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Theneuroscience of religion, also known as "neurotheology"[1] or "spiritual neuroscience,"[2] seeks to explain the biological and neurological processes behindreligious experience.[3] Researchers in this field study correlations of thebiological neural phenomena, in addition to subjective experiences ofspirituality, in order to explain how brain activity functions in response to religious and spiritual practices and beliefs. This contrasts with thepsychology of religion, which studies thebehavioral responses to religious practices. Some people do warn of the limitations ofneurotheology, as they worry that it may simplify the socio-cultural complexity of religion down to neurological factors.
Researchers that study the field of the neuroscience of religion use a formulation of scientific techniques to understand the correlations between brain pathways in response to spiritually based stimuli. The is used interdisciplinary withneurological andevolutionary studies in order to understand the broadersubjective experiences under which traditionally categorized spiritual or religious practices are organized.[4] This is done through a multilateral approach of scientific and cultural studies. Such studies include but is not limited tofMRI andEEG scans,theological studies, andanthropological studies. By using these approaches, researchers can better understand how spirituality and religion affect the chemistry of human brains and in turn how brain activity may affect experiences oftranscendence and spirituality.
Aldous Huxley coined the term "neurotheology" for the first time[citation needed] in his utopian novelIsland.[5] In this, he described the discipline as a combination of cognitive neuroscience ofreligious experience and spirituality. The term has also been used in a lessscientific context, but rather as a subcategory of philosophy. In some cases, according to the mainstream scientific community, this is considered as apseudoscience.
In Armin W. Geertz article onBrain, Body and Culture: A Biocultural Theory of Religion, the term "biocultural" refers to the simultaneous intersection of humans as both biological and cultural animals.[6] In his article, Geertz discusses the connection between the human brain and the rest of the body, stating that the brain does not work independently, but rather in unison with other sense organs in the body. Essentially, arguing that the "cognition functions in the embodiment of the brain."[7] With this, he says that religio-spiritual practices (such as dancing, chanting, or the use of psychoactive substances) that engage the other senses, have physical effects on brain chemistry. This varies cross-culturally, as different cultural and religious practices engage in different methods to induce senses divine transcendence. This, in turn, demonstrates the connection between biology and cultural contexts, since neither are uniform.
Spiritual practices and religious rituals have been around for hundreds of thousands of years with some dating as far back as 300,000 in theRising Star Cave with the discovery ofHomo Naledi. Dave Vliegenthart's articleCan Neurotheology Explain Religion? aims at answering the question of neurotheology as a legitimate way of explaining religious experiences. In this he defines the term"religion" as a "state of consciousness in which reality is deemed religious and thought and experienced through the lens of a particular human mind-set."[8] This is categorized under feelings of intuition, higher or altered states of consciousness, or a connection to a divine being. Through attempts to achievereligious ecstasy, people have tried to connect to divine or ethereal beings as a way to breed human connection in addition to achieving higher wisdom. This goal of attaining eternal knowledge or harmony with the universe is demonstrated cross culturally, as mentioned above in Geertz's work on biocultural studies.
According to an article inScientific American, "consciousness" is everything a person experiences: a personal sense of reality based on experiences of one's own real life events.[9] The article discusses how neuronal correlates of consciousness and the neurological process that go behind the brain's formations of conscious thinking, saying how the senses relay information through the spinal cord to the cerebellum in order to translate physical experience into neurological interpretation.[9] For hundreds of thousands of years humans have been trying to find ways to alter their states of consciousness. This varies widely across cultural groups, religious practices, and more so when looking from individual to individual. In Ancient Greece,maenads would attempt this by ecstatic and frenzied dance. InSufi Mysticism, also known asRumism, there is a similar practice of thewhirling dervishes where spinning in circles to music is done in order to create a connection with the define. In some more extreme cases, may include forms ofasceticism such as fasting, celibacy, or extreme isolation.
In an attempt to focus and clarify what was a growing interest in this field, 1994 educator and businessman Laurence O. McKinney published the first book on the subject, titledNeurotheology: Virtual Religion in the 21st Century. In addition to being written for a popular audience, it also promoted in the theological journalZygon.[10] According to McKinney, "neurotheology" sources the basis of religious inquiry in relatively recent developmental neurophysiology. McKinney's theory emphasizes how pre-frontal development in humans creates an illusion of chronological time as a fundamental part of normal adult cognition past the age of three. The inability of the adult brain to retrieve earlier images experienced by an infantile brain creates questions such as "Where did I come from?" and "Where does it all go?" He suggests that this neurological process led to the creation of various religious explanations. Moreover, studies behind the experience of death as a peaceful regression into timelessness as the brain dies won praise from readers as varied as writerArthur C. Clarke, eminent theologianHarvey Cox, and theDalai Lama and sparked a new interest in the field.[citation needed] Similarly, radical Catholic theologianEugen Drewermann developed a two-volume critique of traditional conceptions ofGod and thesoul in which he reinterpreted religion based on contemporary neuroscientific research.[11]
The neuroscientistAndrew B. Newberg has claimed that "intensely focused spiritual contemplation triggers an alteration in the activity of the brain that leads one to perceive transcendent religious experiences as solid, tangible reality. In other words, the sensation thatBuddhists calloneness with the universe."[12] Theorientation area requires sensory input to do its calculus. "If you block sensory inputs to this region, as you do during the intense concentration ofmeditation, you prevent the brain from forming the distinction betweenself 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." "The right orientation area, equally bereft of sensory data, defaults to a feeling of infinite space. The meditators feel that they have touched infinity."[13] Still, it has also been argued "that neurotheology should be conceived and practiced within a theological framework."[14]
In 1969, British biologistAlister Hardy founded a Religious Experience Research Centre (RERC) at Oxford after retiring from his post as Linacre Professor of Zoology. CitingWilliam James'sThe Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), he set out to collect first-hand accounts ofnuminous experiences. He was awarded theTempleton Prize before his death in 1985. His successor David Hay suggested inGod's Biologist: A Life of Alister Hardy (2011) that the RERC later dispersed as investigators turned to newer techniques of scientific investigation.
