The Neuropsychology of Religion (Part 2)

Neurological states associated with religious experiences strongly suggest that there are specific regions of the brain that produce them

A New Mind Journal Original
Jaime F. Adriazola
American Graduate University, Washington DC

Hamer and his colleagues used a measure (psychological test) of spiritual development and self-transcendence developed by Robert Cloninger, a psychiatrist at the University of Washington, School of Medicine in St. Louis. Cloninger's "Temperament and Character Inventory" added measures that correlated with the following three traits: self-forgetfulness, transpersonal identification, and mysticism. He administered his temperament test and character inventory on ordinary people, and then analyzed the results using statistical techniques that could find correlations in their responses. It was found that all three traits are highly correlated with each other, and were not as highly correlated with any other aspect of temperament and personality.

Hamer and his colleagues then began to determine whether self-transcendence is a hereditary trait. They did this by administering the ‘Cloninger Temperament and Character Inventory’ on pairs of identical twins and fraternal twins.

They found that identical twins were twice as likely to have very similar scores on the Inventory of Temperament and Characters rather than if they were fraternal twins. This result is consistent with the idea that the personality traits of the Temperament and Character Inventory measures are inherited genetically, since identical twins are twice as genetically related as fraternal twins.



Hamer and his colleagues then compared the results of self-transcendence with measures of environmental influence. They found that similarities and differences in the environment could only explain a small fraction of the differences in the Temperament and Character Inventory scores between identical twins versus fraternal twins.

Finally, Hamer and his colleagues began to determine whether the self-transcendence scores were related to specific genes. To make the long story short, Hamer and his colleagues found that specific mutations of a specific gene were highly correlated with differences in self-transcendence as determined by Cloninger's Temperament and Character Inventory.

The specific gene they found and that correlates with self-transcendence is called “VMAT2”, and is known to encode a protein that wraps and regulates levels of neurochemicals called mono amines that are in the brain. These mono amines regulate our moods and emotions; large amounts of them make us feel energized and euphoric, while an insufficiency of them could result in depression. Further analysis of the correlations between the different forms of the VMAT2 gene and measures of personality showed that differences in the VMAT2 gene were not correlated with other personality differences. Conversely, only self-transcendence correlated with changes in the VMAT2 gene.



Hamer also related the function of the VMAT2 gene to the same type of brain function investigated by Persinger, Ramachandran, Saber, Rabin, D'Aquili, and Newberg. Differences in temporal lobe and limbic system function correlate with differences in monoamine levels in those regions of the brain. Additionally, the differences in brain activity, measured by d'Aquili and Newberg, are also correlated with mono amines that are regulated by the protein encoded by the VMAT2 gene.

In other words, not only is the ability of religious experiences measured by specific regions of the brain and neurochemicals, but a specific gene is responsible for the regulation of those neurochemicals in those regions of the brain.

Again, the specific traits produced as expressions of specific genes are evolutionary adaptations. They exist and do what they do because in the past, individuals who had such traits survived and reproduced more often than those who did not.

It seems clear that the capacity for religious experience is an evolutionary adaptation. However, the capacity for language along with the capacity for religious experience does not cause us to learn a particular religion. Instead, it predisposes us to experience particular sensations in particular circumstances. When we perform a particular religious ritual or see (or hear, or smell, or taste, or touch) a particular religious symbol, and if it is performed or is perceived under the right conditions, we experience a strong surge of emotions which we interpret in the context of our cultural traditions learned.

This explains why religious rituals and symbols provoke powerful emotions in people educated in a tradition that venerates such rituals and symbols. On the other hand, these rituals and symbols virtually have no effect on people who are not educated in those traditions. This also explains why blasphemy is such a heinous sin against religious belief: it undermines the emotional meaning of the ritual or religious symbol, making it as insignificant as it would be for someone who was not educated to experience its effects. This is the difference between the sacred and the profane: sacred actions and their elements produce powerful emotions as profane things do not.



Latest discoveries:
Investigators of the New York State Psychiatric Institute and Columbia University found that the importance of religion or spirituality in individuals may also be related to the thickness of its vertices in the brain. They related the importance of religion or spirituality, but not the frequency of attendance at the 'house of worship', with thicker crusts in the left and right parietal and occipital regions, the right mesial frontal lobe of the right hemisphere, and the cuneus and pre-cuneus in the left hemisphere. The study was published this month in the journalJAMA Psychology. Significantly, this relationship between spiritual importance and cortex thickness was found to be stronger among those who suffered from severe depression. They mentioned that those who expressed a stronger spiritual inclination also showed thicker crusts over the left and right hemispheres. "A thicker cortex associated with a high importance of religion or spirituality can confer resilience to the development of depressive illness in individuals with high familial risk of major depression, possibly expanding a cortical reserve that counteracts to a certain extent the vulnerability, which the cortical thinning raises, to develop depressive family illness."

