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Psy 07 12 P520 523 Stockdale Layout 1 All of which could be of life-changing import or completely trivial, depending on your outlook. Personally, I feel it would be ARTICLE far more surprising if these neural correlates didn’t occur; and none of these findings directly addresses spirituality or Neuroscience for the soul religion. Many of these studies also lack a control group. Would you see the same Craig Aaen-Stockdale searches for the truth in attempts to explain religious pattern of activation in a non-religious experience and behaviour subject doing relaxation exercises, counting backwards from one hundred, or completing a Sudoku puzzle? We simply The burgeoning field of uddhist meditators have thicker don’t know, because those crucial controls ‘neurotheology’ or ‘spiritual cortex in brain regions associated haven’t been done. neuroscience’ attempts to explain Bwith attention. Magnetically Far stranger and more controversial religious experience and behaviour stimulating someone’s temporal lobe causes is the study of ‘religious experience’. This in neuroscientific terms. Research them to sense a presence in the room. term refers to a plethora of sensations and in this field can swing erratically Temporal lobe epileptics are obsessed experiences, such as an altered state of between the extremes of rigorous with religion. Is God an illusion generated consciousness, a sensation of awe and science and the fringes of by a ‘God module’ in the brain, or is He majesty, the feeling of union with ‘God’ or pseudoscience in a perplexing and communicating with us via structures in oneness with the universe, the perception sometimes downright odd way. the brain specifically designed to transmit that time, space or one’s own self have This lack of quality control stems and receive His Word? dissolved, or an experience of sudden mainly from the fact that it is a field Such findings and debates are enlightenment. This field attracts that polarises opinion – due to the typical of the growing research area of controversy because many of the world’s cosmic significance attached to ‘neurotheology’. Religious behaviours religions rest upon a foundation of each and every research finding, no such as meditation and prayer have been revelation. Prophets – be they Moses, matter how trivial, that emerges studied extensively, since they are Mohammed or the science-fiction author from the confines of the laboratory. voluntary acts possible, if not necessarily turned founder of scientology L. Ron This article plots a course easy, to do in a scanner or beneath an EEG Hubbard – claim to see or hear things that through such research, asking hairnet. The wholly unsurprising upshot of are not verifiable. If these religious whether there is a ‘neuroscience many and various studies (see Schjoedt, experiences are a fabrication of the brain, for the soul’. 2009, for a review) is that there are neural it calls into question the validity of the correlates of these behaviours. When religious message imparted. meditating upon an object, an ideal (such Is there a need for a separate as ‘compassion’) or reciting a prayer, neuroscience of religion, or do we activity in frontal areas increases – as you Temporal anomalies already have the necessary tools to might expect when you are concentrating Much previous work has singled out questions questions understand it? or attending intently. During the temporal lobe as a potential locus Are you convinced by case-studies? ‘transcendental states’, such as a sense for mystical experiences and religious Is it a case of no smoke without fire, of union with God, oneness with the feelings. In 1963, Slater and Beard or are they just ‘anecdata’? universe, or dissolution of corporeal produced a five-paper magnum opus on boundaries, activity in parietal areas, the clinical characteristics of 69 epileptics involved with spatial awareness, who had schizophrenia-like psychoses decreases… or increases, depending on (Beard, 1963; Slater & Beard 1963a, Krueger, F. & Grafman, J. (2012). The to whom you listen. Similarly, when 1963b). Three quarters of the patients neural basis of human belief systems. London: Psychology Press. subjects experience glossolalia (speaking they studied had temporal lobe epilepsy www.michaelshermer.com – The founder in tongues) there is a decrease in frontal (TLE) and 38 per cent claimed to have resources of Skeptic magazine has written activity consistent with the idea that had religious or mystical experiences. several entertaining books on human self-monitoring is taking a back seat On the basis of this sort of evidence, beliefs and allowing speech-production areas Norman Geschwind proposed a to run riot. constellation of characteristics displayed by Alper, M. (1999). The ‘God’ part of the & T.A. Pedley (Eds.) Epilepsy: A