Links to Spirituality Found in the Brain

LiveScience Staff, LiveScience.com

Scientists have identified areas of the brain that, when damaged, lead to greater spirituality. The findings hint at the roots of spiritual and religious attitudes, the researchers say.

The study, published in the Feb. 11 issue of the journal Neuron, involves a personality trait called self-transcendence, which is a somewhat vague measure of spiritual feeling, thinking, and behaviors. Self-transcendence "reflects a decreased sense of self and an ability to identify one's self as an integral part of the universe as a whole," the researchers explain.

Before and after surgery, the scientists surveyed patients who had brain tumors removed. The surveys generate self-transcendence scores.

Selective damage to the left and right posterior parietal regions of the brain induced a specific increase in self-transcendence, or ST, the surveys showed.

"Our symptom-lesion mapping study is the first demonstration of a causative link between brain functioning and ST," said Dr. Cosimo Urgesi from the University of Udine in Italy. "Damage to posterior parietal areas induced unusually fast changes of a stable personality dimension related to transcendental self-referential awareness. Thus, dysfunctional parietal neural activity may underpin altered spiritual and religious attitudes and behaviors."

Previous neuroimaging studies had linked activity within a large network in the brain that connects the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortexes with spiritual experiences, "but information on the causative link between such a network and spirituality is lacking," explains lead study author, Urgesi said.

One study, reported in 2008, suggested that the brain's right parietal lobe defines "Me," and people with less active Me-Definers are more likely to lead spiritual lives.

The finding could lead to new strategies for treating some forms of mental illness.

"If a stable personality trait like ST can undergo fast changes as a consequence of brain lesions, it would indicate that at least some personality dimensions may be modified by influencing neural activity in specific areas," said Dr. Salvatore M. Aglioti from Sapienza University of Rome. "Perhaps novel approaches aimed at modulating neural activity might ultimately pave the way to new treatments of personality disorders."

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20100212/sc_livescience/linkstospiritualityfoundinthebrain;_ylt=Asl_AAFWuOl4.becfbqkQl0br7sF

Scientists See God on the Brain

Jeremy Hsu, Staff Writer, LiveScience.com

Science can't say whether God represents a loving,

vengeful or nonexistent being. But researchers have

revealed for the first time how such religious beliefs

trigger different parts of the brain.

Brain scans showed that participants fell back on higher

thought patterns when reacting to religious statements,

whether trying to figure out God's thoughts and emotions

or thinking about metaphorical meaning behind religious

teachings.

"That suggests that religion is not a special case of a

belief system, but evolved along with other belief and

social cognitive abilities," said Jordan Grafman, a

cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of

Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.

Such results fit with previous research which shows that

no single "God spot" exists in the brain. Both believers

and nonbelievers participated in the new study, detailed in

this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the

National Academy of Sciences.

A first part of the study established a range or spectrum of

religious beliefs relating to God's perceived involvement in

this world, God's perceived emotion, and personal

experiences as opposed to abstract doctrine. The second

part examined how participants responded to religious

statements reflecting those beliefs, with the help of fMRI

scanners.

The brain scans showed that people use known, higher-

function brain regions to sort out their thoughts on God

and religion. For instance, parts of the brain linked with

theory of mind (ToM) lit up when trying to understand a

supposedly detached God's intentions - although

individual minds varied wildly when pondering a more

involved God.

A possible explanation: "Probably because we would tend

to use theory of mind when we were puzzled, concerned,

or threatened by another's behavior," Grafman told

LiveScience.

People again relied on theory of mind, as well as brain

regions that detect emotion through facial expression and

language, when they read statements reflecting God's

anger. Statements of God's love stimulated regions

connected with positive emotions and suppression of

sadness 

Unsurprisingly, statements of religious doctrine activated

parts of the brain that help decode metaphor and 

abstractness. That contrasted with statements reflecting

religious experience, which prodded the brain to retrieve

memories and imagery of self in action.