During the 1980sMichael Persinger stimulated thetemporal lobes of human subjects with a weakmagnetic field using an apparatus that popularly became known as the "God helmet"[15] and reported that many of his subjects claimed to experience a "sensed presence" during stimulation.[16] This work has beencriticised,[3][17][18][19] though some researchers[20] have published a replication of one God Helmet experiment.[21]
Granqvistet al. claimed that Persinger's work was notdouble-blind. Participants were oftengraduate students who knew what sort of results to expect, and there was the risk that theexperimenters' expectations would be transmitted to subjects by unconscious cues. The participants were frequently given an idea of the purpose of the study by being asked to fill in questionnaires designed to test their suggestibility toparanormal experiences before the trials were conducted. Granqvistet al. failed toreplicate Persinger's experiments double-blinded, and concluded that the presence or absence of the magnetic field had no relationship with any religious or spiritual experience reported by the participants, but was predicted entirely by their suggestibility and personality traits. Following the publication of this study, Persingeret al. dispute this.[22] One published attempt to create a "haunted room" using environmental "complex" electromagnetic fields based on Persinger's theoretical and experimental work did not produce the sensation of a "sensed presence" and found that reports of unusual experiences were uncorrelated with the presence or absence of these fields. As in the study by Granqvistet al., reports of unusual experiences were instead predicted by the personality characteristics and suggestibility of participants.[23] One experiment with a commercial version of the God helmet found no difference in response to graphic images whether the device was on or off.[24][25]
The first researcher to note and catalog the abnormal experiences associated withtemporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) was neurologistNorman Geschwind, who noted a set of religious behavioral traits associated with TLE seizures.[26] These includehypergraphia,hyperreligiosity,reduced sexual interest,fainting spells, andpedantism, often collectively ascribed to a condition known asGeschwind syndrome.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran explored the neural basis of the hyperreligiosity seen in TLE using thegalvanic skin response (GSR), which correlates with emotional arousal, to determine whether the hyperreligiosity seen in TLE was due to an overall heightened emotional state or was specific to religious stimuli. Ramachandran presented two subjects with neutral, sexually arousing and religious words while measuring GSR. Ramachandran was able to show that patients with TLE showed enhanced emotional responses to the religious words, diminished responses to the sexually charged words, and normal responses to the neutral words. This study was presented as an abstract at a neuroscience conference and referenced in Ramachandran's book,Phantoms in the Brain,[27] which was not published as apeer-reviewed scientific article.
Research byMario Beauregard at theUniversity of Montreal, usingfMRI onCarmelite nuns, has purported to show that religious and spiritual experiences include several brain regions and not a single 'God spot'. As Beauregard has said, "There is no God spot in the brain. Spiritual experiences are complex, like intense experiences with other human beings."[28] The neuroimaging was conducted when the nuns were asked torecall past mystical states, not while actually undergoing them; "subjects were asked to remember and relive (eyes closed) the most intense mystical experience ever felt in their lives as a member of the Carmelite Order."[29]A 2011 study by researchers at theDuke University Medical Center foundhippocampal atrophy is associated with older adults who report life-changing religious experiences, as well as those who are "born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation".[30]
A 2016 study using fMRI found "a recognizable feeling central to ... (Mormon)... devotional practice was reproducibly associated with activation innucleus accumbens,ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and frontal attentional regions.Nucleus accumbens activation preceded peak spiritual feelings by 1–3 s and was replicated in four separate tasks. ... The association of abstract ideas and brain reward circuitry may interact with frontal attentional and emotive salience processing, suggesting a mechanism whereby doctrinal concepts may come to be intrinsically rewarding and motivate behavior in religious individuals."[31]
Some scientists working in the field hypothesize that the basis ofspiritual experience arises in neurological physiology. Speculative suggestions have been made that an increase ofN,N-dimethyltryptamine levels in thepineal gland contribute tospiritual experiences.[32][33] It has also been suggested that stimulation of the temporal lobe by psychoactive ingredients ofmagic mushrooms mimics religious experiences.[34] Thishypothesis has found laboratory validation with respect topsilocybin.[35][36]
[...] these brain scans may provide proof that our brains are built to believe in God. He says there may be universal features of the human mind that actually make it easier for us to believe in a higher power. [...] Anthropologists like Atran say, 'Religion is a byproduct of many different evolutionary functions that organized our brains for day-to-day activity.'
Murphy claims his devices are able to modulate emotional states in addition to enhancing meditation and generating altered states. In flat contradiction of this claim, Gendle & McGrath (2012) found no significant difference in emotional state whether the device was on or off.
