Psychiatry and neuroscience professor Marc Potenza, worked on this study. The medial thalamus and caudate, areas which process sensory input and emotions, also displayed reduced activity. Researchers believe this is why we lose ourselves during a spiritual awakening, in union with the divine. This regions is responsible for self-awareness and awareness of others. increased attention), less activity occurred in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL). While more activity was shown in the parietal cortex (i.e. The neurological pattern exhibited when a spiritual experience was recounted was the same across all volunteers. One week later, participants were put into an fMRI machine and made to listen to a recording of a neutral female voice, who recount their experiences back to them. This helped build what researchers called their “imagery script.” Volunteers were asked to recall stressful and peaceful experiences. They were each asked to recall a time when they had a spiritual experience. To conduct the study, researchers recruited 27 young adults from in and around New Haven, Connecticut. This region is responsible for our attention. In it, Oxford University professor Lisa Miller and colleagues at Yale and Columbia universities, isolated spirituality-related activity in a part of the brain called the parietal cortex. The results were published in the journal Cerebral Cortex. In the last few decades, neuroscientists have been seeking out what such experiences look like, from their perspective. Traditionally, we’ve known very little about the neurobiological mechanisms responsible for a spiritual awakening. This is separate from religion which often includes dogma, religious texts, and some sort of institution. Generally speaking, a spiritual experience is one that transcends the self and connects the person to the universe in a profound and meaningful way. It also varies across cultures and has been interpreted differently at different times in history. Though they seem diametrically opposed, could there ever be a marriage between the two? Might not science inform spirituality and vice-versa? One problem is, there’s a great range of opinions on what exactly spirituality is. We often think of spirituality as something wholly outside of science.
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