Julian Jaynes Society Spring 2024 Newsletter
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Neuroscience Confirms Julian Jaynes’s Neurological Model
Posted June 10, 2020. Updated March 18, 2024.
Beginning in 1999, research began to emerge confirming Julian Jaynes’s neurological model for the bicameral mind: fMRI studies showing a right/left temporal lobe interaction during auditory verbal hallucinations.
Yet, more than twenty years later, there remains ongoing confusion on this subject (for example, a recent post on Scott Alexander’s “Star Slate Codex” blog was completely wrong on this issue). To help clear up this lingering confusion, I revisit this topic with an excerpt from one of my related newsletter articles, followed by quotes from related research, related video, further reading, and additional resources:
“Over three decades ago, Julian Jaynes introduced his theory of the origin of consciousness and a historically older mentality called the bicameral mind …
While the technology was not then available to test his ideas, Jaynes suggested a possible neurological model for the bicameral mind. Briefly stated, he reasoned that auditory hallucinations emanate from the areas of the right temporal lobe corresponding to the language areas in the left temporal lobe, and are subsequently processed (or “heard”) in the left temporal lobe language areas. Because of their external quality, the bicameral person experiencing auditory hallucinations interpreted them as the externally generated commands of a dead ancestor, chief, king, or god. To this day, those who experience auditory hallucinations often hear behavioral commands and experience them as being externally generated.
In my chapter in Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness, “Consciousness, Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind: Three Decades of New Research,” I discuss a number of neuroimaging studies that emerged over the past decade that provide support for Jaynes’s neurological model. These studies show brain activation in the right followed by the left temporal lobe at the onset of auditory hallucinations. Some researchers infer a possible interaction between these two areas — the language areas of the left hemisphere and the corresponding areas of the right hemisphere — during auditory hallucinations.
Since the publication of Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness, a number of new studies have been published that also show bilateral temporal lobe (‘bicameral’) activation during auditory hallucinations, providing further support for Jaynes’s neurological model specifically and his bicameral mind theory in general.
In 2007, French psychiatrist Renaud Jardri and his colleagues published a study in Molecular Psychiatry titled “Activation of Bilateral Auditory Cortex during Verbal Hallucinations in a Child with Schizophrenia.” They used functional MRI to study the “neural substrates of verbal auditory hallucinations in a child suffering from very early onset schizophrenia.” The analysis performed “shows bilateral activation of the superior temporal gyri” during auditory hallucinations (see the image above). This bilateral activation of the superior temporal gyri during auditory hallucinations is exactly what Jaynes predicted more than 30 years ago.
In an article published in 2007 in Schizophrenia Research, Dr. Iris E. C. Sommer and her colleagues in the Netherlands reported that “the majority of schizophrenia patients showed prominent activity in the right-sided homologues of the classical language areas during AVH [auditory verbal hallucinations] (i.e. in the right inferior frontal gyrus, right superior temporal and supramarginal gyrus), while normal language is generally produced in the left hemisphere in right-handed subjects.” Again, this corresponds precisely with Jaynes’s predictions.
In another study published in 2008, Sommer et al. measured cerebral activation using fMRI in 24 psychotic patients. They report that “group analysis for AVH revealed activation in the right homologue of Broca’s area, bilateral insula, bilateral supramarginal gyri and right superior temporal gyrus.” They go on to speculate that “the association between AVH and activity in right hemisphere language areas could explain the low linguistic complexity and derogatory content, characteristic for AVH in psychotic patients.”
In a 2008 article titled “Functional MRI of Verbal Self-Monitoring in Schizophrenia” published in Schizophrenia Bulletin, psychologist Veena Kumari and her colleagues in the United Kingdom conclude that positive schizophrenic symptoms (hallucinations and persecution) show “exaggerated activation in the right superior-middle temporal gyrus.”
Also noteworthy, Dr. Yair Lampl in the Department of Neurology at Tel Aviv University and his colleagues published an article in late 2005 that studied auditory hallucinations in stroke patients. According to Lampl, auditory hallucinations occur only rarely after a stroke. Of the 641 stroke patients in the study, only four experienced auditory hallucinations. Of interest to the present discussion, all of the cases of auditory hallucinations “occurred after an ischemic lesion of the right temporal lobe.”
These new studies provide additional evidence in support of Jaynes’s neurological model. They have been published in peer-reviewed journals by a variety of researchers working in different labs around the world. While their research is highly supportive of Jaynes’s neurological model, these scientists did not have the goal of providing evidence for Jaynes’s theory and in some cases may not even be aware of it. …”
Reprinted from Marcel Kuijsten, “New Evidence for Jaynes’s Neurological Model: A Research Update,” The Jaynesian, Volume 3, Issue 1. Read the full article.
Statements Supportive of Jaynes’s Neurological Model by Psychiatrists, Neurologists, and Neurosurgeons
“Neuroimaging techniques of today have illuminated and confirmed the importance of Jaynes’ hypothesis.”
— Robert Olin, M.D., Ph.D., Professor Emeritus in Preventive Medicine, Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, in Lancet, 1999, 20, 354, 9173.
“In 1976 Julian Jaynes proposed in his book … [that] the left hemisphere was the site for speech, and the right hemisphere was the site for hallucinations that expressed voices and commands of gods and demons. … Their results provided direct evidence of the involvement of primary auditory areas in auditory hallucinations. … Contemporary neuroimaging data have been used to revive and support … [Jaynes’s] controversial hypothesis.“
— Leo Sher, M.D., Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 2000, 25, 3, 239-40.
“… Scientific interest in [Jaynes’s] work has been re-awakened by the consistent findings of right-sided activation patterns in the brain, as retrieved with the aid of neuroimaging studies in individuals with verbal auditory hallucinations.”
— Jan Dirk Blom, M.D., in A Dictionary of Hallucinations (Springer, 2009).
“An interesting hypothesis is posed by Julian Jaynes on the “bicameral brain” (sic) where one hemisphere (right) gives orders and the other (left) listens and executes orders. … The latest studies have shown bilateral activation of Broca’s area instead of only left side activation that brings new life to the theory of mind bicameralism. The reduction of lateralization even correlated with the intensity of hallucinations.“
— D.M. Pavlović, M.D., A.M. Pavlović, M.D., and Maja Lačković, M.D., “The Neuropsychology of Hallucinations,” Archives of Biological Sciences, 2011, 63, 1, 43-48.
“Jaynes claims that remnants of the ancient bicameral brain (sic) organization can still be found in the verbal or auditory hallucinations associated with hypnosis and schizophrenia. This hypothesis is consistent with the findings from recent neuroimaging studies, which identified the right temporal lobe as the source of auditory hallucinations in patients with schizophrenia.“
— Andrea E. Cavanna and Andrea Nani, Consciousness: Theories in Neuroscience and Philosophy of Mind (Springer, 2014).
“The theory of a bicameral mind evolved the psychology and neuropsychiatric concepts of some disorders including the one for schizophrenia. … Jaynes’ theories were further confirmed by … other authors. … According to all these findings and theories, it is postulated that anterior corpus callosotomy would be beneficial in controlling the auditory and visual hallucinations in those with schizophrenia refractory to the highest medical therapy.“
— Mousa Taghipour, MD & Fariborz Ghaffarpasand, MD, “Corpus Callosotomy for Drug-Resistant Schizophrenia; Novel Treatment Based on Pathophysiology,” World Neurosurgery, August 2018, 116: 483-484.
Supportive Evidence from Peer-Reviewed Articles
The Neurology of Auditory Hallucinations: Evidence from Direct Stimulation, EEG, PET , & fMRI
Key Point: Numerous studies using a variety of techniques implicate the language areas of the non-dominant hemisphere in auditory verbal hallucinations.
“Electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe was performed in chronic schizophrenic patients to treat the auditory hallucinations. During electrical stimulation, there appeared different kinds of hallucinations. … In most of these cases, craniotomy of the non-dominant side was performed, and the exposed temporal lobe cortex was electrically stimulated directly.”
