The God in the Brain

[Guest guest]

We can thank Era, and Jody at Guruphiliac for

this great posts.

 

<http://tinyurl.com/7n3nc>

 

Your Brain on Religion:

Mystic visions or brain circuits at work?

By Sharon Begley, Newsweek, Copyright May 7, 2001.

In the new field of " neurotheology, " scientists seek the

biological basis of spirituality. Is God all in our heads?

 

May 7 issue - One Sunday morning in March, 19 years ago, as Dr. James

Austin waited for a train in London, he glanced away from the tracks

toward the river Thames. The neurologist-

who was spending a sabbatical year in England-saw nothing out of the

ordinary: the grimy Underground station, a few dingy buildings, some

pale gray sky. He was thinking, a bit absent-mindedly, about the Zen

Buddhist retreat he was headed toward. And then

Austin suddenly felt a sense of enlightenment unlike anything he had

ever experienced. His sense of individual existence, of separateness

from the physical world around him, evaporated

like morning mist in a bright dawn. He saw things " as they really

are, " he recalls. The sense of " I, me, mine " disappeared. " Time was

not present, " he says. " I had a sense of eternity. My old yearnings,

loathings, fear of death and insinuations of selfhood vanished. I had

been

graced by a comprehension of the ultimate nature of things. "

CALL IT A MYSTICAL EXPERIENCE, a spiritual moment, even a religious

epiphany, if you like-but Austin will not. Rather than interpret his

instant of grace as proof of a reality beyond the comprehension of our

senses, much less as proof of a deity, Austin took it as " proof of the

existence of the brain. " He isn't being smart-alecky. As a

neurologist, he accepts that all we see, hear, feel and think is

mediated or created by the brain. Austin's moment in the Underground

therefore inspired him to explore the neurological underpinnings of

spiritual and mystical experience. In order to feel that time, fear

and self-consciousness have dissolved, he reasoned, certain brain

circuits must be interrupted. Which ones? Activity in the amygdala,

which monitors the environment for threats and registers fear, must be

damped. Parietal-lobe circuits, which orient you in space and mark the

sharp distinction between self and world, must go quiet.

Frontal- and temporal-lobe circuits, which mark time and generate

self-awareness, must disengage. When that happens, Austin concludes in

a recent paper, " what we think of as our 'higher' functions of

selfhood appear briefly to 'drop out,' 'dissolve,' or be 'deleted from

consciousness'. " When he spun out his theories in 1998, in the

844-page " Zen and the Brain, " it was published not by some flaky New

Age outfit but by MIT Press.

May 2 - Why God Won't Go Away: Brain science and the biology of

belief " by Andrew Newberg, M.D.

 

Since then, more and more scientists have flocked to " neurotheology, "

the study of the neurobiology of religion and spirituality. Last year

the American Psychological Association published " Varieties of

Anomalous Experience, " covering enigmas from near-death experiences to

mystical ones. At Columbia University's new Center for the Study of

Science and Religion, one program investigates how spiritual

experiences reflect " peculiarly recurrent events in human brains. " In

December, the scholarly Journal of Consciousness Studies devoted its

issue to religious moments ranging from " Christic visions " to

" shamanic states of consciousness. " In May the book " Religion in

Mind, " tackling subjects such as how religious practices act back on

the brain's frontal lobes to inspire optimism and even creativity,

reaches stores. And in " Why God Won't Go Away, " published in April,

Dr. Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania and his late

collaborator, Eugene d'Aquili, use brain-imaging data they collected

from Tibetan Buddhists lost in meditation and from Franciscan nuns

deep in prayer to ... well, what they do involves a lot of

neuro-jargon about lobes and fissures. In a nutshell, though, they use

the data to identify what seems to be the brain's spirituality

circuit, and to explain how it is that religious rituals have the

power to move believers and nonbelievers alike.

 

What all the new research shares is a passion for uncovering the

neurological underpinnings of spiritual and mystical experiences-for

discovering, in short, what happens in our brains when we sense that

we " have encountered a reality different from-and, in some crucial

sense, higher than-the reality of everyday experience, " as

psychologist David Wulff of Wheaton College in Massachusetts puts it.

OUTSIDE OF TIME AND SPACE

 

In neurotheology, psychologists and neurologists try to pinpoint which

regions turn on, and

which turn off, during experiences that seem to exist outside time and

space. In this way it differs from the rudimentary research of the

1950s and 1960s that found, yeah, brain waves change when you

meditate. But that research was silent on why brain waves change, or

which specific regions in the brain lie behind the change.

