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| ON THIS PAGE: Table of Contents, Praise for the Book, Excerpts, and Book Reviews Table of Contents: Part I: Religion and the Human Brain
1: Who Cares about God? [see excerpt, below]
Prelude to a Neurological and Spiritual Revolution
2: Do You Need God When You Pray?
Meditation, Memory, and the Aging Brain
3: What Does God Do to Your Brain?
The Neural Varieties of Meditation and Prayer
Part II: Neural Evolution and God
4: What Does God Feel Like?
The Varieties of Spiritual Experience
5: What Does God Look Like?
Imagination, Creativity, and the Visual Representation of Spirituality
6: Does God have a Heart?
Compassion, Mysticism, and the Spiritual Personalities of the Brain
7: What Happens When God Gets Mad? [see excerpt, below]
Anger, Fear, and the Fundamentalist in Our Brain
Part II: Transforming Your Inner Reality
8: Exercising Your Brain:
Eight Ways to Enhance Your Spiritual, Mental, and Physical Health
9: Finding Serenity: [see excerpt, below]
Meditation, Intention, Relaxation, and Awareness
10: Compassionate Communication:
Dialogue, Intimacy, and Conflict Transformation
Epilogue: Is God Real?
A Personal Reflection
Appendix 1: Compassionate Communication:
CDs, Workshops, and Online Survey
Appendix 2: Online Survey of Spiritual Experiences
Appendix 3: Meditation Resources, Books, and CDs
Advance praise for How God Changes Your Brain:
“Dr. Newberg and Mark Waldman present an illuminating view of the inner and outer workings of our neurological perception of reality and how profoundly it is affected by our spiritual practices. Their practical exercises for a brain tune-up are revolutionary and I’m immensely enjoying including them in my daily spiritual regime.” —Michael Bernard Beckwith, founding minister of Agape International Spiritual Center, author of Spiritual Liberation
"A highly practical, easy to read guide on the interface between spirituality and neuroscience. This book is filled with useful information that can make your brain and your life better starting today!"
–Daniel G. Amen, M.D. author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life "Newberg and Waldman give us a magnificent, comprehensive explanation of how spiritual beliefs and experiences enhance changes in our brains and yield better health and well-being. They bring science and religion closer together." —Herbert Benson, MD, Harvard, author of The Relaxation Response
"A highly practical, easy to read guide on the interface between spirituality and neuroscience. This book is filled with useful information that can make your brain and your life better starting today!"
–Daniel G. Amen, M.D. author of Change Your Brain, Change Your Life “How God Changes Your Brain boldly explores the relationship between the structure of our brains, and our ability to not only experience, but to cultivate our innate compassion and deep inner peace.” —Jill Bolte Taylor, Ph.D., Indiana University School of Medicine, author of My Stroke of Insight
“Not since William James' Varieties of Religious Experience has there been a work that so exquisitely integrated science and spirituality. Newberg and Waldman have written a book that is wise, up to date, scholarly, mature and imaginative. At the same time it is a down to earth book that the reader will wish to read at least twice.”
—George Vaillant, M.D., Harvard Medical School, author of Spiritual Evolution: A Scientific Defense of Faith
Excerpt from Chapter 1: LEARNING TO FEEL COMPASSION
Ultimately, this book is about compassion—a primary concept found in virtually every religious tradition. Compassion, as I am using it here, is similar to empathy, and it expresses our neurological capacity to resonate to another person’s emotions. But compassion goes a step further, referring to our ability to respond to another person’s pain. It allows us to be more tolerant of others and more accepting of our own shortcomings and faults. Compassion appears to be an evolutionary adaptive process, and our neurological heart appears to be in the anterior cingulate, a very small structure that sits at the center of an important communication junction between the frontal lobe (which initiates our thoughts and behaviors) and the limbic system (which processes a wide range of feelings and emotions). It helps to maintain a delicate balance between our feelings and our thoughts, and is the newest part in the evolutionary history of the brain. If you have a larger or more active anterior cingulate, you may experience greater empathy, and you’ll be far less likely to react with anger or fear. If the anterior cingulate malfunctions, your communication skills will be compromised and you won’t be able to accurately sense what others are thinking or feeling. The anterior cingulate appears to be crucial for empathy and compassion, and many brain- scan studies of meditation show that this part of the brain is stimulated by such practices. The neural circuits spanning the anterior cingulate and the prefrontal cortex integrate attention, working memory, motivation, and many other executive functions. Throughout this book, we’ll return to the functional importance of this special part of the brain. We can use spiritual practices to become less hostile and greedy and feel more compassionate toward others, but internal compassion is not enough to deal with the problems we must face in the world. Thus, we must find ways of bringing our spirituality into dialogue with others. But how do you neurologically promote peaceful cooperation between people, especially between those who hold conflicting points of view? To address this need, Mark and I created a special meditation exercise that brings compassion directly into the dialogue process itself. It is currently being tested in psychotherapy to deal with relationship conflicts, and we are demonstrating it in schools, religious communities, and businesses to teach people how to get along better with each other. And yet, no matter how hard we try to control destructive emotions, our old reptilian brain continues to interfere.