— Ishibashi, et al., “Hallucinations Produced by Electrical Stimulation of the Temporal Lobes in Schizophrenic Patients,” Journal of Experimental Medicine, 1964, 82, 124-139.
“Penfield reproduced such experiences by electrical stimulation of the temporal lobe cortex. We have found that similar hallucinatory experiences may arise from subcortical stimulation of the temporal lobe.”
— M. J. Horowitz and J. E. Adams, “Hallucinations on Brain Stimulation: Evidence for Revision of the Penfield Hypothesis,” in W. Keup (ed.), Origin and Mechanisms of Hallucinations (Springer, 1970).
“In reviewing our series of patients it was of interest to note that hallucinations were produced by electrical stimulation of the depth structures of the temporal lobe in certain patients.“
— Weingarten, et al. ,”The Relationship of Hallucinations to the Depth Structures of the Temporal Lobe,” Acta Neurochirurgica, 1977, Suppl. 24: “Advances in Stereotactic and Functional Neurosurgery 2”, 199-216.
“Metabolism in Broca’s region and its right-hemisphere homologue correlated positively and significantly in the hallucinating group, as it did in anterior cingulate and left superior temporal areas, and in right frontal and parietal areas.”
— Cleghorn, et al., “Regional Brain Metabolism During Auditory Hallucinations in Chronic Schizophrenia,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 1990, 157, 562-570.
“Left temporal lobe activity was found to be decreased with increasing positive symptom’s scores scores. … Patients with a recent history of auditory hallucinations showed an atypical right temporal lobe dominance, which occurred independently of medication status.”
— Gordon, et al., “Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) Measures of Brain Function in Schizophrenia,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 1994, 28, 446–452.
“A large and significant decrease in SSVEP latency in the right temporo/parietal region occurred in the second prior to the report of auditory hallucinations. … This finding suggests that activity of fine temporal resolution in the neural networks in the right temporo/parietal area may be implicated in the genesis of auditory hallucination. …”
— Line, et al., “Steady State Visually Evoked Potential Correlates of Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia,” NeuroImage, 1998, 8, 4.
“Metabolism in Broca’s region and its right-hemisphere homologue correlated positively and significantly in the hallucinating group…”
— Cleghorn, et al., “Regional Brain Metabolism During Auditory Hallucinations in Chronic Schizophrenia,” The British Journal of Psychiatry, 1990, 157, 4, 562-570.
“Results showed that activation [during auditory hallucinations] first appeared in the right middle temporal gyrus and then extended to a wider area of the right superior temporal and left superior temporal gyri (where the hallucination is “heard”), right middle and inferior frontal gyri, right anterior cingulate, and right cuncus.”
—- Lennox, et al., “Spatial and Temporal Mapping of Neural Activity Associated with Auditory Hallucinations,” Lancet, 1999, 353, 644.
“The group of hallucinating patients demonstrated right medial and inferior frontal activations (BA 45/46), focal bilateral temporal lobe activations (BA 22, 37), and a left parahippocampal gyral activation.”
— Copolov, et al., “A PET Study of Brain Activation in Response to Auditory Hallucinations and External Speech in Schizophrenic Patients,” Biological Psychiatry, April 2000, 47, 8.
“Patients showed no differences while generating inner speech but experienced a relatively attenuated response in the posterior cerebellar cortex, hippocampi, and lenticular nuclei bilaterally and the right thalamus, middle and superior temporal cortex, and left nucleus accumbens during auditory verbal imagery.”
— Shergill, et al, “Functional Anatomy of Auditory Verbal Imagery in Schizophrenic Patients With Auditory Hallucinations,” American Journal of Psychiatry, October 2000, 157, 1691–1693.
“Auditory hallucinations were associated with activation in the … temporal cortex bilaterally (with greater responses on the right).“
— Shergill, et al, “Mapping Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia Using Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging,” The Archives of General Psychiatry, November 2000, 57.
“Group analysis demonstrated shared areas of activation in right and left superior temporal gyri, left inferior parietal cortex and left middle frontal gyrus.“
— Lennox, et al., “The Functional Anatomy of Auditory Hallucinations in Schizophrenia,” Psychiatry Research, November 2000, 100, 1, 13–20.
“AVHs [auditory verbal hallucinations] were associated with increased metabolic activity in the left primary auditory cortex and the right middle temporal gyrus. Our results suggest a possible interaction between these areas during AVHs.”
— Bentaleb, et al., “Cerebral Activity Associated with Auditory Verbal Hallucinations: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Case Study,” Journal of Psychiatry & Neuroscience, 2002, 27, 2, 110.
“Recent functional neuroimaging findings seem to confirm the hypothesis that the right middle temporal gyrus represents the source of auditory hallucinations in at least some schizophrenic patients. Arguably, this lateralization pattern could well be the reason why these inner voices lack the characteristic of being self-generated.“
— Cavanna et al. “The ‘Bicameral Mind’ 30 Years On,” Functional Neurology, 2007, 22, 1, 11-15.
“The majority of schizophrenia patients showed prominent activity in the right-sided homologues of the classical language areas during AVH [auditory verbal hallucinations] (i.e. in the right inferior frontal gyrus, right superior temporal gyrus and supramarginal gyrus), while normal language is generally produced in the left hemisphere in right-handed subjects.”
— Sommer, et al., “Can fMRI-guidance Improve the Efficacy of rTMS Treatment for Auditory Verbal Hallucinations?” Schizophrenia Research, 2007, 93, 1, 406–8.
“Group analysis for AVH revealed activation in the right homologue of Broca’s area, bilateral insula, bilateral supramarginal gyri and right superior temporal gyrus. … The association between AVH and activity in right hemisphere language areas could explain the low linguistic complexity and derogatory content, characteristic for AVH in psychotic patients.“
— Sommer, et al., “Auditory Verbal Hallucinations Predominantly Activate the Right Inferior Frontal Area,” Brain, 2008, 131, 3169-77.
“The regions (Broca’s homologue and the right insula) coincide with the areas that showed greatest activation during auditory verbal hallucinations in our analysis of 24 patients (Sommer et al., 2008). It could therefore be hypothesized that auditory verbal hallucinations result from ‘release’ language activity in the right inferior frontal area that is inhibited in the healthy brain.”
— Sommer & Diederen, “Language Production in the Non-Dominant Hemisphere as a Potential Source of Auditory Verbal Hallucinations,” Brain, 2009, 132, 10, e124.
“… Group analysis for AVH [auditory verbal hallucinations] revealed activation in the right homolog of Broca’s area, bilateral insula, bilateral supramarginal gyri, [and] right superior temporal gyrus.”
— Sommer, Iris & Kelly Diederen, “Auditory Verbal Hallucinations and Language Lateralization,” in Iris E.C. Sommer and René S. Kahn (eds.), Language Lateralization and Psychosis (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
“Patients experiencing AVHs demonstrated significantly increased activation likelihoods in a bilateral neural network, including the Broca’s area…”
— Jardri, et al., “Cortical Activations During Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Schizophrenia: A Coordinate-Based Meta-Analysis,” The American Journal of Psychiatry, 2011, 168, 1, 73–81.
“Findings suggest that heightened functional coupling between the left inferior frontal gyrus and right temporal regions leads to coactivation in these speech processing regions that is hallucinogenic.”
—- Hoffman, et al., “Time Course of Regional Brain Activity Accompanying Auditory Verbal Hallucinations in Schizophrenia,” The British Journal of Psychiatry, 2011, 198, 4, 277–283.
“Auditory verbal hallucinations are a cardinal symptom of schizophrenia … The current results indicate that spatial location of auditory hallucinations is associated with the right temporoparietal junction (rTPJ) anatomy, a key region of the ‘where’ auditory pathway.”
— Plaze, et al., “Where Do Auditory Hallucinations Come From?” A Brain Morphometry Study of Schizophrenia Patients with Inner or Outer Space Hallucinations,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, January 2011, 37, 1, 212-21.
