region in the left PMC at 50 Hz induced a subjectively similar state. The findings suggest a causal link between the PMC and the integration of self-referential information, offering clues about the pathophysiology of self-dissociation in neuropsychiatric conditions.