Limbic Seizures and Lizzie Borden

A very interesting piece of research from 1996 has been posted on the Harvard University site.

The essay examines the work of Dr. Anneliese Pontius, associate clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. For 15 years, Pontius has been piecing together clues to understand the bizarre behavior of a young man, with a history of schizophrenia, who “returned home from a hitchhiking journey to find his brother in the kitchen receiving lessons from a home instructor. Minutes later, for no apparent reason, he fatally punched out the heart of his 14-year-old brother.”

The young man, although prone to delusions, had never shown signs of violence before. He later recounted that a memory of his parents had come to mind when he saw the reference to Lizzie Borden. But by all accounts the murder seemed to come out of the blue.

She has recently identified a new syndrome that she believes may explain this murder, and others of similarly stupefying origins.

According to Pontius, the crimes are the tragic result of “electrical storms”-or seizures-in a constellation of brain structures known collectively as the limbic system. Normally, the limbic system, which mediates the basic drives of eating, sex and predation, is under the control of the ponderous frontal lobes. The frontal lobes filter the impulses generated by the limbic system, okaying some, disallowing others.

However, during a seizure, the limbic system may shake loose from the frontal behemoth, essentially bypassing the “permission” of the normally dominant frontal lobes, resulting in an uncensored-and irrational-drive to kill.

Pontius believes that random, though highly specific, external stimuli-such as a meaningful photograph or library card, or a bodily movement, such as reaching into a pocket-revive old memories that in turn ignite the limbic storm.

During limbic seizures, the normal balance between the frontal lobe and the limbic system is thrown off, leading to uncharacteristically violent behavior. The limbic system is composed of the dark-shaded structures in the center of the brain.

Is it possible that this syndrome also explains the Borden murders?

All the crimes were committed by men with few social contacts. Only a few had a history of schizophrenia. “These are basically loners. They long for human contact,” Pontius says, adding that their social isolation prevented them from releasing old memories. None had any reason to kill; many attacks, such as the fly-fishing case, were against total strangers in full view of witnesses. All felt no emotion while committing their crimes. “Like the animal who kills doesn’t hate his prey,” Pontius says.

“Normally, the frontal lobe is very much in control to give us decent socialized behavior,” she explains. What helps trigger the electrical storm, she believes, is the abnormal social isolation of these people. The inability to share experiences-of minor hurts as well as major unhappinesses-results in the persistence of stressful memories, which can be unleashed by an apparently harmless, though meaningful, stimulus, thereby kindling a limbic seizure.

Support for her theory comes from studies in which patients being operated on for temporal lobe epilepsy had their limbic systems electrically stimulated, particularly the amygdala. The patients, who were awake, reported many of the same symptoms such as nausea, seeing auras and hearing voices. They also demonstrated aggressive behavior.

Pontius’ theory is still largely grounded in her own clinical observations. However, she is currently working with researchers in Texas to see if the dopamine receptors of people exhibiting LPTR are defective. Another fruitful approach, she believes, would be to look for some defect in the brains of pet dogs who suddenly turn on and kill their owners.

Pontius believes that although people who commit crimes as a result of limbic seizures are aware of what they are doing, they are not, in a legal sense, “responsible” for their actions.

Read the whole piece here.