HUMANITY’S GREATEST ENEMY: ANGER
Of all the emotions we are born with, anger is the most primal and difficult one to control. No matter how discreet, anger generates anxiety, defensiveness, and aggression in the other person—the famous fight or- flight reaction that every living organism contains. And if you respond to someone else’s anger with irritability—which is the way most brains are designed to react—the problem only gets worse. Anger interrupts the functioning of your frontal lobes. Not only do you lose the ability to be rational, you lose the awareness that you’re acting in an irrational way. When your frontal lobes shut down, it’s impossible to listen to the other person, let alone feel empathy or compassion. Instead, you are likely to feel self- justified and self- righteous, and when that happens the communication process falls apart. Anger also releases a cascade of neurochemicals that actually destroy those parts of the brain that control emotional reactivity. It takes a lot of perseverance and training to respond to anger with kindness, but this is exactly what spiritual teachers have been trying to teach for centuries. When you intensely and consistently focus on your spiritual values and goals, you increase the blood flow to your frontal lobes and anterior cingulate, which causes the activity in emotional centers of the brain to decrease. Conscious intention is the key, and the more you focus on your inner values, the more you can take charge of your life. Thus, meditation—be it religious or secular—enables you to more easily accomplish your goals, which is why we’ve devoted three chapters to teaching you how to exercise your brain in loving and compassionate ways.
HAVING FAITH
As a neuroscientist, the more I delve into the nature of the human brain, the more I realize how mysterious we are. But if I had to pick two things that I have learned—as a doctor, a teacher, a husband, and a father—I would first say that life is sacred. Indeed, we are literally driven to live because every cell in our body fights to survive, and every neuron in our brain strives to become strong. The second thing I’ve learned is that behind our drive to survive, there is another force, and the best word to describe it is faith. Faith not just in God, or in science or love, but faith in ourselves and each other. Having faith in the human spirit is what drives us to survive and transcend. It makes life worth living, and it gives meaning to our life. Without such hope and optimism—synonyms for what I am calling faith—the mind can easily slip into depression or despair. Faith is embedded in our neurons and in our genes, and it is one of the most important principles to honor in our lives. Some people put their faith in God, while others put it into science, relationships, or work. But wherever you choose to place your faith, you must still confront a deeper question: What is your ultimate pursuit and dream? What do you truly desire in your life—not only for yourself, but for the world as well? And how will you begin to make that desire a reality? Having hope and faith are essential, but something more is needed: the skill and discipline to organize your brain in ways that will successfully motivate your life. Our meditation studies have provided a few basic tools that can help you achieve those goals, and if you apply them to your life, not only will you find a little more happiness, you’ll bring a little more peace into the world. Excerpt from Chapter 2: WHAT DOES GOD DO TO YOUR BRAIN? The Neural Varieties of Spiritual Practice
The moment we encounter God, or the idea of God, our brain begins to change. For most American children this occurs in the first year of life when they come face- to- face with holiday religious symbolism. Brightly colored Christmas trees and Easter baskets rivet a child’s attention, and this imprints a permanent image into memory. Later, when they are introduced to parental concepts of God, these ideas become neurologically connected to earlier memories and thoughts. Images build upon images, and concepts build upon concepts, until a complex neurological circuit emerges that represents a primitive system of religious belief. Storytelling may deepen a child’s fantasy about God, but rituals give personal meaning to theological ideas. That is why religious parents ask their children to pray, and why they expose them to religious ceremonies and events. We take them to our temples, churches, and mosques on the high holidays, where their senses are saturated with the sights, sounds, and smells of our spiritual heritage and beliefs. They gaze through stained- glass windows, sing hymns in