“Several common areas of activation were observed for the psychotic and nonpsychotic subjects during the experience of AVH, consisting of the bilateral inferior frontal gyri, insula, superior temporal gyri, supramarginal gyri and postcentral gyri, left precentral gyrus, inferior parietal lobule, superior temporal pole, and right cerebellum.”
— Diederen, et al., “Auditory Hallucinations Elicit Similar Brain Activation in Psychotic and Nonpsychotic Individuals,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, September 2012, 38, 5.
“AVH [auditory verbal hallucination]-related activity was … observed in Broca’s area and its right hemisphere homologue…”
— Zmigrod, et al., “The Neural Mechanisms of Hallucinations: A Quantitative Meta-Analysis of Neuroimaging Studies,” Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, 2016, 69, 113-123.
“AVHs [auditory verbal hallucinations] were associated with activation in bilateral language and motor regions.“
— Ford, et al., “Neurobiology of Auditory Hallucinations,” Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Neuroscience, November 2019.
“The group with complex hallucinations showed elevated activity in the bilateral temporal cortex including Wernicke’s area…”
— Marschall, et al., “Spontaneous Brain Activity Underlying Auditory Hallucinations in the Hearing-Impaired,” Cortex, March 2021, 136, 1-13.
“We [found] activations … during experience of AVH: these involved Wernicke’s area and its right homologue, Broca’s area and its right homologue, and the precentral gyrus and supplementary motor area bilaterally.”
— Fuentes-Claramonte, et al., “Auditory hallucinations activate language and verbal short-term memory, but not auditory, brain regions,” Scientific Reports, 2021, 11, 18890.
Language Lateralization and Psychosis
Key Point: Individuals that process language more evenly in both hemispheres (“less lateralized”) are more likely to experience auditory hallucinations.
“Delay in establishing dominance in one hemisphere could be the critical factor that predisposes to schizophrenia.”
— Crow, T.J., “Cerebral Lateralization is Delayed in Children who Later Develop Schizophrenia,” Schizophrenia Research, 1996, 22, 3, 181–185.
“These results show the strong association of the right middle temporal gyrus with the experience of auditory hallucination in this patient, supporting the hypothesis that auditory hallucinations reflect abnormal activation of auditory cortex. Language is more associated with the left hemisphere in normal subjects. This finding may therefore reflect the abnormal lateralisation of language function in schizophrenia.“
—- Lennox, et al., “Spatial and Temporal Mapping of Neural Activity Associated with Auditory Hallucinations,” Lancet, 1999, 353, 644.
“Twelve schizophrenic patients and twelve healthy controls were scanned while they were engaged in a verb-generation and a semantic decision task. … The results indicate that language processing is less lateralized in patients than in controls. … Analysis of variance of the extent of activity … revealed a significant hemisphere by group interaction … which was due to increased activation in the right hemisphere of the patients.“
— Sommer, et al., “Language Lateralization in Schizophrenia, An fMRI Study,” Schizophrenia Research, 2001, 52, 1-2, 57-67.
“Schizophrenia patients showed reduced language lateralization in the frontal cortex, because of a more bilateral activation of Broca’s area compared with a primarily left hemisphere activation in healthy controls.“
— Weiss, et al., “Language Lateralization in Unmedicated Patients During An Acute Episode of Schizophrenia: A functional MRI Study,” Psychiatry Research, March 2006, 31, 146.
“Both the overall auditory cortex and planum temporale volumes and the lateralization to the left hemisphere were markedly reduced in patients. The decrease of lateralization correlated with increased severity of symptoms.
— Oertel, et al., “Reduced Laterality as a Trait Marker of Schizophrenia—Evidence from Structural and Functional Neuroimaging,” The Journal of Neuroscience, February 2010, 30, 6, 2289–2299.
“Reduced cerebral lateralisation of language in patients diagnosed with schizophrenia has been documented in a substantial number of studies.“
— Allen and Modinos, “Structural Neuroimaging in Psychotic Patients with Auditory Verbal Hallucinations,” in Blom and Sommer (eds.), Hallucinations: Research and Practice (Springer, 2012).
“…[R]educed language lateralization is a weak trait marker for schizophrenia as such and a strong trait marker for the experience of auditory hallucinations within the schizophrenia population”
— Ocklenburg , et al. “Auditory Hallucinations and Reduced Language Lateralization in Schizophrenia: A Meta-Analysis of Dichotic Listening Studies,” Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society, April 2013, 19, 4, 410-8.
“Patients with schizophrenia exhibited significantly decreased leftward hemispheric [language] lateralization.”
— Alary, et al., “Functional Hemispheric Lateralization for Language in Patients with Schizophrenia,” Schizophrenia Research, Sept. 2013, 149, 1-3, 42-7.
Right Hemisphere as “Alien Intruder”/Sensed Presence/Externally Perceived Voice
Key Point: The origin of auditory hallucinations in the non-dominant hemisphere may be what gives them their “external” quality.
“In schizophrenia, defective interhemispheric integration, probably neurochemical, may lead to disinhibition of the awareness by the left hemisphere that it is being “influenced” by an unknown “external force” which is fact the right hemisphere.”
— Nasrallah, Henry A., “The Unintegrated Right Cerebral Hemispheric Consciousness as Alien Intruder: A Possible Mechanism for Schneiderian Delusions in Schizophrenia?” Comprehensive Psychiatry, 1985, 26, 3, 273–282.
“The hypothesis of vectorial hemisphericity predicts that left hemispheric intrusions of the right hemispheric equivalent of the sense of self should be associated with the experience of a “presence” of someone else. The neurophenomenological profile of a woman whose medical history satisfied these theoretical criteria … is presented. ”
— Persinger, et al., “The Sensed Presence as Right Hemispheric Intrusions into the Left Hemispheric Awareness of Self: An Illustrative Case Study,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1994, 78, 3.
“We report evidence of isolated conceptual knowledge in the right hemisphere of a woman with chronic anarchic hand sign after ischemic infarction of the central four-fifths of the corpus callosum.”
— Baynes, et al., “Isolation of a Right Hemisphere Cognitive System in a Patient with Anarchic (Alien) Hand Sign,” Neuropsychologia, 1997, 35, 8.
“The second component is alienation, which is the failure to recognize the content of AVH as self-generated. This failure may be related to the fact that cerebral activity associated with AVH is predominantly present in the speech production area of the right hemisphere.”
— Sommer, et al., “Dissecting Auditory Verbal Hallucinations into Two Components: Audibility (Gedankenlautwerden) and Alienation (Thought Insertion),” Psychopathology, 2010, 43, 137–140.
“[A] lack of synchronization between Broca and its homolog may lead to the erroneous interpretation of emotional speech activity from the right hemisphere as coming from an external source.”
— Ćurčić-Blake, et al., “When Broca Goes Uninformed: Reduced Information Flow to Broca’s Area in Schizophrenia Patients With Auditory Hallucinations,” Schizophrenia Bulletin, September 2013, 39, 5.
Alien hand syndrome after corpus callosotomy reveals its underlying mechanism. 3 out of a series of 18 patients demonstrated ALS after callosotomy. Distinct features were bihemispheric language dominance and genuine left-handedness. Both hemispheres come with capacities for independent action. Loss of contralateral inhibition appears a major mechanism underlying ALS.
— Helmstaedter, et al., “Dr. Strangelove Demystified: Disconnection of Hand and Language Dominance Explains Alien-Hand Syndrome after Corpus Callosotomy,” Seizure, 2021, 86.
Auditory and Visual Hallucinations and Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
Key Point: Patients with temporal lobe epilepsy (abnormal brain activity in the temporal lobes) also occasionally experience both auditory and visual hallucinations.
See Section 2, “Auditory Hallucinations in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy” (Case Reports)
— Shafica Karagulla, “Psychical Phenomena in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy and The Psychoses,” British Medical Journal, March 1955, 1, 4916, 748–752.
“A case report is presented to illustrate problems in managing the schizophrenia-like psychosis of temporal lobe epilepsy.”