Neuroimaging of a living, working brain simply didn't exist back then.

In contrast, today's studies try to identify the brain circuits that

surge with activity when we think we have encountered the divine, and

when we feel transported by intense prayer, an uplifting ritual or

sacred music.

Although the field is brand new and the answers only tentative, one

thing is clear. Spiritual experiences are so consistent across

cultures, across time and across faiths, says Wulff, that it

" suggest a common core that is likely a reflection of structures

and processes in the human brain. "

There was a feeling of energy centered within me ... going out to

infinite space and returning ... There was a relaxing of the dualistic

mind, and an intense feeling of love. I felt a profound letting go of

the boundaries around me, and a connection with some kind of energy

and state of being that had a quality of clarity, transparency and joy.

I felt a deep and profound sense of connection to everything,

recognizing that there never was a true separation at all.

On the Cover: Science & the Spirit

A look at the relationship between religion and the brain

Religion And The Brain

Is God all in our heads? A look at 'Neurotheology' and the biological

basis of spirituality

- Faith Is More Than A Feeling

The problem with Neurotheology is that it confuses spiritual

experiences with religion That is how Dr. Michael J. Baime, a

colleague of Andrew Newberg's at Penn, describes what he feels at the

moment of peak transcendence when he practices Tibetan Buddhist

meditation, as he has since he was 14 in 1969. Baime offered his brain

to Newberg, who, since childhood, had wondered about the mystery of

God's existence. At Penn, Newberg's specialty is radiology, so he

teamed with Eugene d'Aquili to use imaging techniques to detect which

regions of the brain are active during spiritual experiences. The

scientists recruited Baime and seven other Tibetan Buddhists, all

skilled meditators.

TESTING FOR THE TIMELESS AND INFINITE

In a typical run, Baime settled onto the floor of a small darkened

room, lit only by a few candles and filled with jasmine incense. A

string of twine lay beside him. Concentrating on a mental image, he

focused and focused, quieting his conscious mind (he told the

scientists afterward) until something he identifies as his true inner

self emerged. It felt " timeless and infinite, " Baime said afterward,

" a part of everyone and everything in existence. " When he reached the

" peak " of spiritual intensity, he tugged on the twine. Newberg,

huddled outside the room and holding the other end, felt the pull and

quickly injected a radioactive tracer into an IV line that ran into

Baime's left arm. After a few moments, he whisked Baime off to a SPECT

(single photon emission computed tomography) machine. By detecting the

tracer, it tracks blood flow in the brain. Blood flow correlates with

neuronal activity.

Attention: Linked to concentration, the frontal lobe lights up during

meditation

Religious emotions: The middle temporal lobe is linked to emotional

aspects of religious experience, such as joy and awe

Sacred images: The lower temporal lobe is involved in the process by

which images, such as candles or crosses, facilitate prayer and

meditation

Response to religious words: At the juncture of three lobes, this

region governs response to language Cosmic unity: When the parietal

lobes quiet down, a person can feel at one with the universe

-------------------------

Source: Newsweek

The SPECT images are as close as scientists have come to snapping a

photo of a transcendent experience. As expected, the prefrontal

cortex, seat of attention, lit up: Baime, after all, was focusing

deeply. But it was a quieting of activity that stood out. A bundle of

neurons in the superior parietal lobe, toward the top and back of the

brain, had gone dark. This region, nicknamed the

" orientation association area, " processes information about space and

time, and the orientation of the body in space.

It determines where the body ends and the rest of the world begins.

Specifically, the left orientation area creates the sensation of a

physically delimited body; the right orientation area creates the

sense of the physical space in which the body exists. (An injury to

this area can so cripple your ability to maneuver in physical space

that you cannot figure the distance and angles needed to navigate the

route to a chair across the room.)

SELF AND NOT-SELF

The orientation area requires sensory input to do its calculus. " If

you block sensory inputs to this region, as you do during the intense

concentration of meditation, you prevent the brain from forming the

distinction between self and not-self, " says Newberg. With no

information from the senses arriving, the left orientation area cannot

find any boundary between the self and the world. As a result, the

brain seems to have no choice but " to perceive the self as endless and

intimately interwoven with everyone and everything, " Newberg and

d'Aquili write in " Why God Won't Go Away. " The right orientation area,

equally bereft of sensory data, defaults to a feeling of infinite

space. The meditators feel that they have touched infinity.