foreign tongues, light candles, bow down in prayer, and sample sacramental foods. They literally enter another world. God becomes even more grand and mysterious—and sometimes frightening—and new parts of the brain light up like a fireworks display. Rituals add substance to our beliefs, and the more intense the ritual, the more likely we are to have a religious or spiritual epiphany. Thus, spiritual practice is the key to making God personally meaningful and real. But for a researcher like myself, even the simplest ritual is hard to study because there are so many variables to consider. Take, for example, the act of going to church. We know that religious involvement is correlated with health and longevity,1 but it is difficult to figure out why. Does it have to do with the length of time you spend in church, or how often you go? Does it matter which denomination you attend? Going to church might involve confession, communion, singing, chanting, praying, tithing, talking with other members, reading sacred scriptures, or volunteering in charitable work. Which activity has an impact on the brain? Some of them, all of them, or a specific combination of pursuits? Few studies have been able to isolate which aspects contribute to one’s health, but we are beginning to discover that each one can change the way you think and feel about God. Different religious activities have different effects on specific parts of the brain, but this does not make the results any easier to interpret. For example, praying silently affects one part of the brain, while praying out loud affects another part. And if you repeat the same prayer over and over, one part of the brain may be activated in the first few minutes, another part might quiet down ten minutes later, while other brain functions will change after forty or fifty minutes of intense prayer. To make matters even more complicated, a single structure in the brain can be simultaneously involved in dozens of different functions, some of which specifically relate to the religious ritual and others of which do not. For example, the anterior cingulate cortex, which plays a crucial role in spiritual practices, is involved with learning, memory, focused attention, emotional regulation, motor coordination, heart rate, error detection, reward anticipation, conflict monitoring, moral evaluation, strategy planning, and empathy.2 To understand how this single structure influences religious experience, you have to distill the information gathered in hundreds of seemingly unrelated studies. But when you connect the dots, a picture emerges that allows us to catch a glimpse of the neural reality of God. This chapter, and the four chapters that follow, outline a general model that explains how different concepts of God affect your brain, and how your brain constructs specific impressions of God. The chart on the accompanying pages summarizes how specific parts of the brain generate different experiences of God.
THE “GOD” CIRCUITS IN YOUR BRAIN:
From early childhood on, God exists in every person’s brain as a combination of ideas, images, feelings, sensations, and self/other relationships. Here is a thumbnail sketch of key neural structures and circuits that shape our perception of God:
OCCIPITAL- PARIETAL CIRCUIT Identifies God as an object that exists in the world. Young children see God as a face because their brains cannot process abstract spiritual concepts.
PARIETAL- FRONTAL CIRCUIT Establishes a relationship between the two objects known as “you” and “God.” It places God in space and allows you to experience God’s presence. If you decrease activity in your parietal lobe through meditation or intense prayer, the boundaries between you and God dissolve. You feel a sense of unity with the object of contemplation and your spiritual beliefs.
FRONTAL LOBE Creates and integrates all of your ideas about God— positive or negative—including the logic you use to evaluate your religious and spiritual beliefs. It predicts your future in relationship to God and attempts to intellectually answer all the “why, what, and where” questions raised by spiritual issues.
THALAMUS Gives emotional meaning to your concepts of God. The thalamus gives you a holistic sense of the world and appears to be the key organ that makes God feel objectively real.
AMYGDALA When overly stimulated, the amygdala creates the emotional impression of a frightening, authoritative, and punitive God, and it suppresses the frontal lobe’s ability to logically think about God.
STRIATUM Inhibits activity in the amygdala, allowing you to feel safe in the presence of God, or of whatever object or concept you are contemplating.
