Where God Lives In Your Brain

TheSync writes: "NewScientist has a story about research into the 'religious brain,' the part of the brain responsible for a deep, calming, spiritual feeling. Brains of Tibetan Buddhists meditating and Franciscan Nuns deep in prayer were imaged using Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT). It was found that during these spiritual experiences, an area of the parietal lobe in the brain became much less active." The article is interesting as well for the other areas of brain research it touches on. Where can I get a God helmet?

Comments

Bad science, or at best weak science.

[Black Parrot]

OK, he was looking for the neural correlate of religious experience, he found something, and he announced success.

He should be the first person to exercise skepticism toward his own findings. Why not run the experiment on people practicing TM, or absorbed in a programming problem, or getting laid, or any other non-religious activity that brings about extreme focus in the brain, and see whether you get the same effect?

It's way too easy to find some general phenomenon and think you've found the specific phenomenon you've been looking for. That's the danger of focussing your career on a search for something that you "know" must exist.

Maybe he's right, but I'll hold out for a second opinion.

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"God" brain

[chaidawg]

If you are interested in this, I suggest a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, by Julian Jaynes.

Jaynes speaks of consciousness as a development of only the past 3 millenia. Before that, the lobes of the brains comunicated in a way such that one half acted as the "God" brain. To say that is a huge generalization of the book, so I suggest you go read it.
If you want, you can buy it at Amazon

Value of this research

[Dancin_Santa]

So they found that the brain stops functioning when a person is "talking to God". Huge surprise!

Dancin Santa