Burnet, P.W.J., Eastwood, S.L., Lacey, K. Devinsky, O., Feldmann, E., Bromfield, E. brain. New York: Rogue Press. comprehensive textbook. Vol. II & Harrison, P.J. (1995). The et al. (1991). Structured interview for Bear, D.M. (1979). Temporal lobe epilepsy: (pp.2065–2070). Philadelphia: distribution of 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A partial seizures: Clinical A syndrome of sensory limbic Lippincott–Raven. receptor mRNA in human brain. phenomenology and diagnosis. references hyperconnection. Cortex, 15, 357–384. Booth, J.N. & Persinger, M.A. (2009). Brain Research, 676(1), 157–168. Journal of Epilepsy, 4(2), 107–116. Beard, A.W. (1963). The Schizophrenia- Discrete shifts within the theta band Derr, J.S. & Persinger, M.A. (1989). Devinsky, O. & Lai, G. (2008). Spirituality like psychoses of epilepsy: ii. between the frontal and parietal Geophysical variables and behavior: and religion in epilepsy. Epilepsy and Physical aspects. British Journal of regions of the right hemisphere and LIV. Zeitoun (Egypt) apparitions of the Behaviour, 12, 636–643. Psychiatry, 109, 113–129. the experiences of a sensed Virgin Mary as tectonic strain- Dewhurst, K. & Beard, A.W. (1970). Benson, D.F. & Hermann, B.P. (1998). presence. Journal of Neuropsychiatry induced luminosities. Perceptual and Sudden religious conversions in Personality disorders. In J. Engel Jr. 21(3), 279–283. Motor Skills, 68, 123–128. temporal lobe epilepsy. British 520 vol 25 no 7 july 2012 neurotheology patients with TLE, which later became Studies with hundreds of patients have who present with features of the know as ‘Geschwind syndrome’. This estimated the frequency of religious Geschwind syndrome’ (Benson & was codified by David Bear, who listed experience to be between 1 per cent Hermann, 1998), and other authors the following characteristics: Emotionality, (Kanemoto & Kawai, 1994) and 2.3 per conclude that this reflects the ‘majority Manic tendencies, Depression, Altered cent (Devinsky et al., 1991). Curiously, opinion’ among epileptologists today sexuality, Anger, Hostility, Aggression, this seems to be much lower than the (Hughes, 2005a). Dissecting claims that Religiosity, Paranoia, Guilt, Viscosity and incidence of religious experience in the various religious figures suffered from Hypergraphia (Bear, 1979; Geschwind, normal population, which varies between epilepsy, neurologist John Hughes argues 1979; Waxman & Geschwind, 1975). 20 and 60 per cent (Saver & Rabin, that hallucinations are actually very These personality characteristics became 1997), still it is worthwhile to look in uncommon in epilepsy: ‘Epileptic popularly known as ‘temporal lobe detail at the case histories of this handful phenomena are nearly always brief and personality’. of hyper-religious patients. Of the 137 primitive, like light flashes’ (Hughes, However, it seems to me that the patients with TLE studied by Ogata and 2005b), which certainly doesn’t sound evidence for hyper-religiosity in TLE isn’t Miyakawa (1998), only three (2.2 per anything like the ecstatic and complex terribly compelling. The widely-cited Slater cent) were found to have had religious visions of heaven and hell reported by and Beard study suffers from the fact that experiences. Curiously, all three had TLE Joan of Arc or Christina the Astonishing. the individual cases described were cherry- with (again) psychosis and even more Similarly, the fact that seizures originate in picked by the authors during the course of interestingly, in each case their mothers the temporal lobe is no reason to implicate their routine clinical practice precisely or mothers-in-law had profound influence that part of the brain in spiritual matters. because they were unusual cases. Three over their religious or spiritual As Vilayanur Ramachandran, himself a quarters of the patients that reported development. A more prosaic conclusion proponent of a temporal lobe link, says, religious experiences had TLE, but this could be that they were hyper-religious ‘the changes that have triggered these is the same proportion of TLE patients because they were living in a religion- patients’ religious fervour could be in the sample as a whole, and as far occurring anywhere, not necessarily in as I can tell from their data, the temporal lobes’ (Ramachandran & religiosity seems to be completely Blakeslee, 1998, p.187). Neuropsychiatrist uncorrelated with the presence of and expert on near-death experiences, temporal lobe symptoms in the Peter Fenwick (quoted in Hughes, 2005a) patient’s history. Their data could concludes: ‘It is likely that the earlier therefore equally implicate epilepsy accounts of temporal lobe epilepsy and (in general), schizophrenia or temporal lobe pathology and the psychosis in the production of relationship to mystic and religious states hyper-religiosity.
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