ANTERIOR CINGULATE Allows you to experience God as loving and compassionate. It decreases religious anxiety, guilt, fear, and anger by suppressing activity in the amygdala. Excerpt from Chapter 7: WHAT HAPPENS WHEN GOD GETS MAD? Anger, Fear, and the Fundamentalist in Our Brain
As we have argued throughout this book, most Americans have greatly benefited from their personal relationships with religion, spirituality, and God. But when it comes to sharing our religious beliefs with others, certain problems may arise, especially if we want them to embrace our spiritual points of view. If we use our powers of persuasion to reach a general consensus of belief—which, from an evolutionary point of view, is essential for social cooperation—we are bound to create conflicts with those who hold different religious beliefs. The culprit is not religion per se, but what our brain is biologically inclined to do when we encounter people who embrace different visions of “truth.” One part wants to reject opposing ideas, while another part tries to understand, cooperate, and compromise. In essence, we all have two brains—one selfish and suspicious, another open- minded and kind. Since we live in a world filled with uncertainties, both brains are constantly on the alert.
THE TWO WOLVES Once upon a time, or so the Cherokee legend goes, a young Indian boy received a beautiful drum as a gift. When his best friend saw it, he asked if he could play with it, but the boy felt torn. He didn’t want to share his new present, so he angrily told his friend, “No!” His friend ran away, and the boy sat down on a rock by the stream to contemplate his dilemma. He hated the fact that he had hurt his friend’s feelings, but the drum was too precious to share. In his quandary, he went to his grandfather for advice. The elder listened quietly and then replied. “I often feel as though there are two wolves fighting inside me. One is mean and greedy and full of arrogance and pride, but the other is peaceful and generous. All the time they are struggling, and you, my boy, have those same two wolves inside of you.” “Which one will win?” asked the boy. The elder smiled and said, “The one you feed.” We all harbor a pack of neurological wolves in our brain. The old ones reside in the limbic system, and they are filled with aggression and fear. They’re fast, efficient, and potentially deadly, and they’ve been running the show for 150 million years. The younger ones reside in our frontal lobes and anterior cingulate, where empathy, reason, logic, and compassion reside. These pups are playful and imaginative, but they are also neurologically vulnerable and slow when compared to the activity in the emotional parts of the brain. So, when it comes to making sophisticated moral decisions, which one will win? The selfish brain or the cooperative one? Again, as with the two wolves, it depends on the one you feed. If you allow anger and fear to dominate, you will lose the neurological ability to think logically and act compassionately toward others. In fact, it is nearly impossible to find peace and serenity if your mind is preoccupied by negative, anxious, or hateful thoughts. Excessive anger or fear can permanently disrupt many structures and functions in both your body and your brain. These destructive emotions interfere with memory storage and cognitive accuracy, which, in turn, will disrupt our ability to properly evaluate and respond to social situations.1 Anger makes people indiscriminately punitive, blameful, pessimistic, and unilaterally careless in their logic and reasoning skills.2 Furthermore, anger encourages your brain to defend your beliefs—be they right or wrong—and when this happens, you’ll be more likely to feel prejudice toward others.3 You’ll inaccurately perceive anger in other people’s faces,4 and this will increase your own distrust and fear. It’s an insidious process that feeds on itself, and it can influence your behavior for very long periods of time.5 Eventually, it will even damage important structures in your brain. Nor is it good for your heart. Regardless of your age, gender, or ethnicity—anger, cynicism, hostility, and defensiveness will increase your risk of cardiovascular disease and cerebrovascular problems.6 What makes anger particularly dangerous is that it blinds you to the fact that you’re even angry; thus, it gives you a false sense of certainty, confidence, and optimism.7 When people use their religion or politics—or even humor or teasing8—as a weapon to aggressively disparage others who embrace different beliefs, they unwittingly stimulate the other person’s brain to retaliate with similar aggression. Aggression and hostility shut down activity in the anterior cingulate and striatum—the two key areas of the brain that control anger and fear—and when this occurs, the amygdale takes over, generating a “fight or flight” response that is spread through every other part of the brain.9 In the evidence we’ve cited throughout this book, it is obvious that most forms of spiritual contemplation lead to a healthier brain, and most likely to a healthier society as well. But you must exercise that brain by exposing yourself to new ideas. Think about God and spirituality in different ways, as deeply as you can, and you will learn to appreciate the diversity, fallibility, and mystery of human beliefs. But no matter how open- minded you become, and no matter how tolerant or compassionate you think you are, there will always remain the remnants of a neurological exclusiveness and fundamentalism in your brain—a wolf that will respond with fear and anger to all that is different and new. The struggle between good and bad, between tolerance and intolerance, between love and hate, is the personal responsibility of every individual on this planet. The question remains: Which wolf will you feed, and which wolf will you tame?