— Sidney Bloch, “Problems of Treatment in the Schizophrenia-Like Psychosis of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy-A Case Report,” Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 1968, 2.
“One of them — a 32-year-old female with a right temporo-occipital focus — had a seizure pattern which included a vision of Christ coming down from the sky.”
— Dewhurt and Beard, “Sudden Religious Conversions in Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,” British Journal of Psychiatry, 1970, 117, 540, 497-507.
“Hallucinations are infrequently seen in prepubertal children. … We here report the case of a child who presented with psychosis and nocturnal hallucinations and for whom temporal epilepsy was eventually diagnosed and successfully treated.”
— Kechid, et al., “Hearing Hallucinations in a 12-Year-Old Child: Psychotic Disorders or Temporal Epilepsy?”, The Primary Care Companion to the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, 2008, 10, 4, 328–329.
“MEG revealed interictal epileptic discharges within the anterior partition of the right superior temporal gyrus; signal-to-noise ratio of these discharges was overall poor in EEG. The findings suggest that auditory vocal hallucinations without verbal content can evolve in the right hemisphere and are probably independent of language lateralization.“
— Hug, et al., “Voices Behind the Left Shoulder: Two Patients with Right-Sided Temporal Lobe Epilepsy,” Journal of the Neurological Sciences, June 2011, 305, 1–2.
“The psychoses of epilepsy are well recognized complications of seizure disorders, diagnosed easily from the history. However, in the absence of recognized seizures, the diagnosis can be challenging.”
— Edward Needham, “Temporal Lobe Epilepsy Masquerading As Psychosis – A Case Report and Literature Review,” Neurocase: The Neural Basis of Cognition, 2012, 18, 5.
“Hearing voices (i.e. auditory verbal hallucinations) is mainly known as part of schizophrenia and other psychotic disorders. However, hearing voices is a symptom that can occur in many psychiatric, neurological and general medical conditions. … The third patient is a 27-year-old woman with voices caused by temporal lobe epilepsy.“
— I.E. Sommer and D.W. van der Spek, “Hearing Voices Does Not Always Constitute A Psychosis,” Nederlands Tijdschrift Voor Geneeskunde, 2016, 160, D492.
“The purpose of this case report is to document a patient with cinematographic hallucinations, with corresponding right temporal lobe seizures on electroencephalogram (EEG).“
— Nelson, et al., “A Unique Patient with Epilepsy with Cinematographic Visual Hallucinations,” Epilepsy & Behavior Case Reports, 2016, 5, 78-79.
“We therefore propose that the mediation of AVH in the context of schizophrenia spectrum disorders involves the attribution of an excess of negative salience by anterior-cingulate areas to linguistic input from Broca’s right homologue.”
— J. Looijestijn, et al., “Draining the pond and catching the fish: Uncovering the ecosystem of auditory verbal hallucinations,” NeuroImage: Clinical, 2018, 20.
“Activation during VAH [verbal auditory hallucination] experience was observed … The left and right inferior frontal gyri (Broca’s area and its contralateral homologue) were involved.” … “Specifically, our findings show that miscommunications between two functional networks are central in the occurrence of hallucinations, i.e. linguistic content from the right-sided area of Broca is assigned false salience in the insula.”
— J. Looijestijn, et al., Exploring Function in the Hallucinating Brain, University of Groningen, 2018.
“Psychiatric disorders are very common in epilepsy. … Here, we report a case of a young female who was suffering from complex partial seizure with secondary generalization and who subsequently developed schizophrenic symptoms. … the patient who had a right-sided lesion developed schizophrenic symptoms.”
— B. Sweetha, “A Case of Untreated Mesial Temporal Sclerosis in Right Hemisphere Presenting As Schizophrenia,” University Journal of Medicine and Medical Specialities, 2019.
Further Evidence from Split-Brain Experiments
Psychological experiments conducted with “split-brain” patients, who have had their corpus callosum severed (the primary connection between the two brain hemispheres), provide further evidence for Jaynes’s neurological model. These experiments suggest that the two hemispheres can in some ways operate independently, express different preferences, that one’s sense of self is associated with the language-dominant hemisphere, and that the actions of the right hemisphere can often feel “alien” to the person (with the right hand holding a newspaper to read and the left hand knocking it away, for example). See Elizabeth Schechter, Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains: The Minds’ I (Oxford University Press, 2018) for a recent, extensive discussion of this fascinating research.
Related Video
Iris Sommer: Investigating Voices
Describes the experience and neurology of auditory hallucinations and shows the accuracy of Julian Jaynes’s neurological model.
2-Minute Neuroscience: Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI)
Explains the basics of fMRI as well as some of its limitations.
How does fMRI brain scanning work? Alan Alda and Dr. Nancy Kanwisher, MIT
During the filming of “Brains on Trial with Alan Alda,” Alan made a special stop in a mock fMRI scanner to understand how it works and how scientists can glean insights.
Further Reading
Julian Jaynes, “The Double Brain,” in J. Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Houghton Mifflin, 1976/1990), Ch. I.5.
Marcel Kuijsten, “Consciousness, Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind: Three Decades of New Research,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.), Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (Julian Jaynes Society, 2006).
Robert Olin, “Auditory Hallucinations and the Bicameral Mind,” Lancet, 1999, 354, 166.
Leo Sher, “Neuroimaging, Auditory Hallucinations, and The Bicameral Mind,” Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 2000, 25, 3, 239-40.
Elizabeth Schechter, Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains: The Minds’ I (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Iris Sommer and Rene S. Kahn (eds.), Language Lateralization and Psychosis (Cambridge University Press, 2009).
Mousa Taghipour and Fariborz Ghaffarpasand, “Corpus Callosotomy for Drug-Resistant Schizophrenia; Novel Treatment Based on Pathophysiology,” World Neurosurgery, August 2018,116, 483-484.
Review additional peer-reviewed supporting evidence for Julian Jaynes’s neurological model.
Brain fMRI image reprinted by permission from Macmillan Publishers Ltd: Jardri, et al, “Activation of Bilateral Auditory Cortex during Verbal Hallucinations in a Child with Schizophrenia,” Molecular Psychiatry, 12, 319, Copyright 2007.
Now Available: The Revised Edition of Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness
Read the revised second edition of the book that reignited interest in Julian Jaynes’s theory worldwide, from Julian Jaynes Society Executive Director Marcel Kuijsten.
How old is consciousness? What is the relationship of consciousness and language? What is the origin of god beliefs and religion? Why do people hear voices that command their behavior? These are just a few of the fascinating questions posed by Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes’s influential and controversial theory and discussed in this book. A treasure trove of provocative ideas, Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind explains, extends, clarifies, and presents the latest evidence for Jaynes’s theory in a series of highly engaging interviews with both voice-hearers and leading thinkers on the theory.