Even statements that believers or nonbelievers disagreed

with produced intriguing results.

"Reading a statement that you have been asked to

compare your own personal beliefs with certainly will

activate your own belief system," Grafman pointed out.

He and his colleagues observed brain regions relating to 

disgust or conflict lighting up in response.

One question that remains unanswered is whether religion

evolved as a central functional preoccupation for human

brains in early societies, or whether it simply relied on

brain regions which had evolved for other types of

thought-processing.

Future research may also try to see if human brains

respond similarly for different religions, given that this

study focused only on Western Christian beliefs.

"The more interesting studies will wind up comparing

different belief systems with similar dimensions to see if

they also activate the same brain areas," Grafman said.

"If they do, we can better define why those brain areas

evolved in humans."

Audio: Does Science Condemn God? 

Top 10 Mysteries of the Mind 

All About Cults, Religion and the Paranormal 

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Religion May Help Extend Your Life   

By Serena Gordon, HealthDay Reporter

WEDNESDAY, Nov. 26 (HealthDay News) -- Attending a

weekly religious service, regardless of your faith, may

lower your risk of death by 20 percent compared to

people who don't attend services, researchers are

reporting.

"Religion is always a hot topic, but particularly now, when

people are perhaps in fear because of the recession and

the threat of terrorism, people are looking for stability, and

religion is something we find people reach out to for that

stability. And, we see some health benefits here," said the

study's lead author, Eliezer Schnall, a clinical assistant

professor of psychology at Yeshiva College at Yeshiva

University in New York City.

"Maybe it's the sense of community, or the support, or

maybe people are less depressed when they join in

religious services," he said, adding that the researchers

tried to control the data to account for many of these

factors, but "we have not completely explained it all."

Results of the study were published in the current issue of

the journal Psychology and Health.

The study participants came from the large Women's

Health Initiative observational study, and included nearly

95,000 women from all over the United States. The

women were all between 50 and 79 years old at the start

of the study.

When the study began, each woman filled out extensive

questionnaires regarding health history, health behaviors,

psychosocial factors, demographics and religion. Medical

information was obtained yearly for each study volunteer,

and the average follow-up time was 7.7 years.

Before adjusting the data, there was no significant

difference in the risk of death between regular religious

service attendees and those who chose not to attend.

Schnall noted that there were many reasons why this

could be so. But the main reason, he said, could be that

people who go to religious services every week may be in

better physical shape. "Maybe they're just healthy enough

to go to services," he said.

When the researchers adjusted the data to account for

physical health, age, ethnicity, income, education, social

support, important life events and life satisfaction, they

found that weekly religious service attendance was

responsible for a 20 percent reduction in the risk of death.

Attending less than once a week was responsible for a 15

percent drop in the risk of death.

But, attending religious services didn't improve the risk of

death from cardiovascular disease or improve heart

outcomes, the study found.

Although the study noted a decreased risk of death,

Schnall wouldn't say that the prescription for good health

is to attend religious services regularly.

"I'm not saying our study yields such a prescription, but

our findings are intriguing and we do at least have some

ideas of why there is a benefit, but we have not

completely explained it all," he said.

Dr. Harold G. Koenig, founder and co-director of the

Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke

University Medical Center, called the new research "a

very well-done study that provides good, well-controlled

evidence that religious attendance is related to lower

mortality."

"And, they [the researchers] show it's not just the social

factor, it's not just the behavioral factors, and it's not just

that some people might be too sick to be able to go to

church. The researchers controlled well for these, though

they still don't explain it all at the end," said Koenig.

"But," he added, "that doesn't mean there are supernatural

effects, just that we don't fully understand the mechanism

by which religion does this yet."

More information

Read about another study on religion and health at the

American Heart Association

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http://news.yahoo.com/s/hsn/20081127/hl_hsn/religionmayhelpextendyourlife

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