Significantly, the researchers stated that their findings are simply correlational; as the importance of religion does not necessarily cause greater thickness, or vice versa.



Psychology professor Brick Johnstone also said that, "Finding a neuropsychological basis for spirituality, but is not isolated to a specific area of the brain”. For the study published in the International Journal for the Psychology of Religion, Johnstone and his colleagues studied 20 people with traumatic brain injuries affecting the right parietal lobe, a brain area located a few inches above the right ear. The team interviewed the participants about their spiritual beliefs, wondering how close they felt to a Power, and if they considered their lives to be part of a divine plan.

They found that those participants with more significant lesions in their right parietal lobe expressed a feeling of greater closeness to a higher power. "Neuropsychology researchers have consistently shown that impairment in the right side of the brain diminishes one's focus on the self."



Professor Johnstone also measured the frequency of participants' religious practices, such as attending church or listening to religious programs. Johnstone compared these measures to activity rates in the frontal lobe and found a connection between increased activity in this part of the brain and increased participation in religious practices. "This finding indicates that spiritual experiences are likely to be associated with different parts of the brain." "Certain parts of the brain play more predominant roles, but they all work together to facilitate the spiritual experiences of individuals," Johnstone finally said.

References:
Allen D. MacNeill: Evolutionary Psychology.
D'Aquili: Because God? Brain Science and the Biology of Belief will not leave.
D'Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg: Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of
Religious Experience. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press.
Dawkins, Richard; The Desilution of God: New York: Mariner Books, 2007. Dennett.
Daniel C .; Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon, New York.
Penguin, Hamer, Dean H.: The Gene of God: How Faith is Wired in our Genes.
New York: Doubleday.
Harris, Sam: The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason, New York.
Ramachandran, Vilayanur S., and Sandra Blakeslee: Phantoms in the Brain: Probing the
Mysteries of the Human Mind. New York.
Miller L, Vansal R, Wickramaratne P, et al. Neuroanatomical correlates of religiosity and spirituality, one study in adults with high and low familial risk for depression. JAMA Psychiatry.
Johnstone B, Bodling A, Cohen D, et al: The "lack of interest" related to the right parietal lobeas the neuropsychological basis of spiritual transcendence.
International Journal of Psychology of Religion.

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The Neuropsychology of Religion (Part 1)

Neurological states associated with religious experiences strongly suggest that there are specific regions of the brain that produce them

A New Mind Journal Original
Jaime F. Adriazola
American Graduate University, Washington DC

It has been 145 years since Charles Darwin wrote his famous book "The Descent of Man" (1871), where he argued that humans do not have an innate instinct to believe in God. "Belief in God has often been not only the Great, but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and inferior animals. However, it is impossible. . . to hold that this belief is innate or instinctive in men."

This conclusion is based on the general observation that many human cultures do not include in their beliefs a deity that can be interpreted as being, in any way conceptually similar to the Judeo-Christian monotheistic God. However, Darwin went on to point out that ... "The belief in omnipresent spiritual entities seems to be universal; and it seems to have come from a considerable advance of man's reason, and from a greater advance in his faculties of imagination, curiosity, and questioning."



In other words, there seems to be no innate tendency to believe in the monotheistic God of the Judeo-Christian religion or to believe in some supernatural force or entity. Why could this be? Why is atheism not the universal result of the advancement of natural science?

The answer is inescapable. Our minds are adapted to think religiously, rather than rationally, and this is the result of our evolutionary history. The capacity for religious experience is found in all human societies. However, within each society there is considerable variation among individuals to the extent that they have such religious beliefs, and that such beliefs seem to modify their behavior.

Likewise, this ability, as well as human language capacity, has been empirically associated with specific neurological structures of the human nervous system. The capacity for human language and participation in war may be causally linked to specific ecological circumstances. The capacity for religious experience has consequences for those who have it: people who have the ability to believe in the supernatural (and especially to act in those beliefs) under certain circumstances, having high rates of survival and reproduction.



The most likely context for the capacity for religious experience to evolve is the same chronic, though episodic, small-scale warfare observed between our primate cousins ​​and our evolved ancestors. Moreover, not only has the capacity for religious experience been the result of war, but making war itself is more likely.

The capacities for religious experience and war are mutually reinforcing. They are a sort of evolutionary arms race which can be succinctly as a "law": religion facilitates the war, which in turn facilitates religion.