Praise for Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness
“In this book Marcel Kuijsten and his colleagues have integrated a quintessential collection of original thoughts concerning Jaynes’s concepts as well as some of Jaynes’s original essays. I have rarely read a manuscript that so eloquently and elegantly examines a complex and pervasive phenomenon. The contributors of this volume have integrated the concepts of psychology, anthropology, archaeology, theology, philosophy, the history of science, and modern neuroscience with such clarity it should be considered an essential text for any student of human experience.” — From the Foreword by Dr. Michael A. Persinger, Professor of Behavioral Neuroscience, Biomolecular Sciences Program, Laurentian University
“Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness is … an accessible re-introduction to Julian Jaynes, whose wondrous and wonderful The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind first brought to public awareness the ‘invisible mansion of all moods, musings, and mysteries … the introcosm’ that is consciousness.” — Richard M. Restak, Clinical Professor of Neurology George Washington Hospital University, School of Medicine and Health Sciences, author of The Naked Brain and Mozart’s Brain and the Fighter Pilot
“Blending biography with analytical and critical discussions and evaluations, this volume presents a rounded picture of Jaynes as an individual and scholar, while not shrinking from controversial and difficult issues.” — Klaus J. Hansen, Professor Emeritus Dept. of History, Queen’s University, Ontario, author of Mormonism and the American Experience
“Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness explains, extends, and expands many of Julian Jaynes’s most provocative ideas. For readers who finished The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and wondered ‘What comes next?’, this collection provides answers. Gathering together both additional writings by Jaynes himself, along with thoughtful essays by scholars from a wide range of disciplines, the book both explores ways in which Jaynes’s thought can be applied in specific fields of study and serves as a testimony to the centrality of the issue of consciousness to all fields of intellectual endeavor. This worthy sequel to Jaynes’s original book has been a long time coming, but the wait has been worth it.” — Ted Remington, Assistant Professor, Department of English & Foreign Languages, The University of Saint Francis
“An indispensable resource for ideas on consciousness, religion, and theory of ancient civilizations. Includes various authors including some important but lesser known articles by Julian Jaynes himself. Interdisciplinary, insightful, provocative, in the original spirit of Jaynes’ seminal work, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, but goes well beyond mere support and evidence of that work. Contains profuse notes and bibliographies for each article.” — John Hainly, Dept. of Philosophy, Southern University
“… Offers insights into otherwise inexplicable aspects concerning the pharaoh Tutankhamun and dragon-motifs in Shang China … Jaynes’ theory merits in my view the reassessment by the scientific community urged in this volume.” — Ilkka Kallio, Statistics Finland, Helsinki, in the Journal of Consciousness Studies
“A book which … after 30 years and in light of new research and ideas, introduces again Jaynes’s theory to a scientific world that, now, may be ready to accept it.” — Roberto Bottini, Dept. of Human Sciences, University of Bergamo, Italy
“…Over the past three decades, a dozen or so scholars have gambled their reputations on the possibility that Jaynes may be right. Gathered in this volume, their research provides hard data in support of Jaynes’s claims. Like radio signals beamed back to Earth thousands of years in the future, such information holds the power to restore mystery and wonder to the world we thought we knew.” — Julie Kane, Associate Professor, Dept. of Language & Communication, Northwestern State University
“Anyone who has read Jaynes’s book should read Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness for a greater appreciation of the work. Whether one agrees in whole or part, it is a testament to Jaynes’s research and work that this collection … either agrees with him in total or does not find a great deal to dispute concerning his theories. In the thirty years since Origin was released a great deal of research has in the main proven the man to be remarkably prescient.” — John Holt, in California Literary Review
“This is a beautifully arranged tribute to Jaynes with a broad mix of contributions about aspects of his theory. In new and convincing linguistic evidence, Chinese characters evolve in form and meaning as the ritual for accessing ancestral voices devolves from ‘serene’ personators to ‘frenzied’ shamans to ‘drunken revelry.’” —Carole Brooks Platt, Ph.D., author of In Their Right Minds: The Lives and Shared Practices of Poetic Geniuses
“Long awaited and worth the wait. … For three decades I have been enthralled by the ideas put forth in Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness In the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind and have been waiting in vain (until now) for a follow-up volume. Reflections On the Dawn of Consciousness is a collection of incisive essays by Julian Jaynes himself and by others, commenting on and extending his previously published work.” — Bruce Trinque, Amston, CT
“A commendable follow-up to The Origin of Consciousness … Anyone fascinated and moved by Origin will find much of interest in this collection…” — Scott Driver, Tucson, AZ
Julian Jaynes Society Fall 2023 Newsletter
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The Psychology of Ancient Egypt with Brian J. McVeigh
Join us for a 90-minute interview and Q&A session with Brian J. McVeigh on his latest book, The Psychology of Ancient Egypt: Reconstructing A Lost Mentality.
We will be delving into many aspects of ancient Egypt that are relevant to Julian Jaynes’s theory.
This online event will be held on Thursday, November 16th, 2023 at 4pm Pacific/7pm Eastern.
The hour-long interview will be followed by a 30 minute question and answer session with the event participants.
Free and open to the public (RSVP required).
More info and RSVP here: https://www.julianjaynes.org/event/the-psychology-of-ancient-egypt/
A Google Meet invitation with a link to join the event will be sent to all RSVPs.
Read The Psychology of Ancient Egypt: Reconstructing A Lost Mentality – on sale now.
Fact Checking Scott Alexander’s Discussion of Julian Jaynes’s Theory on “Slate Star Codex” – Part 2
By Marcel Kuijsten
In June 2020, the psychiatrist and blogger Scott Alexander wrote a review of Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind for his popular “Slate Star Codex” blog. His discussion of Jaynes’s theory contains a number of misconceptions and errors, and I will attempt to clear those up here. While the first three sections of his review are more or less just a summary of Jaynes’s main arguments and some topics he feels are related or supportive, the issues I’d like to address can be found in the fourth and fifth sections of his post.
Misunderstanding Jaynes’s Definition of Consciousness
Alexander asks the question: “Did he [Jaynes] literally believe that the Sumerians, Homeric Greeks, etc. were p-zombies? … I cannot be completely sure.” P-consciousness is a “type of consciousness,” according to the philosopher Ned Block, the “P” standing for “phenomenal.” It roughly equates to what Jaynes would more accurately call “awareness” or “sensory perception” — the world you perceive when you open your eyes. Block contrasts this with A- or “access” consciousness, which is more closely related to Jaynes’s definition of an introspectable mind-space. To wonder whether or not Jaynes believed that the ancient Sumerians and other ancient cultures lack “p-consciousness” is simply a gross misunderstanding of the theory, and readers that are unclear on this point would do well to re-read the first two chapters of Jaynes’s book, as well as the Afterword. Surprisingly, this same error was also made by Ned Block in his 1977 review of Jaynes’s book. This misconception, along with other misconceptions by Ned Block, are exhaustively addressed by the philosophy professor Jan Sleutels in his article “Greek Zombies,” which appeared in Philosophical Psychology and was updated and revised for the book Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness. Professor Sleutels also clarifies these issues in his interview in Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind.
To be clear, all animal life, including insects, has the experience of sensory perception, to widely varying degrees. This would of course include early, even pre-bicameral humans. Even microorganisms have fairly complex methods of navigating their environment, and habituate to stimuli in their surroundings (Lazova, 2011). But the experience of sensory perception — of sights, smells, sounds and colors — should not be confused with consciousness, because (among other reasons), much of what organisms (including humans) perceive and respond to happens nonconsciously, as Jaynes goes to great lengths to explain. We are consciously aware of only a small fraction of what we perceive (Kilhstrom, 1987; Nørretranders, 1991). Jaynes revisits this topic in the Afterword of his book (added to the 1990 and later editions):
Perception is sensing a stimulus and responding appropriately. And this can happen on a nonconscious level, as I have tried to describe in driving a car. Another way to look at the problem is to remember the behavior of white blood cells, which certainly perceive bacteria and respond appropriately by devouring them. To equate consciousness with perception is thus tantamount to saying that we have six thousand conscious entities per cubic millimeter of blood whirling around in our circulatory system — which I think is a reductio ad absurdum.
(Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, p. 448-449)
To try to make the distinction even clearer, infants of course have “wakefulness,” “awareness,” and sensory perception, but according to Jaynes — as well as Dennett (2005), Zelazo (1999, 2007), and others — they do not yet possess what we might call “Jaynesian” consciousness (others use the term “self-consciousness”), which develops as they learn metaphorical language. Similarly, a person with advanced dementia will likely see a diminishment of some or all of the features of Jaynesian consciousness, but of course still have “wakefulness,” “awareness,” and sense perception. Conversely, Jaynesian consciousness — “an analog ‘I’ narratizing in a mind-space” — can now be observed in some individuals that are in a vegetative state, who are shown to be able to visualize themselves playing tennis, or moving around their home, “in a manner indistinguishable from that of healthy volunteers” (Owen, 2006).
A prominent psychology professor often states that infants are more conscious than adults. In constructing this argument, the professor could just as easily have made the case that cats are more conscious than adults (or a variety of other non-human animals), because what is primarily being described are changes in attention — not consciousness. The fact that many theorists confuse consciousness with things like sense perception, wakefulness, awareness, and attention, or use the term “consciousness” in other vague, poorly defined ways, does not make it correct. In non-human animals (or pre-conscious humans), “sentience” is a better term for what is often referred to as consciousness.
