kind of like the fast-acting poison question, this one...

Does anyone know if extremely heightened brain activity would lead to a vegetative state?

If not, what would it lead to?

If it would, how heightened would the activity have to be?

And what else would it do? How would it manifest?

There is a plot related reason for this. To my (limited) knowledge a coma generally results in reduced brain activity (but if someone could contradict me on this I'd be thrilled).

Awaiting wisdom...

In one of the episodes, Lex Luther's company had developed a serum that could make you smarter. It was tested on children who had been assessed at having below normal IQs. A side-effect, however, was that over time the serum ended up turning the brain to mush, leaving the user in a vegetative state. Sort of a Trojan Horse/burn-out thing.

I'm not sure if that is helpful. Also, I don't know if amphetamines might work for you. I don't knowif they actually highten brain activity, but they do affect reflexes and how your brain processes information. Overuse can cause brain damage.

Depending on your setting, etc., you might consider something like flash, a fictional drug simillar to speed, from Gene Roddenbury's Andromeda.

The brain is complex. We (humans) don't know very much about it at all. We have a sense that certain parts of the brain deal with certain functions. The frontal lobe is wher eyou'll find your advanced reasoning. The amygdala is more primal, dealing with emotions. The inside layers of the brain tend to be more basic and primitive and the outer layers tend to be more advanced, higher functioning and probably evolved later.

What I've noticed when it comes to scifi stories and brains is that you can make anything up, make up some kind of authority, and people will believe it. People will believe it to the point of creating myths around these things, such as the myth that humans only use ten percent of their brain. THat's not true. We use all of our brains, although at any given time probably only ten percent of it is active. If you ever look at EEG's of the brain you will see the patterns of electrical current (brain activity) constantly shifting from one part to another.

I'm beginning to ramble here and I apologize. I was trying to make the point that increased brain activity doesn't mean a whole lot. Do you want us to use every part of our brain all at once? I don't think that would be entirely comfortable but I have no idea what it would do. I would have a lot of trouble believing that it put someone in a coma. Almost by definition if all of the brain was active then you would be using the bits that move your arms and legs and eyeballs. You would be seeing, hearing, feeling, moving, and reasoning all at once.

If you seriously want to do something with the brain that is central to a scifi plot I highly recommend getting a book on the brain. It doesn't need to be advanced, but some basic research may help your creative juices. Keep in mind that we know so little about the brain that it's going to be relatively easy to convince us that what you say will happen, but you need to get the terms right, you need to get the concepts right, and you definitely don't want to contradict what little we do know for sure.

An extended seizure could put you in a vegitative state immediately, though of course once your brain runs low on neurotransmitters and ATP the seizure itself will end, being followed by a long period of little activity that would not appear very different to an observer. I suppose that a severe enough seizure could lead to an indefinite period of deep unconsciousness (it does sometimes result in actual brain death, but we will not describe death as an indefinite period of deep unconsciousness for purposes of this "meditation").

Epileptics report a lot of different things. Some don't remember anything at all, some see flashes of light or other sensory hallucinations, a few experience stunning feelings of grand "epiphany" in which they report understanding the nature and purpose of the universe.

And some even come out of such seizures with reasonably intelligible ideas that would be beyond their normal creative abilities.

I will stress that seizures cannot last very long, since they rapidly drain your brain's reserves of important chemicals that power "brain activity". And they can be artificially induced by non-fatal electrical shocks as well, but usually a 12-volt charge applied to the mouth won't do the trick.

I saw this show on the Discovery Channel last year where they put electrodes all over the heads and bodies of meditating monks and the results were startling in that they were apparently able to raise their body temperature to combat the cold of Tibet's mountain climate. Australian Aborigines do this naturally in their sleep, and I believe they are the only documented case of this. They sleep practically naked during the cold nights, while people of other genetic descent must resort to blankets and sleeping bags.

Meditation puts the brain wave pattern to alpha, which, if memory serves, is an even, steady wave that indicates a state of relaxed awareness. I think we experience alpha waves naturally when we sleep. Beta brain waves are what we experience during normal, conscious wakefulness, and I think they're spikier (fuzzy on this one).

I don't know if what I experienced during feeble attempts at meditation was heightened awareness, but I doubt it. I was probably just experiencing a sudden lack of stimuli--the "deafening silence." Most times, I just nod off. So much for enlightenment.

There have been MRIs (note the lack of aprostrophe, because it doesn't own anything and it's not a contraction ) taken while subjects were praying and meditating, but I can't remember what the results indicated. You might want to look that up.

My stepdaughter has epilepsy. Before she seizes, she experiences an "aura." An aura is the distinct pre-seizure feeling. Some people smell scents or hear sounds that aren't there, but she feels it viscerally, like a fuzziness or a tingling. When she has a seizure, it isn't pretty, and it is dangerous (that whole wooden-spoon-in-the-mouth-thing is a total myth: never ever do that to a seizing person). It's also extremely tiring, because all her muscles are firing involuntarily. Bad ones last a couple of minutes. Electrical signals go haywire in the brain, forging non-normative pathways which are (for lack of a better analogy) widened with each seizure so that it is virtually guaranteed they will be used again next time. When she comes out of a seizure, her speech is slurred and she is exhausted. Usually, she sleeps afterwards.

It is possible to "work off" an aura so that the seizure doesn't happen. She walks around and shakes her hands and talks to us. Even more amazing, essential oil of rosemary, when inhaled, heads off seizures, as well. Of course, she also takes medication to control them. (Cannabis is an excellent seizure-controlling substance, but we all know the legal problems with that.)

loads of great info so far - thanks. The premise is fictional, but as you asked for more info...

here's the plot idea - (don't laugh) - the protagonist stumbles on an occult related attack on a friend during which his psychic abillities are "downloaded" into a little gold box. In the ensuing struggle the box is shattered and our heroine gets the sum total of several people's psychic abilities poured into her brain at once. She's left in a coma - though only for a short while - from which she emerges as a kind of super-psychic.

I want to avoid all sorts of Dead Zone analogies so I don't want the accident to "turn on" parts of her brain never used before etc. My idea was that her whole brain goes into hyper-drive as it assimilates the new abilities. The setting is a world of angels, demons, ghosts and psychics, so that part has to be taken as a given.

What I'd like is to have the doctor supervising her care to give a reasonable account of her condition. The medical staff don't have to be 100% sure - "I've never seen anything like it" sort of thing - but should be able to give possible causes.

Given the nature of the project (occult thriller) I am very interested in the historical reactions to epilepsy Magic Beans mentioned so will have to look into this further.

So, any other thoughts?

The doctor could try explaining it like a computer download that causes an overload of sorts in her brain. Her body has simply shut down to stop the flow of stimulus until it can fully process everything. Hopefully she'll wake up.

Really, the most plausible cover story would be that she got an electrical shock or something that induced a severe seizure followed by a brief coma. That sort of thing can happen.

It isn't surprising for someone who has undergone something extremely traumatic to become catatonic for a while. And I'd think that having to deal with a bunch of other people's psychic abilities all at once would be traumatic enough.

I would think that finding out suddenly that you had major psychic abilities of your own would be enough of a shock to overwhelm you. How much more, then, would having to assimilate similar abilities from lots of people overwhelm your mind?