As Darwin said, the ubiquity of religious belief in our species is strong evidence that the capacity for such a belief is a specific evolutionary adaptation of the species. And, like all traits evolved, there is considerable variation within the human groups for this trait. In fact, precisely this variation is the prerequisite for evolution through natural selection.

In addition, the observation that most people, even in our technological culture, believe in the supernatural, essentially without empirical evidence, is strong evidence for the idea that the capacity for such a belief is "wired in our brains." And, like all evolutionary psychological mechanisms, one can ask the question, "What is the use?" Or, "What is the biological function of the capacity for religious belief?" As we shall see, it certainly seems that the evidence points to the conclusion that: "The ability of religious belief increases our ability to participate in war, which in turn improves our fitness."



Michael Persinger, a professor of psychology at Laurentian University in Canada, published “Neuropsychological Bases of Belief in God". In it, Persinger argued that a specific neurological condition known as 'temporal lobe epilepsy' produces psychological states that are similar to the religious experiences of people like Joan of Arc and St. Paul in 'The Road to Damascus'. 'Temporal lobe epilepsy' is different from other forms of temporal lobe epilepsy in which epileptic seizures do not involve seizures, immobility or loss of consciousness. In contrast, a person who has a 'temporal lobe epilepsy' attack observes a change in sensory perception, often involving changes in odors, sounds, tastes, and phantom sensations in the skin. Some people also experience cognitive changes such as 'Déjà Vu' or 'Jamais Vu' during a seizure in ‘temporal lobe epilepsy’, and a significant fraction of these people also experience a greater sense of 'religiosity', including the feeling of a presence Invisible and supernatural.

Researcher Persinger developed a machine, often called the "The God Helmet" (read the full article on 'NewmindJournal.com'), which generates a weak magnetic field in and around the right temporal lobe of a person's brain. Approximately 80 percent of people, in a test of the "Helmet of God", felt the presence of an invisible figure nearby, which is usually interpreted as a supernatural entity, as a figure of God or the spirit of a person absent or dead.



Other researchers, such as Vilayanur S. Ramachandran, have also linked temporal lobe epilepsy and other neurological effects to religious experiences. Ramachandran based his work on the prior research of Norman Geschwind, a clinical psychiatrist. Geschwind described a clinical syndrome, called Geschwind syndrome, which is characterized by hypergraphia (the tendency to write lengthy detailed arguments and descriptions, often on religious subjects), hyper-religiosity, fainting, mutism (the inability to speak at certain events Social), and pedantism (the tendency to extensive discourse, on obscure topics, especially word definitions and the fine points of grammar).

Geschwind hypothesized that this syndrome is a manifestation of a form of mild temporal lobe epilepsy and suggested that it might explain the behavior of some historical hyper-religious figures.

Ramachandran tested the Geschwind hypothesis using a lie detector type device that measures the electrical conductivity of the skin as an indirect indication of emotional arousal. Ramachandran found that people with mild temporal lobe epilepsy reacted differently to religious words than people who did not have temporal lobe epilepsy.

Jeffrey Saver and John Rabin also studied the relationship between temporal lobe epilepsy and extended their recommendations to neurological states generated by the limbic system of the brain and neurochemical states generated by the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs. They noted that a large amount of Americans have reported having religious experiences, characterized by feelings that included the belief that a specific event "should happen”, were aware of "the presence of God," that "God had responded to their Prayers”, which were being protected (or at least looked at) by an invisible presence (often characterized as the spirit of an absent or dead person), who felt the presence of a" sacred spirit in nature "or" presence Evil "or a deep sense of" oneness with the cosmos."



In particular, many people who had such experiences described a sense of depersonalization (they felt "outside themselves") and a sense of being united or part of their environment. They also noted descriptions of such feelings, often interpreted as religious experiences, by epileptics, such as the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoevsky.

They emphasized that such interpretations were just that: the interpretations were not the causes of such experiences, but rather the cognitive means by which people who had experienced such attacks explained their sensations to themselves. In other words, sensations came first, and subsequently, religious explanations.

Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg have recently presented an integrative model of the neurobiological underpinnings of religious experience. In his books, 'The Mind Mysticism: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience' and Why God will not go away: 'Brain Science and the Biology of Belief', the books report how their research in the states of Neurological factors associated with religious experiences strongly suggest that there are specific regions of the brain and states that produce such experiences.

This model is based on his research on neurological correlations between brain functions and regions, as well as the religious experiences of devoutly religious mystics and people. They studied these correlations using brain scans and other measures of brain activity using subjects trained in Eastern and Western meditative traditions i.e. (monks, nuns, and priests). They found that these subjects had consistent patterns of brain activity that were different from those not religiously trained, and that these patterns of brain activity were correlated with specific meditation and religious practices.