1. Davidson RJ, Lewis DA, Alloy LB, Amaral DG, Bush G, Cohen JD, Drevets WC, Farah MJ, Kagan J, McClelland JL, Nolen Hoeksema S, Peterson BS. Neural and behavioral substrates of mood and mood regulation, Biol Psychiatry, 2002 Sep 15;52(6):478–502.
2. For the most comprehensive overview of anger published to date, see Lerner JS, Tiedens LZ. Portrait of the angry decision maker: How appraisal tendencies shape anger’s influence on cognition. J Behavioral Decision Making. 2006:19: 115–137. Tiedens LZ, Linton S. Judgment under emotional certainty and uncertainty: the effects of specific emotions on information processing. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2001 Dec;81(6):973–88. Lerner JS, Goldberg JH, Tetlock PE. Sober second thought: the effects of accountability, anger and authoritarianism on attributions of responsibility. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. 1998;24(6), 563–74.
3. Maner JK, Kenrick DT, Becker DV, Robertson TE, Hofer B, Neuberg SL, Delton AW, Butner J, Schaller M. Functional projection: how fundamental social motives can bias interpersonal perception. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2005 Jan;88(1):63–78.
4. Hugenberg K, Bodenhausen GV. Facing prejudice: implicit prejudice and the perception of facial threat. Psychol Sci. 2003 Nov;14(6):640–3.
5. Lerner JS, Keltner D. Fear, anger, and risk. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2001 Jul;81(1):146–59.
6. Thomas KS, Nelesen RA, Dimsdale JE. Relationships between hostility, anger expression, and blood pressure dipping in an ethnically diverse sample. Psychosom Med. 2004 May–Jun;66(3):298–304.
Chang PP, Ford DE, Meoni LA, Wang NY, Klag MJ. Anger in young men and subsequent premature cardiovascular disease. Arch Intern Med 2002;162:901–6.
Gallacher JE, Yarnell JW, Sweetnam PM, Elwood PC, Stansfeld SA. Anger and incident heart disease in the caerphilly study. Psychosom Med. 1999 Jul– Aug;61(4):446–53.
Bongard S, al’Absi M, Lovallo WR. Interactive effects of trait hostility and anger expression on cardiovascular reactivity in young men. Int J Psychophysiol. 1998 Mar;28(2):181–91.
Shapiro D, Goldstein IB, Jamner LD. Effects of cynical hostility, anger out, anxiety, and defensiveness on ambulatory blood pressure in black and white college students. Psychosom Med. 1996 Jul–Aug;58(4):354–64.
Shapiro D, Goldstein IB, Jamner LD. Effects of anger/hostility, defensiveness, gender, and family history of hypertension on cardiovascular reactivity. Psychophysiology. 1995 Sep;32(5):425–35.
7. Lerner JS, Tiedens LZ. Portrait of the angry decision maker: How appraisal tendencies shape anger’s influence on cognition. J Behavioral Decision Making,. 2006:19: 115–137.
8. Anderson CA, Carnagey NL, Eubanks J. Exposure to violent media: the effects of songs with violent lyrics on aggressive thoughts and feelings. J Pers Soc Psychol. 2003 May;84(5):960–71.
Warm TR. The role of teasing in development and vice versa. J Dev Behav Pediatr. 1997 Apr;18(2):97–101.
Ueno Y. [The relation between the attitude toward humor, aggression and altruism] Shinrigaku Kenkyu. 1993 Oct;64(4):247–54.
