The Hunt for God in the Brain Continues
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As a society, we’ve mostly moved past debating the existence of God — at least, humanity’s greatest minds are no longer occupied by that useless task (I can’t speak for Internet comment threads) — and moved on to trying to figure out why exactly people seem to want to believe in God so much.
There are social questions, such as: Does modernity erase religiosity?
And then there’s the search for the “God spot” in the brain — broadly, an attempt to find brain structures and networks connected in some significant way to religious belief. Two new studies offer some small progress in that endeavor, both in the online open-access journal, PLoS ONE.
First off, there’s “The Neural Correlates of Religious and Nonreligious Belief,” which looks at what regions of the brain activate when evaluating religious and ordinary propositions:
We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects—fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers—as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief (judgments of “true” vs judgments of “false”) was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation, emotional associations, reward, and goal-driven behavior. This region showed greater signal whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc. or statements about ordinary facts. A comparison of both stimulus categories suggests that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks.
Second, there’s “Neuroanatomical Variability of Religiosity,” which looks for brain-structure differences between the religious and non-religious:
Experiencing an intimate relationship with God and engaging in religious behavior was associated with increased volume of R middle temporal cortex, BA 21. Experiencing fear of God was associated with decreased volume of L precuneus and L orbitofrontal cortex BA 11. A cluster of traits related with pragmatism and doubting God’s existence was associated with increased volume of the R precuneus. Variability in religiosity of upbringing was not associated with variability in cortical volume of any region. Therefore, key aspects of religiosity are associated with cortical volume differences.
Short take: The hunt continues; the prey is getting nervous.
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It seems to me that when they find the God Spot it will be in the imagination section of our brains.
Amen.
In response to another comment. See in context »Mr. Sager,
I believe that you have confused two very different ideas, religiosity and belief in gods (or God). Religiosity is of course defined differently by different by different researchers but they all agree that it is a multi-dimensional parameter. The actual belief in gods or God is only one dimension. It is entirely possible for a person to score very high on one or more dimensions of religiosity but not actually belief in the existence of a god An atheist can score highly on a religiosity test.
Additionally, the “god spot” is associated a somewhat different aspect of religiousness. Some people experience ecstatic religious events, an experience of intense emotion and religiosity. Dostoyevsky and Saul of Tarsus both report such events. There is a form of epilepsy where this is documented (e.g. Hansen & Brodtkorb, Epilepsy & Behavior 4 (2003) 667-673. This is a related but distinct aspect.
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Can we use that to see if we can spot a brain in liberal democrats?
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