Alexander also states that Jaynes seems to be “unaware of (or avoiding)” the “hard problem of consciousness.” However, that phrase was coined by David Chalmers in 1995 — 18 years after Jaynes’s book was published (in January of 1977), and two years before Jaynes’s death. As just discussed, Jaynes would likely have viewed this as the problem of the experience of sensory perception. To put it another way, it was not the issue he was primarily concerned with, which was the origin of our ability to introspect, to have what he called “an analog ‘I’ narratizing in a mind-space.” As a side-note, the philosopher Daniel Dennett — whose views on consciousness in certain ways are similar to Jaynes’s — has argued persuasively that in fact there is no “hard problem of consciousness” (Dennett, 2018).
Jaynesian Consciousness Is Not the Same As “Theory of Mind”
Next Alexander suggests that what Jaynes really identified was that the ancient Greeks and people in other cultures prior to 1500 B.C. simply lacked “theory of mind” — or a knowledge that other people have an inner mental life that differs from their own. However consciousness — as defined by Jaynes — and theory of mind are two completely different things. What Jaynes carefully documents, through a variety of different lines of evidence, is the lack of subjective interiority or “inner mind-space” in ancient cultures, as well as a previous “bicameral” mentality. In ancient Greece, the emergence of consciousness ushers in a “cognitive explosion,” and we see the beginnings of history, science, philosophy, and theater. Follow-up research has documented the transition from bicameral mentality to consciousness in cultures that Jaynes did not investigate, such as ancient China (Carr, 2006) and ancient Tibet (Gibson, 2016, 2022). The transition is also documented in the changing nature of dreams — from “visitation” to conscious (Atwan, 2016; Jaynes, 2012a; Kuijsten, 2022). We see a similar transition to consciousness through language development in children (Rowe, 2016, 2022; Zelazo, 1999, 2007). This is not simply the failure to recognize mental states different than our own in others (“theory of mind”).
At best we can say that theory of mind is a feature (or perhaps a sub-feature) of Jaynesian consciousness, and also perhaps one of the means by which we can measure consciousness, in child development, for example. Jaynes lists the features of consciousness on pages 59-65 and 449-452 of his book, and it is a much more extensive set of skills that simply possessing theory of mind. The changes Jaynes documents in ancient history are also more profound. For an in-depth discussion of why Jaynesian consciousness should not be confused with theory of mind, please see my interview with psychology professor John Kihlstrom in Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (published after Alexander’s blog post), and Jaynes’s own brief commentary on this issue in The Julian Jaynes Collection (Jaynes, 2012b).
But why does Alexander propose that Jaynes identified the origin of “theory of mind,” rather than the origin of consciousness, in the first place? Alexander’s primary source of confusion — as is unfortunately so often the case with confusion about Jaynes’s theory — seems to stem from a failure to understand how narrowly and precisely Jaynes defines consciousness. It seems he did not do a careful reading of this section of Jaynes’s book, and he is likely (and perhaps unknowingly) substituting his own, broad (and vague) definition of consciousness for Jaynes’s very narrow, precise definition. While this may be a bit of informed speculation on my part, whenever people fail to grasp Jaynes’s narrow definition of consciousness, it generally leads to all of the predictable, “Ned Block-style” objections. Alexander’s own definition of consciousness has to be inferred, however, because — as is so often the case — he never explains his own definition of the term. His attempts to critique Jaynes’s arguments, then, seem to be based on a broad definition of consciousness that Jaynes would never have agreed with. The kinds of things that many writers and theorists often lump under the umbrella term of “consciousness,” Jaynes more accurately relegates to things like reactivity, sense perception, learning, and cognition. It often takes multiple readings of Jaynes, as well periods of reflecting on his ideas, to fully grasp his arguments.
Alexander then turns his attention to Jaynes’s discussion of bicameral mentality and Jaynes’s neurological model for bicameral mentality. He states:
I am not an expert in functional neuroanatomy, but my impression is that recent research has not been kind to any theories too reliant on hemispheric lateralization.
What follows are some examples of Alexander’s misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of Jaynes’s arguments on these topics — and, more specifically, mischaracterizations of the new evidence for Jaynes’s arguments — along with brief clarifications.
Confusion on Split-Brain Research
Alexander contends that findings of the split-brain experiments by Sperry, Gazzaniga, and Bogen “[don’t] replicate.” Here he is referring to the evidence from research on split-brain patients that suggests that, when the primary connection between the brain hemispheres is severed, the two hemispheres seem to operate much more independently, to the extent that two separate “spheres of consciousness,” one per hemisphere, seem to emerge. To back up his sweeping claim that findings from decades of research on this subject have somehow been refuted, he cites a Science Daily press release (University of Amsterdam, 2017) referring to research by the Dutch neuroscientist Yair Pinto (2017).
It is rare that a single study ever refutes the findings of decades of research on any subject, and in this instance, it certainly does not. The fact of the matter is that Yair Pinto is a well known skeptic of some of the conclusions of split-brain research — one might go so far as to say that he is something of a “split-brain research conclusions denier.” And while there is certainly nothing wrong with raising thoughtful objections to scientific research — indeed, that is a critical part of the scientific process — in my view, his arguments against the primary findings of split-brain research, although at times thought-provoking, don’t hold up to serious scrutiny or debate.
The fact is that many of the key findings from the split-brain experiments, as bizarre and provocative as they may be, have actually held up quite well (Gazzaniga, 2005). For an outstanding recent discussion of this research and its philosophical implications, see philosophy professor Elizabeth Schechter’s Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains: The Minds’ I (2018). I highly recommend reading this book (while expensive, it can be obtained via inter-library loan), and also watching the 2018 debate “Do Split-Brain Patients Have Two Minds?” between Joseph LeDoux, Elizabeth Schechter, and the aforementioned Yair Pinto.
Again, it should be obvious that one article on any subject is rarely definitive, and citing a single article rarely conveys a balanced view of the current state of any controversial or evolving subject matter. You can’t simply dismiss decades of Nobel-prize winning experiments with a wave of the hand, a statement that “they don’t replicate,” and a link to a press release — as Alexander does in his post. (Here I might encourage Dr. Alexander to revisit his own post, “Beware the Man of One Study,” because in at least three places in his commentary on Jaynes, he very much is “the man of one study.”)
How does this research relate to Jaynes’s theory? It demonstrates that, in split-brain patients, the brain hemispheres operate in a more independent, or “bicameral,” manner. It is thus conceivable that this also occurred in the past, but for neuro-cultural (rather than surgical) reasons.
Confusion on the Neurology of Auditory Hallucinations & Jaynes’s Neurological Model
Alexander then makes the statement that
Jaynes says his theory implies that schizophrenic hallucinations come from the language centers of the right hemisphere, and I think the latest fMRI evidence is that they don’t.
Here he is referring to Jaynes’s fourth hypothesis: his neurological model for bicameral mentality, which is that auditory hallucinations emerge in the language areas of the right hemisphere and travel across the corpus callosum, to be “heard” in the language areas of the left hemisphere (in right-handed individuals). On this point, Alexander is simply egregiously wrong.
To support this claim, he again cherry picks one study, while simply ignoring the dozens of studies that provide strong support for Jaynes’s neurological model. Like the study of nutrition, brain science is highly complex, and if one looks hard enough, it’s easy to find a single study to support almost any conclusion. What matters is the preponderance of evidence, and, as we will see, the preponderance of evidence now clearly supports Jaynes’s neurological model.
Alexander does not cite — and appears to not have read — any of the follow-up publications on Jaynes’s theory, as I previously described many of the studies supporting Jaynes’s neurological model in my chapter “Consciousness, Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind: Three Decades of New Research” in Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (2006) and in an article titled “New Evidence for Jaynes’s Neurological Model: A Research Update” (2007) in The Jaynesian newsletter. Both of these were available for more than a decade before Alexander wrote his blog post, and many of the relevant studies have also been posted in the Summary of Evidence and Supporting Evidence sections of the Julian Jaynes Society website, many also for more than a decade.
