God on Brain

در مورد neurotheology قدیم ها هم حرف زده بودم، توی آرشیو پاک شده م. این علم، در مورد مدل کردن و شبیه سازی بیوشیمی تجربه دینی در مغزه. مثلاً میگن چه جوی آدمهایی بیشتر "استعداد تجربیات معنوی" دارند و این تجربیات دقیقاً به چه فرآیندهایی توی مغز مربوط میشه و چیزهایی از این قبیل. مثلاً گفته میشه که نزول وحی جنسش از نوع، یا حتی خود صرع بوده و هست. البته اینها نه چیزی رو اثبات میکنه نه رد، اما میتونه خیلی جالب باشه. این قسمت های پایین رو از اینجا بلند کرده م.

Scientists like Andrew Newberg want to see just what does happen during moments of faith. He worked with Buddhist, Michael Baime, to study the brain during meditation. By injecting radioactive tracers into Michael's bloodstream as he reached the height of a meditative trance, Newberg could use a brain scanner to image the brain at a religious climax.

The bloodflow patterns showed that the temporal lobes were certainly involved but also that the brain's parietal lobes appeared almost completely to shut down. The parietal lobes give us our sense of time and place. Without them, we may lose our sense of self. Adherants to many of the world's faiths regard a sense of personal insignificance and oneness with a deity as something to strive for. Newberg's work suggests a neurological basis for what religion tries to generate.

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If brain function offers insight into how we experience religion, does it say anything about why we do? There is evidence that people with religious faith have longer, healthier lives. This hints at a survival benefit for religious people. Could we have evolved religious belief?
Prof Dawkins (who subscribes to evolution to explain human development) thinks there could be an evolutionary advantage, not to believing in god, but to having a brain with the capacity to believe in god. That such faith exists is a by-product of enhanced intelligence. Prof Ramachandran denies that finding out how the brain reacts to religion negates the value of belief. He feels that brain circuitry like that Persinger and Newberg have identified, could amount to an antenna to make us receptive to god.

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The connection between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious feeling has led one Canadian scientist to try stimulating them. (They are near your ears.) 80% of Dr Michael Persinger's experimental subjects report that an artificial magnetic field focused on those brain areas gives them a feeling of 'not being alone'. Some of them describe it as a religious sensation.

این فکر کنم همونجاست که بهش میگن GodSpot. از لحاظ مکانی البته ربطی به G-Spot نداره (دور و بر گوش و اینا :) )

The first clinical evidence to link the temporal lobes with religious sensations came from monitoring how TLE patients responded to sets of words. In an experiment where people were shown either neutral words (table), erotic words (sex) or religious words (god), the control group was most excited by the sexually loaded words. This was picked up as a sweat response on the skin. People with temporal lobe epilepsy did not share this apparent sense of priorities. For them, religious words generated the greatest reaction. Sexual words were less exciting than neutral ones.

این قسمت رو که میخوندم یاد موقعی افتادم که ج.پ میگفت با این مدیتیشن تجربه ای میکنی که از صد بار از ارگزم لذت بخش تره! مثلا اینجوری میخواست ترقیبم کنه. یه کلمه تو وبلاگ نوشته بودم فکر میکنم تو زندگی قبلیم فاحشه بوده م، دست از سرم بر نمیداشتند!! مردم فرق "نوشته" و "خاطره" رو نمیفهمند! {احسان با تو هم هستم ها!! :) }