Researchers D'Aquili and Newberg have pointed out that the center of the greatest religious experience is a sense of wonder, combined with "sensations slightly pleasing to feelings of ecstasy”. They have shown that such sensations can be induced by rhythmic chanting and body movements, combined with loud music and colorful visual displays. Consequently, the factors that induce these sensations produce a condition of sensory overload and excitation of the sympathetic nervous system, together with simultaneous parasympathetic activation, due to the conscious "damping" of the excitation.

Such sensations are common in two contexts: military training and religious training. It is no coincidence that human beings preparing for war use exactly the same types of sensory stimuli described by d'Aquili and Newberg. They have tied such exhibitions to religious activities and demonstrated the deep similarities between religious and secular rituals: "Patriotic rituals ... emphasize the "holiness" of a nation, or a cause, or even a flag… meaningful idea in a visceral experience."

Researcher Dean Hamer found a correlation between a single human gene and a measure of human behavior that correlates strongly with the capacity for religious experiences. Using a combination of molecular genetic techniques, demographic analysis, and epidemiology, Hamer and his colleagues at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland, showed a strong correlation between a specific gene (called VMAT2), and "self-transcendence" which is correlated with religious experience.
………………….End of part 1

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New roots discovered in the psychiatric field

Newborns whose mothers were exposed during pregnancy to any one of a variety of environmental stressors — such as trauma, illness, and alcohol or drug abuse — become susceptible to various psychiatric disorders that frequently arise later in life. However, it has been unclear how these stressors affect the cells of the developing brain prenatally and give rise to conditions such as schizophrenia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and some forms of autism and bipolar disorders.

*Important Note: The research is in press, corrected proof. Please see below for more information.*

Now, Yale University researchers have identified a single molecular mechanism in the developing brain that sheds light on how cells may go awry when exposed to a variety of different environmental insults. The findings, to be published in the May 7 issue of the journal Neuron, suggest that different types of stressors prenatally activate a single molecular trigger in brain cells that may make exposed individuals susceptible to late-onset neuropsychiatric disorders.

The researchers found that mouse embryos exposed to alcohol, methyl-mercury, or maternal seizures all activate in the developing brain cells a single gene — HSF1 or heat shock factor — which protects and enables some of the brain cells to survive prenatal insult. Mice lacking the HSF1 gene showed structural brain abnormalities and were prone to seizures after birth, even after exposure to very low levels of the toxins.

In addition, researchers created stem cells — which are capable of becoming many different tissue types, including neurons — from biopsies of individuals diagnosed with schizophrenia. Genes from these “schizophrenic” stem cells responded more dramatically when exposed to environmental insults than stem cells obtained from non-schizophrenic individuals. The findings provide support to the thesis that stress induces vulnerable cells to malfunction.

“It appears that different types of environmental stressors can trigger the same condition if they occur at the same period of prenatal development,” said Yale’s Pasko Rakic, senior author of the study. “Conversely, the same environmental stressor may cause different pathologies, if it occurs at different times during pregnancy.”

Since HSF1 activation can potentially serve as a permanent marker of the stressed/damaged cell, it opens the possibility of identifying these cells in adults in order to explore the pathogenesis of postnatal disorders and how to protect vulnerable cells.

Notes about this neuropsychology research

Rakic is the Dorys McConnell Duberg Professor of Neuroscience and Professor of Neurology and Director of the Yale Kavli Institute for Neuroscience and corresponding author. Kazue Hashimoto-Torii formerly of Yale and now at the Center for Neuroscience, Children’s National Medical Center, Washington, DC is lead author of the paper.

The research was funded primarily though grants R01 NS014841, R01 DA023999 and K99/R00-AA018387 from the National Institutes of Health.

Contact: Bill Hathaway – Yale
Source: Yale press release
Image Source: The image is credited Michael Helfenbein and is adapted from the Yale press release
Original Research: Abstract for “Roles of Heat Shock Factor 1 in Neuronal Response to Fetal Environmental Risks and Its Relevance to Brain Disorders” by Kazue Hashimoto-Tori, Masaaki Torii, Mitsuaki Fujimoto, Akira Nakai, Rachid El Fatimy, Valerie Mezger, Min J. Ju, Seiji Ishii, Shih-hui Chao, Kristen J. Brennand11, Fred H. Gage, Pasko Rakic in Neuron. Published online April 10 2014 doi:10.1016/j.neuron.2014.03.002

Important disclaimer: The abstract page offers this notice: “Note to users: Uncorrected proofs are Articles in Press that have been copy edited and formatted, but have not been finalized yet. They still need to be proof-read and corrected by the author(s) and the text could still change before final publication.”