More recently — and partly in response to Alexander’s critique — I outlined many of the studies that show clear support for Jaynes’s neurological model in the post: “Neuroscience Confirms Julian Jaynes’s Neurological Model,” as well as in the book Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind. I encourage you to take a moment to look at the studies summarized in my post, compare those to the one study Alexander cites (“Tuning in to the Voices: A Multisite fMRI Study of Auditory Hallucinations“), and draw your own conclusions as to whether or not Alexander accurately represents the current state of evidence regarding Jaynes’s neurological model.
It is not at all clear why Alexander cites this one particular study, as the experimental design does not speak as directly to the issue of Jaynes’s neurological model as the many more relevant, better designed studies available — and many of these studies clearly support Jaynes’s early conjectures regarding the bicameral neurology of auditory hallucinations. How could anyone even briefly researching this issue miss, for example, the commentaries by Dr. Robert Olin (“Auditory Hallucinations and the Bicameral Mind,” 1999) and Dr. Leo Sher (“Neuroimaging, Auditory Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind,” 2000), both with the full text available online, and both calling attention to Belinda Lennox’s landmark 1999 study, “Spatial and Temporal Mapping of Neural Activity Associated with Auditory Hallucinations” (1999)? Lennox’s fMRI study of a hallucinating schizophrenic patient was the first fMRI study to show strong support for Jaynes’s neurological model. Her findings, or findings roughly similar to hers, have since been replicated by numerous other researchers over the past two decades — including recently.
If you search for “jaynes auditory hallucinations” on Google Scholar, Dr. Olin’s and Dr. Sher’s commentaries are the first and third results. We are left to wonder, 1) did Dr. Alexander not take the short amount of time necessary to locate and read the many more relevant studies that are highly supportive of Jaynes’s neurological model — despite the fact that this would have been very easy to do, or 2) for reasons unknown, did he deliberately mischaracterize the evidence supporting Jaynes’s fourth hypothesis by selecting one ambiguous study while ignoring the many more relevant and more favorable studies? I have no way of knowing, but am willing to give the benefit of the doubt that it was just exceedingly poor research on his part. Either way, he failed to accurately convey the evidence on this subject to his readers.
Confusion on Spirit Possession & the Right Hemisphere
In his book, Jaynes speculates that spirit possession and other trance states might indicate a temporary shift to right-hemisphere dominance. Alexander commits the same “single ambiguous study as definitive evidence” error with regards to Jaynes’s comments on spirit (or demon) possession. He reports one study (Vazquez, 2018) that had ambiguous results regarding right hemisphere activity during the “possessed” state. Yet he fails to mention the many other studies that do support Jaynes’s speculation about right-hemisphere involvement in spirit possession and other trance states. See, for example, Krippner & Combs (2002), Persinger (1993), and Flor-Henry, Shapiro & Sombrun (2016), who state:
We corroborated not only generalized right hemispheric dominance during shamanic trance but also a specific shift from the normative anterior prefrontal to the right posterior mode of awareness.
Once again, it seems that Dr. Alexander did not review all of the relevant research, but instead jumped to conclusions based on a single study, or perhaps looked for a study that seemed to support his pre-existing views. While I would not argue that the evidence for right-hemisphere involvement in trance states is conclusive, I would suggest that it was not accurately portrayed by Dr. Alexander in his post.
Confusion on Preliterate Societies & Vestiges of Bicameral Mentality
In the fifth and final section of his post, Alexander brings up the topic of preliterate societies. Here his misunderstanding of what it means to be a bicameral person (“Jaynes claims Bronze Agers heard gods literally all the time” — Jaynes never suggests this) causes him to question why there isn’t more overt evidence of bicameral mentality documented in preliterate societies. Alexander’s naiveté on the subject is summed up in his somewhat flippant statement that we should expect tribal people to have said things like, “That couple-year period when we all stopped hallucinating gods and became conscious — that was a weird time.”
Psychological transitions in any culture are often gradual, not well documented (if at all), and poorly remembered. Further, there is no reason to believe that some preliterate societies did not develop some of the features of consciousness on their own trajectories. Nonetheless, accounts of recently contacted tribes by Christian missionaries and others are filled with examples of vestigial bicameral practices and behaviors. To give just one example, a missionary reported that:
With these undesirable denizens of the spirit-world … the Ten’a may be said to have an almost continual intercourse” [i.e., communication]. “They hold themselves liable to see or hear them at any time.
Quoted in Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Primitive Mentality
That sounds a lot like he is describing auditory and visual hallucinations, and one can read many similar examples associated with preliterate societies worldwide. For more examples, see the quotes from books such as Primitive Mentality, How Natives Think, and Do Kamo posted in the “The Mentality of Pre-Literate & Pre-Modern Peoples” section of the JJS Forum.
There are many challenges inherent in the study of the psychology and inner mental life of a given individual or culture. For one, anthropologists who studied recently contacted tribes were not familiar with Jaynes’s theory (in most cases, it had not yet been proposed) and were not focused specifically on psychological issues, thus generally they were not asking the relevant questions. A key point to understand, and one that Alexander seems to at least partly acknowledge, is that if you met a bicameral or semi-bicameral person (transported through time) on the street today, it would certainly not be immediately obvious to you. It would take time to develop an understanding of the extent to which their behavior was directed in times of stress by auditory hallucinations, the degree to which they had a well-developed analog ‘I’ narratizing in a mind-space, etc.
Similarly, it would not be immediately obvious to you if you met a conscious person who also frequently hears voices, as many people around the world still do, but rarely discuss. How many people today are aware that a significant percentage of the homeless they pass on the street every day are hearing voices (Desjarlais, 1997)? The fact is, we are surrounded by examples of vestiges of bicameral mentality in modern society — let alone in preliterate societies. Studies by psychologists such as Russell Hurlburt at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who for decades has been investigating inner experience (see Hurlburt, 1990, 2011), illustrate both larger than expected differences in the inner dialogue of even modern, conscious people, as well as the challenges inherent in this type of research. The bottom line is that understanding another person’s inner mental life, or lack thereof, is a lengthy, complex process and cannot be immediately gleaned merely from observable behavior.
An exhaustive review of the evidence for bicameral mentality and vestiges of bicameral mentality in recently contacted tribes has yet to be written, but in the meantime, interested readers should look at the source material by Lucien Lévy-Bruhl, Maurice Leenhardt, and other early investigators, as well as more recent investigators such as Daniel Everett (2009).
Summing Up
Scott Alexander’s blog post on Julian Jaynes’s book and theory contains a number of factual errors and significant misunderstandings of Jaynes’s arguments. Furthermore, it fails to mention the great deal of new evidence that supports Jaynes’s theory, instead misleading readers to believe that relevant new studies generally contradict the theory — the opposite of what is true. For those who feel that perhaps I’ve been a bit hard on Dr. Alexander (I have no doubt that he is a well intentioned person), I think it’s important to emphasize that, in my view, bloggers and other writers do their readers a disservice when they publish poorly researched content. By mischaracterizing Jaynes’s theory as essentially not having withstood the test of time — rather than what is in fact the case, that many aspects of Jaynes’s theory are well supported by new evidence — Alexander potentially turned off many of the readers in his large audience to learning more about Jaynes’s fascinating ideas.
Given that Alexander was so out of his depth on this review, and wrong on so many key points, one can only wonder as to the validity of his other posts. The problems seen in Alexander’s post are one of reasons that I’m not a fan of generalist blogs in the first place: authors often seem to feel pressured to constantly churn out new material, and thus are compelled to delve into topics and areas they are wholly unfamiliar with. A better approach is taken by bloggers that stick to their given areas of expertise.