I felt communion, peace, openness to experience ... [There was] an

awareness and responsiveness to God's presence around me, and a

feeling of centering, quieting, nothingness, [as well as] moments of

fullness of the presence of God. [God was] permeating my being.

This is how her 45-minute prayer made Sister Celeste, a Franciscan

nun, feel, just before Newberg SPECT-scanned her. During her most

intensely religious moments, when she felt a palpable sense of God's

presence and an absorption of her self into his being, her brain

displayed changes like those in the Tibetan Buddhist meditators: her

orientation area went dark. What Sister Celeste and the other nuns in

the study felt, and what the meditators experienced, Newberg

emphasizes, " were neither mistakes nor wishful thinking. They reflect

real, biologically based events in the brain. " The fact that spiritual

contemplation affects brain activity gives the experience a reality

that psychologists and neuroscientists had long denied it, and

explains why people experience ineffable, transcendent events as

equally real as seeing a wondrous sunset or stubbing their toes.

PINPOINTING SPIRITUAL EXPERIENCE

That a religious experience is reflected in brain activity is not too

surprising, actually. Everything we experience-from the sound of

thunder to the sight of a poodle, the feeling of fear and the thought

of a polka-dot castle-leaves a trace on the brain. Neurotheology is

stalking bigger game than simply affirming that spiritual feelings

leave neural footprints, too. By pinpointing the brain areas involved

in spiritual experiences and tracing how such experiences arise, the

scientists hope to learn whether anyone can have such experiences, and

why spiritual experiences have the qualities they do.

I could hear the singing of the planets, and wave after wave of light

washed over me. But ... I was the light as well ... I no longer

existed as a separate I' ... I saw into the structure of the universe.

I had the impression of knowing beyond knowledge and being given

glimpses into ALL.

That was how author Sophy Burnham described her experience at Machu

Picchu, in her 1997 book " The Ecstatic Journey. " Although there was no

scientist around to whisk her into a SPECT machine and confirm that

her orientation area was AWOL, it was almost certainly quiescent. That

said, just because an experience has a neural correlate does not mean

that the experience exists " only " in the brain, or that it is a

figment of brain activity with no independent reality. Think of what

happens when you dig into an apple pie. The brain's olfactory region

registers the aroma of the cinnamon and fruit. The somatosensory

cortex processes the feel of the flaky crust on the tongue and lips.

The visual cortex registers the sight of the pie.

Remembrances of pies past (Grandma's kitchen, the corner bake shop

....) activate association cortices. A neuroscientist with too much

time on his hands could undoubtedly produce a PET scan of " your brain

on apple pie. " But that does not negate the reality of the pie. " The

fact that spiritual experiences can be associated with distinct neural

activity does not necessarily mean that such experiences are mere

neurological illusions, " Newberg insists. " It's no safer to say that

spiritual urges and sensations are caused by brain activity than it is

to say that the neurological changes through which we experience the

pleasure of eating an apple cause the apple to exist. "

The bottom line, he says, is that " there is no way to determine

whether the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience

mean that the brain is causing those experiences ... or is instead

perceiving a spiritual reality. "

PRODUCING VISIONS

In fact, some of the same brain regions involved in the pie experience

create religious experiences, too. When the image of a cross, or a

Torah crowned in silver, triggers a sense of religious awe, it is

because the brain's visual-association area, which interprets what the

eyes see and connects images to emotions and memories, has learned to

link those images to that feeling. Visions that arise during prayer or

ritual are also generated in the association area: electrical

stimulation of the temporal lobes (which nestle along the sides of the

head and house the circuits responsible for language, conceptual

thinking and associations) produces visions.

Temporal-lobe epilepsy-abnormal bursts of electrical activity in these

regions-takes this to extremes. Although some studies have cast doubt

on the connection between temporal-lobe epilepsy and religiosity,

others find that the condition seems to trigger vivid, Joan of

Arc-type religious visions and voices. In his recent book " Lying

Awake, " novelist Mark Salzman conjures up the story of a cloistered

nun who, after years of being unable to truly feel the presence of

God, begins having visions.

The cause is temporal-lobe epilepsy. Sister John of the Cross must

wrestle with whether to have surgery, which would probably cure

her-but would also end her visions. Dostoevsky, Saint Paul, Saint

Teresa of Avila, Proust and others are thought to have had

temporal-lobe epilepsy, leaving them obsessed with matters of the spirit.