Prerost FJ. Locus of control and the aggression inhibiting effects of aggressive mhumor appreciation. J Pers Assess. 1983 Jun;47(3):294–9.
Sinnott JD, Ross BM. Comparison of aggression and incongruity as factors in children’s judgments of humor. J Genet Psychol. 1976 Jun;128(2d Half): 241–9.
9. Beaver JD, Lawrence AD, Passamonti L, Calder AJ. Appetitive motivation predicts the neural response to facial signals of aggression. J Neurosci. 2008 Mar 12;28(11):2719–25.
Excerpt from Chapter 9: FINDING SERENITY - Meditation, Intention, Relaxation, and Awareness
God can change your brain. This much we have shown. But now our meditation research has brought us to a turning point, for we can distill from the world’s spiritual practices a set of simple exercises that will enhance the neural functioning of the brain. When we do so, we improve our physical, emotional, and cognitive health, adding years of greater happiness to our lives. As a doctor, I must emphasize that these techniques do not, in any way, replace the appropriate use of current medical practice,* but if you add them to your daily repertoire of activities, you will find that they can have a very powerful effect on your life. They will boost the responsiveness of your immune system, sharpen your productivity at work, and enrich the quality of your relationships—not just with family and friends, but with strangers whom you might casually meet. Empathy and compassion will be enhanced, and you’ll even find it easier to interact with those who hold beliefs that differ from your own. That’s a lot to promise, but we feel that the thirty- plus years of research into the underlying mechanics of spiritual practice is so conclusive that we are planning to incorporate these exercises into various programs at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind.**
INTENTION The exercises in this chapter center on three main interconnecting principles: intention, relaxation, and awareness. Intention refers to the goal you want to manifest in your life, for everything we do has an underlying intention, whether we are conscious of it or not. We use our intention to determine what we want to focus on, and the goal can be anything you choose: money, power, peace, insight, romance, or a closer connection to God. Before you sit down to practice any of the following exercises, clarify what your intention is. Better yet, write it out on a slip of paper and keep it posted in a prominent place. When you clearly articulate your intention or goal in writing and speech, your frontal lobes can more efficiently direct your motor cortex to carry out your desire as you actively engage with others in the world.
It’s an extraordinary process: You begin with a goal- oriented thought, and the more you focus on it, the more your brain begins to plot out strategies to carry that thought into the world. Other animals, even primates, can barely do this because they have far fewer neural connections that run from the frontal lobe to other parts of the brain. RELAXATION Relaxation is the second principle, and it is found in most contemplative practices and stress- reduction programs. Thus, one begins the intention by consciously relaxing the body. Usually this involves focusing on the breath, but as we mentioned in the previous chapter, yawning may be a faster way to achieve deep relaxation and alertness.
Breath awareness serves another function, because it trains your mind to stay focused on a natural—and essential—body process. By focusing your conscious intention on your breath, you begin to slow down mental “busy- ness.” Your thoughts become fewer and more integrated, and your body begins to relax. In an fMRI*** experiment we just completed, when we compared a breath- based meditation to a meditation that focuses on a word or phrase, we discovered that breathing awareness increases activity in the limbic system while activity in the frontal lobe decreases. Thoughts recede, but the emotional intensity of the experience increases. Relaxation is a key element in meditation—for keeping your body and brain tuned up—but for many people, focusing on one’s breath will not achieve the deep state of relaxation associated with neurological health. That is why we’ve included several different kinds of relaxation exercises, and I strongly recommend that you try them all. Use the ones that feel best, but it’s also a good idea to alternate between them. Over time you’ll realize that the same technique affects your body in different ways.
AWARENESS Once a deep state of relaxation is reached, the next step involves becoming aware of your body in relation to the world. Focused breathing enhances self- awareness by increasing activity in the precuneus, an important circuit that regulates consciousness in the brain.1 But in mindfulness practices, this is only the first step in generating greater awareness and attentiveness. For example, you might be asked to observe a simple activity like eating or walking. Usually, you will do it in slow motion, paying attention to every tiny movement you make. If you put some food in your mouth, you’ll pay attention to every muscle that is used when chewing, noting the subtle qualities of smell, flavor, texture, and temperature of each bite. You’ll also pay attention to every muscle needed when you lift the fork to your mouth.