It is my hope that, before writing about Jaynes’s theory, others will see that it is imperative to first familiarize themselves with all (or at least most) of the available literature on the subject, and not just skim Julian Jaynes’s book and think that that now makes them an “expert,” or even in a position to properly evaluate the theory. It is difficult to fully understand all of the nuances of Jaynes’s theory — and impossible to accurately evaluate the evidence for or against it — without also looking at the new evidence, clarifications, and extensions of the theory that have been published in the now more than 45 years since Julian Jaynes first published his book.
I welcome your comments below.
References
Robert Atwan, “The Interpretation of Dreams, The Origin of Consciousness, and the Birth of Tragedy”, in in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2016).
Michael Carr, “The Shi “Corpse/Personator” Ceremony In Early China,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness (Julian Jaynes Society, 2006).
Daniel Dennett, “What Do You Believe Is True Even Though You Cannot Prove It?” Interview for Edge.org, 2005.
Daniel Dennett, “Facing Up to the Hard Question of Consciousness,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 2018.
Robert R. Desjarlais, Shelter Blues: Sanity and Selfhood Among the Homeless (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1997).
Daniel Everett, Don’t Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle (Vintage, 2009).
Pierre Flor-Henry, Yakov Shapiro & Corine Sombrun, “Brain Changes during a Shamanic Trance: Altered Modes of Consciousness, Hemispheric Laterality, and Systemic Psychobiology,” Cogent Psychology, 2017, 4, 1.
Michael S. Gazzaniga, “Forty-five Years of Split-brain Research and Still Going Strong,” Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 2005, 6, 653–659.
Todd Gibson, “Souls, Gods, Kings, and Mountains: Julian Jaynes’s Theory of the Bicameral Mind in Tibet, Part One” and “Listening for Ancient Voices: Julian Jaynes’s Theory of the Bicameral Mind in Tibet, Part Two,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2016).
Todd Gibson, “Evidence for Bicameral Mentality in Ancient Tibet,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2022).
Russell T. Hurlburt, “A Schizophrenic Woman Who Heard Voices of the Gods,” in R. Hurlburt, Sampling Normal and Schizophrenic Inner Experience (Plenum Press, 1990). Reprinted in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2016).
Russell T. Hurlburt, Investigating Pristine Inner Experience: Moments of Truth (Cambridge University Press, 2011).
Julian Jaynes, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (Mariner Books, 1976/2000).
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Julian Jaynes, “In A Manner of Speaking: Commentary on Cognition and Consciousness in Non-Human Species,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) The Julian Jaynes Collection (Julian Jaynes Society, 2012b).
John Kihlstrom, “The Cognitive Unconscious,” Science, 1987, 237, 4821.
S. C. Krippner & A. Combs, “The Neurophenomenology of Shamanism: An Essay Review,” Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2002, 9, 77–82.
Marcel Kuijsten “Consciousness, Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind: Three Decades of New Research,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited (Julian Jaynes Society, 2006).
Marcel Kuijsten, “Consciousness, Language, and Dreams,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2022).
Marcel Kuijsten, “New Evidence for Jaynes’s Neurological Model: A Research Update,” The Jaynesian, 2007.
Milena Lazova, et. al., “Response Rescaling in Bacterial Chemotaxis,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2011, 108, 33.
Joseph LeDoux, Yair Pinto, and Elizabeth Schechter, “Debate: Do Split-Brain Patients Have Two Minds?” (NYU Center for Mind, Brain and Consciousness, 2018).
Tor Nørretranders, The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size (Penguin Books, 1991).
Robert Olin, “Auditory Hallucinations and the Bicameral Mind,” The Lancet, 1999, 354, 9173.
Adrian Owen, et al, “Detecting Awareness in the Vegetative State,” Science, 2006, 313, 5792.
Michael A. Persinger, “Vectorial Cerebral Hemisphericity as Differential Sources for the Sensed Presence, Mystical Experiences and Religious Conversions,” Perceptual and Motor Skills, 1993, 76, 915–930.
Yair Pinto, et al. “Split Brain: Divided Perception but Undivided Consciousness,” Brain, January 2017.
Bill Rowe, “Two Origins of Consciousness” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Gods, Voices, and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2016).
Bill Rowe, “The Development of Consciousness in Children” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind (Julian Jaynes Society, 2022).
Elizabeth Schechter’s Self-Consciousness and “Split” Brains: The Minds’ I (Oxford University Press, 2018).
Leo Sher, “Neuroimaging, Auditory Hallucinations, and the Bicameral Mind,” Journal of Psychiatry and Neuroscience, 2000, 25, 3.
Jan Sleutels, “Greek Zombies,” in M. Kuijsten (ed.) Reflections on the Dawn of Consciousness: Julian Jaynes’s Bicameral Mind Theory Revisited (Julian Jaynes Society, 2006).
University of Amsterdam, “Split Brain Does Not Lead to Split Consciousness,” ScienceDaily, January 25, 2017.
Jose Luis Mosso Vazquez, et al., “Resting Stated-Tractography-fMRI in Initial Phase of Spiritual Possession – A Case Report,” Trends in Medicine, 2018.
Philip Zelazo, “Language, Levels of Consciousness, and the Development of Intentional Action,” in P.D. Zelazo, J.W. Astington & D.R. Olson (eds.), Developing Theories of Intention: Social Understanding and Self-Control (Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1999).
Philip Zelazo, et al, “The Development of Consciousness,” in P. Zelazo (ed.), The Cambridge Handbook of Consciousness (Cambridge University Press, 2007).
See also: Fact Checking Scott Alexander’s Review of Julian Jaynes’s Theory on “Slate Star Codex” – Part 1, by Brian J. McVeigh
Julian Jaynes Society Summer 2023 Newsletter
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Julian Jaynes Society Spring 2023 Newsletter
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Now Available: Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind
Two years in the making, Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind: Interviews with Leading Thinkers on Julian Jaynes’s Theory is now available!
How old is consciousness? What is the relationship of consciousness and language? What is the origin of god beliefs and religion? Why do people hear voices that command their behavior? These are just a few of the fascinating questions posed by Princeton University psychologist Julian Jaynes’s influential and controversial theory and discussed in this book. A treasure trove of provocative ideas, Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind explains, extends, clarifies, and presents the latest evidence for Jaynes’s theory in a series of highly engaging interviews with both voice-hearers and leading thinkers on the theory.
Advanced Praise for Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind
“Julian Jaynes was my teacher in the early 1960s. … Much psychological science since then points to the possibility that he was right. Right about consciousness, right about ancient history, right about evolution, right about language, even right about Homer. This volume begins to close the gap, bringing Jaynes’s brilliance to the attention and appreciation of the contemporary public.”
— Martin Seligman, Professor of Psychology, University of Pennsylvania, and author of The Hope Circuit and Learned Optimism
“… A marvel of collective scholarship across multiple disciplines. … In this book, you will hear the voices of the most open-minded scholars of our generation.”
— William R. Woodward, Professor of Psychology, The University of New Hampshire, and author of Hermann Lotze: An Intellectual Biography
“Rich with ideas and fertile speculations, this outstanding collection of expert interviews advances the revolutionary work of the psychologist Julian Jaynes.”
— Richard Rhodes, Historian and Pulitzer Prize Laureate for The Making of the Atomic Bomb
“… It is time for a new generation of … deep thinkers at the heart of every discipline to rediscover Julian Jaynes’s tantalizing hypotheses concerning the origin and nature of human consciousness. This collection of interviews … will enable contemporary readers to understand why Jaynes’s style of inquiry remains as captivating and compelling as ever — and as provocative and controversial. Reader: take the plunge, and join the conversation!”
— Christian Y. Dupont, Ph.D., Associate University Librarian for Collections and Burns Librarian, Boston College, and author of Phenomenology in French Philosophy: Early Encounters
“… Conversations on Consciousness and the Bicameral Mind helps us understand humanity’s development of consciousness over millennia, as well as how we learn it in our first years of life.”
— Loretta Graziano Breuning, Ph.D., author of Habits of a Happy Brain, The Science of Positivity, and Status Games
Julian Jaynes Society November/December 2022 Newsletter
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