Listen to this PodcastMore 60-Second Science
-
The Wisdom of Psychopaths
In this engrossing journey into the lives of psychopaths and their infamously crafty behaviors, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton reveals that there is a...
Read More »
[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.]
In America there’s a feeling of Christmas. But that’s not the only winter holiday going on. Jews are lighting Hanukkah candles, Muslims recently feasted on Eid al-Adha, and pagans celebrated the solstice. So it’s a good time for researchers to consider spirituality—from a scientific point of view.
One experience central to major religions around the world is that of transcendence, the idea of almost losing a sense of self to the feeling that there’s something bigger out there. Now scientists at the University of Missouri say they’ve located that experience in our brains. All the people studied, from Buddhist monks in meditation to Francescan nuns in prayer, experience this transcendence. And they all have decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. That area has to do with senses such as orienting yourself in the space around you. The study was published in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science.
Interestingly, people with injuries to the right parietal lobe report increased levels of spiritual experiences. The researchers are quick to say that this connection doesn’t minimize the role of religion, and that religious or spiritual experiences might decrease activity in that region and thus increase that special feeling of transcendence. Just in time for the holidays.
—Cynthia Graber
60-Second Science is a daily podcast. Subscribe to this Podcast: RSS | iTunes
See what we're tweeting about
9 Comments
Add CommentWhich means, the whole world is getting demolished by a bunch of stoned people.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisInteresting that you capitalized all the holidays and celebrants except Pagans and Solstice...
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisOh, great, now religions will start wars based not on who has the better God, but on who has the better right parietal lobe dampening techniques.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAs I have always believed, prayer dulls the brain.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIs there a way to stimulate the right parietal lobe and thus to minimize any possible religious experiences?
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisIt would be easier just to disenfranchise them on the basis of being impaired by virtue of auto intoxication.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisMeditation is not necessarily religious; so, I think the effects are simply a result of the well-known results of meditation. I am a devout atheist ( god is the ultimate ad hoc hypothesis) but I use meditation a lot, to calm myself, and to put myself to sleep, for instance.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisA prayer is for what, it is for relaxing the mind and body, so as one can put his brain activity on prayer. The meditation while praying helps the brain to relax. Other wise it may be wandering in the day to day problems. As one needs a good sleep for body merchanism for its revival meditation is for the brairn as well as for the body. This helps the extra free radicals that get accumulated in the brain and body to be reduced by the flow and circulation of the blood, after which one can concentrate more on their work or innovate or creativity.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisPerhaps more care and less subjectivity should be injected into future reportings. Meditation decreases left parietal activity more than right parietal while increasing bilateral frontal cortex activity Among other regions of the brain, translating into decrease of sense of where you are & increase of focus and concentration. Results from a meditation study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences have shown that mental training through meditation (and presumably other disciplines) can itself change the inner workings and circuitry of the brain. Neuroplasticity does not stop when you're an adult.
Reply | Report Abuse | Link to thisAn alternate and perhaps better reporting of this area of findings can be found here
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43006-2005Jan2.html
Alternatively, search for Richard Davidson, Tibetan monks and powerful gamma waves.