Although temporal-lobe epilepsy is rare, researchers suspect that

focused bursts of electrical activity called " temporal-lobe

transients " may yield mystical experiences. To test this idea, Michael

Persinger of Laurentian University in Canada fits a helmet jury-rigged

with electromagnets onto a volunteer's head.

The helmet creates a weak magnetic field, no stronger than that

produced by a computer monitor. The field triggers bursts of

electrical activity in the temporal lobes, Persinger finds, producing

sensations that volunteers describe as supernatural or spiritual: an

out-of-body experience, a sense of the divine. He suspects that

religious experiences are evoked by mini electrical storms in the

temporal lobes, and that such storms can be triggered by anxiety,

personal crisis, lack of oxygen, low blood sugar and simple

fatigue-suggesting a reason that some people " find God " in such

moments. Why the temporal lobes? Persinger speculates that our left

temporal lobe maintains our sense of self. When that region is

stimulated but the right stays quiescent, the left interprets this as

a sensed presence, as the self departing the body, or of God.

Those most open to mystical experience tend also to be open to new

experiences generally. They are usually creative and innovative, with

a breadth of interests and a tolerance for ambiguity (as determined by

questionnaire).

They also tend toward fantasy, notes David Wulff ... I was alone upon

the seashore ... I felt that I

.... return[ed] from the solitude of individuation into the

consciousness of unity with all that is ... Earth, heaven, and sea

resounded as in one vast world encircling harmony ... I felt myself

one with them.

Is an experience like this one, described by the German philosopher

Malwida von Meysenburg in 1900, within the reach of anyone? " Not

everyone who meditates encounters these sorts of unitive experiences, "

says Robert K.C. Forman, a scholar of comparative religion at Hunter

College in New York City. " This suggests that some people may be

genetically or temperamentally predisposed to mystical ability. " Those

most open to mystical experience tend also to be open to new

experiences generally. They are usually creative and innovative, with

a breadth of interests and a tolerance for ambiguity (as determined by

questionnaire).

They also tend toward fantasy, notes David Wulff, " suggesting a

capacity to suspend the judging process that distinguishes imaginings

and real events. " Since " we all have the brain circuits that mediate

spiritual experiences, probably most people have the capacity for

having such experiences, " says Wulff. " But it's possible to foreclose

that possibility. If you are rational, controlled, not prone to

fantasy, you will probably resist the experience. "

MEASURING SPIRITUAL FORCE

In survey after survey since the 1960s, between 30 and 40 percent or

so of those asked say they have, at least once or twice, felt " very

close to a powerful, spiritual force that seemed to lift you out of

yourself. " Gallup polls in the 1990s found that 53 percent of American

adults said they had had " a moment of sudden religious awakening or

insight. " Reports of mystical experience increase with education,

income and age (people in their 40s and 50s are most likely to have

them).

Yet many people seem no more able to have such an experience than to

fly to Venus. One explanation came in 1999, when Australian

researchers found that people who report mystical and spiritual

experiences tend to have unusually easy access to subliminal

consciousness. " In people whose unconscious thoughts tend to break

through into consciousness more readily, we find some correlation with

spiritual experiences, " says psychologist Michael Thalbourne of the

University of Adelaide. Unfortunately, scientists are pretty clueless

about what allows subconscious thoughts to pop into the consciousness

of some people and not others. The single strongest predictor of such

experiences, however, is something called " dissociation. " In this

state, different regions of the brain disengage from others. " This

theory, which explains hypnotizability so well, might explain mystical

states, too, " says Michael Shermer, director of the Skeptics Society,

which debunks paranormal phenomena. " Something really seems to be

going on in the brain, with some module dissociating from the rest of

the cortex. "

-------------------------

-------------------------

<http://tinyurl.com/9pgf3>

Era

Back to top

Reply to sender | Reply to group | Reply via web post

Messages in this topic (2)

1b.

Re: neuropsychology

Posted by: " jodyrrr " jodyrrr jodyrrr

Mon Apr 9, 2007 12:24 am (PST)

Guruphiliac , " Era Molnar " <mi_nok wrote:

[snip]

> The bottom line, he says, is that " there is no way to determine

> whether the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience

> mean that the brain is causing those experiences ... or is instead

> perceiving a spiritual reality. "

The bottom line, I say, is that " there is no way to determine whether

the neurological changes associated with spiritual experience mean that

a spiritual reality is actually being perceived. Given the wide

proliferation of ideologies which appear to produce spiritual

experience, it's actually more reasonable to assume that these

experiences are indeed produced in the brain. "