The Exorcism

Ken Hollings

February 2005

The exorcism | Religion on the brain | Fields of vision | All in the mind? | Find out more

All in the mind?

While neurotheology is a relatively new science, Dr Michael Winkelman of the Department of Anthropology at Arizona State University argues that the basic ideas have been around for millennia. He sees the ancient healing practice of shamanism as a method of stimulating the brain's serotonin and opioid neurotransmitter systems. 'Shamanism enhances both one's health and a sense of well-being because they 'turn on' the body's 'feel-good' chemicals,' he says.

Over the past 10 years, MRI scans (magnetic resonance imaging) have helped identify how the left and right hemispheres of the brain work together. So what exactly happens in that moment of intense spiritual awareness? Activity in the brain's amygdala, which monitors the environment for threats and registers fear, is dampened. Parietal lobe circuits, which orient you, go quiet, while circuits in the frontal and temporal lobes, which mark time and generate self-awareness, become disengaged. Using brain-imaging data collected from Tibetan Buddhists during meditation and Franciscan nuns at prayer, Dr Andrew Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania observed that a bundle of neurons in the superior parietal lobe, toward the top and back of the brain, had shut down. This region also helps processes information about orientation and time.

Communion with the divine would therefore seem to take place everywhere and nowhere at the same time, during what Dr Newberg calls a 'softening of the boundaries of the self'. With the human brain's 100 billion cells forging over one quadrillion connections, are we now in danger of losing God among the complex details of his creation? 'The fact that spiritual experiences can be associated with distinct neural activity does not necessarily mean that such experiences are mere neurological illusions,' Newberg insists. 'It's no safer to say that spiritual urges and sensations are caused by brain activity than it is to say that the neurological changes through which we experience the pleasure of eating an apple cause the apple to exist.'

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