You can experiment with this technique right now. Because your attention is focused on reading, you’ll notice that you aren’t aware of the book that you are actually holding in your hands. But the moment I bring your attention to it, other sensations become conscious. Notice how heavy the book feels. Now notice the texture of the cover. What does the smoothness feel like? Is it warm, or cool? And what about the paper on which these words are imprinted? How thick is it? How dark or light is the ink? What happens if you focus on the spaces, rather than the words? Now do one more thing: Take in ten very deep breaths and watch how your sensation of the book changes. Each of these shifts in awareness intensifies the experience of the book, which is what meditation is designed to do. It heightens the quality of the experience and reminds you that there is so much “experience” in everything we do. Meditation broadens your scope of conscious experience, and this strengthens important circuits in your brain. Furthermore, it neurologically helps your frontal lobes become more focused and organized. Research confirms that advanced meditators have a greater cognitive ability to recognize subtle changes, not only in themselves, but in the environment as well.2 There is another neurological benefit, for as you become aware of your mental processes, you learn to watch them and not react. You simply observe your thoughts and feelings as they constantly flow through your mind. Some refer to this as “mindfulness.” If an anxious, irritable, or depressing thought pops up, you note it, then immediately return to your breathing or relaxation, watching what the next thought or feeling will be. Frontal lobe consciousness increases to the point that it begins to neurologically suppress the emotional circuits in your brain. When this happens, feelings of anxiety, irritability, or depression subside, which has a profoundly beneficial effect on every other aspect of neural functioning.
* There is little evidence suggesting that gentle forms of meditation have any negative health effects. Although several researchers have hypothesized that the neurological changes associated with meditation may increase the possibility of triggering an epileptic seizure in people prone to this disease, no reports of seizures have been documented. Anecdotal psychological evidence also suggests that people with certain personality disorders should be carefully evaluated and monitored before engaging in intense spiritual practices.
** The center brings together an interdisciplinary group of faculty from all of the university schools to develop, organize, and coordinate research, scholarship, education, and dialogue, both locally and globally, that focuses on the relationship between spirituality and the brain. By establishing courses, teaching materials, public and academic lecture programs, and local and Internet outreach programs, the center’s resources will be available for all individuals interested in topics related to the intersection of religion and science.
***An MRI brain scan shows a detailed picture of the brain’s activity, whereas an fMRI ( functional magnetic resonance image) scan is more like a motion picture. We can watch moment- tomoment changes in the brain as the test subject performs different mental or physical tasks.
2. Brefczynski- Lewis JA, Lutz A, Schaefer HS, Levinson DB, Davidson RJ. Neural correlates of attentional expertise in long- term meditation practitioners. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. 2007 Jul 3;104(27):11483–8.
