Neurotheology

God and the Brain

Greg BillockJan 14, 2006

Outline

• Part 1 - Neurobiology– How to study the brain– Functional mapping of

the brain– Neurotheology

• Part 2 - Theobiology– Theory of the soul– Revelation and tradition– Personal experience– Conclusions

Brain Science

• The brain is a “dog’s breakfast” of about three and a half pounds of flesh the consistency of extra-firm tofu.

• Contains 100 billion cells• In comparison, a cell contains some 10 billion protein

molecules• The most complex thing we know of

How does it work?

Neurons

• Microscopically, the brain is composed of neurons, connected through synapses and other less direct mechanisms

• Neurons are cells; the brain is an organ

• The brain is bathed in an environment of enzymes and hormones

• It consumes 20% of the body’s energy

• Most of the body’s internal milieu is sensed and regulated by the brain

Figuring out how the brain works

• Direct imaging (fMRI, PET, SPECT, EEG)

• Study animals

• Wait for someone to have an accident

• Psychophysics• Mathematical models

Brain geography

• The brain has different anatomical parts (lobes)

Brain systems and regions

• The brain can be thought of as composed of specific functional areas

• The most explored is the visual system.

Visual pathway

Functionally mapping the brain

• The brain can be functionally mapped by imaging and injury studies.

Specific sensory regions

Auditory pathway

Speech areas

Motor cortex

Basic trick: brain-body maps

Motor homunculus

Ocular dominance -- depth perceptions

More complex systems

• Memory

• Emotion

• Spirituality

• Attention

• Consciousness

Harder to study, but the hypothesis that the same regional/mapping approach is valuable has proven fruitful.

Attention system: Stroop task

Frontal gyrusSuperior parietal lobeOccipital gyrus

FG

OGSPL

Parietal Lobe--Spatial Attention System

Brain activity during shifting spatial attention

Neurobiology of cognition

• Pattern recognition: the mind is tuned to see patterns and organize the world into patterns

Neurobiology of cognition

• The mind automatically categorizes (associative recall)

Neurobiology of cognition

• Causality

• Existential

• Emotional value

The Autonomic Nervous System

Regulate body milieu (including that of the brain) through two systems:• Quiescent• Arousal

Brain Science in a Nutshell

• The brain is an organ--a part of the body• The brain is composed of interacting specialized

areas• The brain is subject to study by several methods

such as imaging, psychophysics, animal models, simulation

• Some brain processes are involuntary and some are voluntary

• The brain is very complex, but probably has a relatively small number of “tricks” like neural maps and uses them over and over.

• The brain is plastic--it is adaptive and can learn

Putting it together--the leopard myth

• A man hears a noise in the forest• It might be a leopard!• … or perhaps the wind• Computing probabilities takes too long• Moving the man out of danger is the primary task

of the limbic system• It takes the cooperation of the brain to activate

the motor cortex• --> Immediate, overpowering belief in the

explanation of the leopard

Putting it together--an afterlife myth

• A close friend has been killed in an accident

• A woman sits at the fire angrily wondering Why??

• As the fire goes out, a puff of smoke rises to the sky.

• The emotional value of the right hemisphere at the dying fire resonates with the existential angst of the left hemisphere verbal process

• The mind’s holistic operator is working with the puzzle of the death like a Necker cube--proposing and evaluating existential solutions

• If there is a synergistic activation between the emotional value metaphor and the linguistic/logical side, the pleasure of an existential resolution stimulates pleasure in the limbic system, causing an activation of the quiscence system.

• Simultaneous activation of the arousal and quiescent system causes a powerfully altered state of consciousness in which the body’s systems reinforce the conviction and freight it with body emotional response.

• Because the verbal centers participate, the experience is memorizable and communicable.

Putting it together on purpose--ritual

• Body movements -- often unusual movements

• Rhythm -- music, dance, repetition

• Familiarity and predictability

• Smells

• Existential weight

Putting it together -- transcendence

• Newberg and d’Aquili propose several paths to transcendent experiences:

• A path of stimulating the quiescent system by denying any arousal until there’s involuntarily spillover

• A path of focusing on an object such as a mantra or an icon

• A path of vigorous activity• All lead to the same result: de-afferenting of the

orientation (spatial attention region) area, leading to an intense feeling of merging with the other.

Other approaches

• Drugs

• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (Persinger)

• Adaptive--Social utility of religion

• Psychiatric conditions (temporal lobe epilepsy)

Religious models of the brain

• The soul

• Dualism– Important to classical Christian doctrine– At odds with a scientific approach to the

brain

• Revelation

• Spiritual experiences

The Soul

• Where is the soul--what bodily or brain structures form the soul?

• Brain science seeks to directly examine the neurological basis of all aspects of experience

• If a stroke damaged the part(s) of the brain where the soul resides, what would that look like?

• If the soul cannot be injured, then what is it?

Dualism

• Classical Christian dualism--there is an immortal soul• Adventists traditionally reject the doctrine of the immortal soul,

and claim adherence to “holism”• Holism in the sense of an absence of an immaterial soul has

some obstacles:– If there is no immortal soul, how do you explain the resurrection?

– If there is no immortal soul, how do you explain the incarnation?

• In response, Adventists typically end up in a position of resisting an immortal soul while maintaining a strong dualism.

• How does the immaterial soul interact with the material body? Descartes thought this interaction was mediated through the pineal gland.

Divine-human interaction

• Revelation--God communicates to human beings through our brains– Which parts of the brain are responsible?

• Brain science can elucidate conditions which externally appear similar to inspiration

• Drugs, meditation, ritual are effective in facilitating spiritual experience. Do they summon God?

Interpretations

• Absolute Unitary Being is “realer than real” -- Newberg and d’Aquili

• The mind generates an experience of “sensed presence” to account for irregular activity in the right temporal lobe (housing emotions of the self) -- Persinger

• Feelings, including spiritual ones, are the basis for the regulation of life by the brain -- Damasio

My Conclusions

• Personal spiritual experiences need to be appreciated as neurologically mediated.

• The specificity and impeachability of such experiences may contribute to a higher degree of humility in interpreting them.

• Dogma relying on dualistic anthropology is obsolete.• Spiritual experience is an important facet of what it is

to be human, and facilitating technology, as long as it respects other important facets of what it is to be human, can be welcomed.

Further Reading

Discussion Questions1. Is the project of discovering how the brain works by studying individual

functions of the brain fruitful? What implications does the answer to that question have for our understanding of the self? The soul? The spirit?

2. Would it be possible to use the results of brain science to distinguish between various types of spiritual experience? How about the possibility of presenting objective evidence verifying the reality of such experiences? What about then validating such experiences?

3. What if it were possible to psychotropically induce a conversion experience? Would such a conversion be authentic? Ethical? Is God using exactly this mechanism to talk to people?

4. How is an individual's experience of the divine conveyed to his or her mental faculties, if not through the brain? If such experiences are conveyed through the brain, what parts of the brain are involved?

5. If the brain is intimately involved in mediating spiritual experience, what is the spiritual status of an individual in whom that part of the brain is injured? What about in an individual in whom that part of the brain works differently than normal?

6. If you could investigate the religious brain function of an historical person, who would you pick? What would you look for?

7. Are there pathological expressions of brain religious function? That is, would it be possible or advisable to medically treat a disease of spiritual experience?