Thanks to Ben Radford for the link! Demonic Possession, Reincarnation, and Xenoglossia:
Dr. Karen Stollznow, a linguist and researcher at the University of California, Berkeley, explains that “though glossolalia is the utterance of feigned language, this is not to say the subject intends to deceive. Instead, this phenomenon is more psychological than linguistic (a kind of localized mass hysteria). MRI studies have shown that when people speak in tongues they are using the emotion parts of the brain, rather than the linguistic centers.”
As for the claims that modern folks suddenly begin speaking fluently in ancient tongues they’ve never heard, these reports are always unverified. Stollznow adds, “It would be very, very easy for any halfway competent historical linguist to determine whether a case of speaking in tongues is cognitive access to a foreign language known to the subject, or if they’re talking gobbledygook.”
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Fascinating. I’ve always wondered whether the “talkers” really believed they were actually speaking another language. I’d err on the side of yes, of course, because delusion (for lack of a better word) seemed more probable than dishonesty, but that left the question of how?
I assume if there lots of recording of such events that they could be compared to find some commonality. A bit like deciphering hieroglyphics in the early days. Maybe that’s what the Doc meant when she said it could be verified?
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