A Searcher With Faith in Mind
Washington Post: Wednesday, April 15, 2009; Page A19 Review By Michael Gerson, michaelgerson@cfr.org Religion has often unintentionally enabled scientific skepticism. The faithful will issue a challenge to science: Ha, you can't explain the development of life, or the moral sense, or the nearly universal persistence of religion. To which the materialist responds: Can too. It is all biology and chemistry, thus disproving your God hypothesis. To this musty debate, Andrew Newberg, perhaps America's leading expert on the neurological basis of religion, brings a fresh perspective. His new book, "How God Changes Your Brain," co-authored with Mark Robert Waldman, summarizes several years of groundbreaking research on the biological basis of religious experience. And it offers plenty to challenge skeptics and believers alike. Using brain imaging studies of Franciscan nuns and Buddhist practitioners, and Sikhs and Sufis -- along with everyday people new to meditation -- Newberg asserts that traditional spiritual practices such as prayer and breath control can alter the neural connections of the brain, leading to "long-lasting states of unity, peacefulness and love." He assures the mystically challenged (such as myself) that these neural networks begin to develop quickly -- a matter of weeks in meditation, not decades on a Tibetan mountaintop. And though meditation does not require a belief in God, strong religious belief amplifies its effect on the brain and enhances "social awareness and empathy while subduing destructive feelings and emotions." Newberg argues that religious belief is often personally and socially advantageous, allowing men and women to "imagine a better future." And he does not contend, as philosophically lazy scientists sometimes do, that a biological propensity toward belief automatically disproves the existence of an object of such belief. "Neuroscience cannot tell you if God does or doesn't exist," Newberg states with appropriate humility. Neurobiology helps explain religion; it does not explain it away. But Newberg's research offers warnings for the religious as well. Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain -- particularly the frontal lobes and the anterior cingulate -- where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is "filled with aggression and fear." It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not. For Newberg, this is not a simple critique of religious fundamentalism -- a phenomenon varied in its beliefs and motivations. It is a criticism of any institution that allies ideology or faith with anger and selfishness. "The enemy is not religion," writes Newberg, "the enemy is anger, hostility, intolerance, separatism, extreme idealism, and prejudicial fear -- be it secular, religious, or political." Newberg employs a vivid image: two packs of neurological wolves, he says, are found in every brain. One pack is old and powerful, oriented toward survival and anger. The other is composed of pups -- the newer parts of the brain, more creative and compassionate -- "but they are also neurologically vulnerable and slow when compared to the activity in the emotional parts of the brain." So all human beings are left with a question: Which pack do we feed? "How God Changes Your Brain" has many revelations -- and a few limitations. In a practical, how-to tone, it predicts "an epiphany that can improve the inner quality of your life. For most Americans, that is what spirituality is about." But if this is what spirituality is all about, it isn't about very much. Mature faith sometimes involves self-sacrifice, not self-actualization; anguish, not comfort. If the primary goal of religion is escape or contentment, there are other, even more practical methods to consider. "I didn't go to religion to make me happy," said C.S. Lewis, "I always knew a bottle of port would do that." The same could be said of psychedelic drugs, which can mimic spiritual ecstasy. Every religious discussion eventually comes down to the question of truth. Can we escape from the wheel of becoming, or hear God's voice in a wandering prophet, or meet a man once dead? Without such beliefs, religion is mere meditation. Newberg's research shows an amplified influence of religious practices on those who "truly believe." But Newberg himself has difficulty sharing such belief. His research on the varieties of religious experience -- and his scientific understanding that the brain is drawn naturally toward artificial certainties -- leave him skeptical about the capacity of the human mind to accurately perceive "universal or ultimate truth." Yet, he told me, "To this day, I am still seeking and searching." And that is the most honest kind of science. Library Journal, 2/10/2009: “God” can be reality or metaphor for physician Newberg and counselor Waldman (Ctr. for Spirituality and the Mind, Univ. of Pennsylvania; Born To Believe). In their latest collaboration, they encourage questioning and contact with diverse beliefs and people. Americans, they reveal, mostly view God as authoritarian, critical, or distant—only 23 percent of believers see God as gentle and forgiving, but the notable trend toward the latter should be beneficial for the individual and society. In the most provocative section, readers learn that there are regions of the brain that respond to thoughts, emotions, and experience and can be changed by willed concentration and practice. The authors present an elaborate, engaging meditation program to reduce anger and fear and increase serenity and love. They embrace faith (not necessarily religious), diversity, tolerance, and “compassionate communication.” Extensive notes—73 pages—include hundreds of recent references to neuropsychological research. Though it may seem speculative to neuroscientists and upsetting to religious conservatives, this is a substantial advance in the self-help/spirituality genre and an excellent choice for general collections. - Reviewed by E. James Lieberman, George Washington University School of Medicine, Washington, DC Publishers Weekly: “In this stimulating and provocative book, two academics at the University of Pennsylvania’s Center for Spirituality and the Mind contend that contemplating God actually reduces stress, which in turn prevents the deterioration of the brain’s dendrites and increases neuroplasticity. The authors conclude that meditation and other spiritual practices permanently strengthen neural functioning in specific parts of the brain that aid in lowering anxiety and depression, enhancing social awareness and empathy, and improving cognitive functioning.. . . this forceful study could stir controversy among scientists and philosophers.” | |
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