I’ve been using Claude (AI) to help generate information about a new book I’m writing. As part of the feedback that Claude gave me, it suggested an unexpected set of ideas from the material I was researching. These combinations became possible due to the ability to quickly synthesize information from different databases.
Some of these combinations have helped me find interesting new ways of thinking about the topic at hand. Therefore, I understand that AI can help accelerate the emergence of scientific discoveries.
Discovery of antibiotics
Major advances in science were initially based on observations of events around us. A famous example of a serendipitous observation involves Dr. Alexander Fleming’s discovery that led to the description of antibiotics.
Fleming was growing bacteria in Petri dishes and noticed that no bacteria grew in one dish in the mold-contaminated area. He wondered how this could be, and thought that the mold was producing an antibacterial compound. Fleming’s observation eventually led to the development of penicillin, one of the most transformative medical discoveries of the 20th century (Lax, 2004).
A patient with PANDAS and OCD
The same spirit of curiosity that drove Fleming to inquire What kind of not just moving led me to take a closer look at a remarkable patient I described in my book who was dealing with a pediatric neuropsychiatric autoimmune disorder associated with streptococcal infections (PANDAS). With this disease, it is believed that the inflammation that the body produces to fight the strep bacteria attacks and damages the brain.
Because of his illness, which occurred at the age of 11, my patient had a rapid onset anxiety and obsessive-compulsive obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) so severe that he could not leave his room without performing a series of rituals that were difficult to complete. As a result, he rarely left his room, did not go to school, and lost his friends.
My patient has improved greatly with self-carehypnosis to regulate OCD and with his hypnotic guidance subconscious. Within four months, he was able to leave his room, reestablish social connections, and return to school.
He then began to express deep spiritual thoughts that arose from his exploration of the subconscious. Furthermore, he engaged in daily self-awareness sessions that strengthened his spiritual beliefs.
Rituals in PANDAS, OCD, and religious practice
I discussed with my patient that there is a significant difference between the rituals we observe in OCD and the rituals in religions. Freud (1907) was originally observed. For example, both religious rituals and OCD compulsions require the exact repetition of specific actions. If a mistake is made, the ceremony must be started again.
Rituals involving cleansing and purification, which have deep spiritual significance in Jewish, Islamic, and Hindu practices, share structural similarities with OCD’s fear of contamination. Furthermore, when people experience unwanted and sinful thoughts, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam have specific rituals and theological frameworks for dealing with them.
There is even a subtype of OCD, obsessing, which includes obsessive and compulsive thoughts of a religious nature, such as fear guilt, anxiety over blasphemous thoughts, compulsive confessions, and compulsive reading of religious texts (Nelson et al., 2006). Sometimes, the difference between OCD and sincere religious fervor is difficult.
When I discussed rituals with Claude AI, he noted that religious rituals (Graybiel, 2008), OCD (Graybiel & Rauch, 2000) and PANDAS (Swedo et al., 2004) are all thought to be related to activity or dysregulation in the basal ganglia of the brain and show some quotes that show this observation. (I verified the validity of these citations in Pubmed, a bibliographic database, given AI’s propensity to hallucinate.) At that point, I thought that AI excels at showing associations drawn from its very large data base.
Based on Claude’s observations, I guessed the development of my patient spirituality the way he recovered may have been directly related to the changes in his brain caused by PANDAS. This hypothesis is supported by my observations that several other patients in my clinical practice with a history of PANDAS and OCD are also highly spiritual.
Scientific research needs to be done to evaluate the validity of my hypothesis, but I found that it was the information that the AI pointed to me that led me to form this new idea.
Claude once again demonstrated his associative ability when he pointed out that OCD is characterized by intrusive thoughts and compulsive attempts at control, in contrast to spiritual practice, which is characterized by releasing control, trusting in a higher power, and accepting what is received without judgment.
It helped me to understand that spiritual practice can be therapeutic for OCD because of the research that has shown its benefits. mindfulness and accepted applications in the treatment of OCD (Bürkle et al., 2025).
AI can accelerate scientific progress
My recent experiences with Claude made me realize how AI has already accelerated scientific progress. I realized that the similarity of Fleming’s unexpected observation led to the development of antibiotics, in 2020, AI analysis of the molecular structure of more than 100 million chemical compounds led to the surprise that a drug that was originally researched as a treatment for diabetes could function as a powerful antibiotic (Stokes 2020).
Take away
The use of AI is at a relatively early stage. Thus, I think that as AI continues to improve (including beyond our current use of large language models that drive AI like Claude), many more scientists will use it regularly. to cut– advanced AI technology to inform and accelerate their research progress.
For example, a hypothesis about a patient’s mental development and changes in the basal ganglia needs to be tested, and that’s exactly how AI-accelerated discovery should work: It can help generate hypotheses that researchers can pursue.
