The role of the extrapersonal brain systems in religious activity (original) (raw)
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The Neuropsychology of Religion
2002
Consider religion to be a community's (1) costly and hard-to-fake commitment (2) to a counterfactual world of supernatural agents (3) who master people's existential anxieties, such as death and deception. This intellectual framework guides a research program that aims to foster scientific dialogue between cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology regarding a set of phenomena vital to most human life and all societies (Atran 2002). The present chapter mainly concerns the third criterion of religion (3), and its implications for neuropsychology. Previous neurobiological studies of religion have focused on tracking participant's neurophysiological responses during episodes of religious experience and recording individual patterns of trance, vision, revelation and the like. This has favored comparison of religious experience with temporal-lobe brain-wave patterns during epileptic seizures and acute schizophrenic episodes. Cognitive structures of t...
Studies in Psychology / Estudios de Psicología, 2019
Abstract The current article is a critical review of the neuropsychological study of religious experience. First, we analyse the philosophical and theological roots of the term and its characterization as a sui generis and unique phenomenon. We subsequently describe the adoption of the concept in psychology, as well as the emergence of alternative approaches that emphasize the role of categorization of experiences as religious. We then move on to explore how both approaches have influenced the neuropsychological study of religious experience, consequently producing different models: sui generis, attributional and others that consider the variety of factors and the heterogeneity of experiences associated with religious practices. Resumen El presente artículo es una revisión crítica del estudio neuropsicológico de la experiencia religiosa. Comenzaremos analizando las raíces filosóficas y teológicas del concepto, y su caracterización en tanto fenómeno sui generis y único. Proseguiremos describiendo el traslado de dicha concepción a la psicología, así como el surgimiento de una concepción crítica al modelo sui generis, a través de enfoques alternativos que enfatizan en el rol de la categorización de las experiencias en tanto religiosas. Veremos cómo ambas concepciones son trasladadas al estudio neuropsicológico de la experiencia religiosa, produciendo distintos modelos sui generis, atribucionistas, así como otros que contemplan la variedad de factores y heterogeneidad de experiencias relacionadas a las prácticas religiosas
Neuroscience of Religion Review
Neuroscience of religion is the attempt to describe and explain religious thought and behavior at the level of the brain. Unlike Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), which mainly seeks to model the cognitive mechanisms involved in religious thought and behavior, and Evolutionary Psychology of Religion (EPR), which attempts to uncover the selection pressures that may have led to those mechanisms (see chapter XX), Neuroscience of Religion aims to identify the neurobiological substrates of such mechanisms.
Challenges Facing the Neurological Study of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience
Method & Theory in the Study of …, 2008
Th e neurological study of religious behavior, belief, and experience faces many challenges related to research conception, experimental design, and interpretation of results. Some of these problems are common to other types of neurological study of behavioral and cognitive phenomena. Others are distinctive to the specifically religious domain of behavior, belief, and experience. Th is paper discusses eight of these problems and three key strategic principles for mitigating them. It then proposes an eight-step framework for research into the neurology of religious behavior, belief, and experience that implements the three strategic principles and addresses all eight of the problems.
Neuroscientific Explanations of Religious Experience are Not free from Cultural Aspects
Journal for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and …, 2008
We cannot disregard that the neuroscientific research on religious phenomena such as religious experiences and rituals for example, has increased significantly the last years. Neuroscientists claim that neuroscience contributes considerably in the process of understanding religious experiences, because neuroscience is able to measure brain activity during religious experiences by way of brain-imaging technologies. No doubt, those results of neuroscientific research on religious experiences are an important supplement to the understanding of some types of religious experiences. However, some conclusions drawn from neuroscientific research on religious experiences are arguable. For example, one such conclusion is that religious experiences are actually nothing but neural activity, i.e. there is nothing 'religious' to the experiences at all. Another such conclusion is that a person's religious experiences actually derive from some ultimate reality, meaning that religious experiences are real. It is the latter assertion that will be analyzed in the present paper. The question is asked whether neuroscience alone is able to affirm that religious experiences are real or whether there are, besides neuroscientific issues, also cultural-religious assumptions that underlie this conclusion.
The neural correlates of religious experience
McNamara's claim that there is overlap between the brain sites implicated in religious experience and those implicated in the sense of self and self-consciousness rests on two postulates: (1) that the " executive Self " can be identied as a neural entity in specic regions of the brain; and (2) that the neural correlates of religious experience can be identied as a consistent set of activations in these regions. Although McNamara is clearly well informed in terms of functional neuroanatomy, he fails to make a convincing argument for his rst postulate regarding the existence of the self as a controlling entity at the neurological level. This is unfortunate because his claim that religious experience decenters the self from its control over body and cognition in order to contemplate and optimize the self rests on this assumption. Furthermore, with respect to his second postulate, since the data currently available do not afford a description of religious experience as a uniform category, it is difcult to see how this evidence can support McNamara's general understanding of the nature and function of religious experience. McNamara may be right that some religious practices are intimately related to the transformative processes of the self, but only future studies can tell whether this idea can be supported by the neurosciences. In the preface to his book The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, Patrick McNamara opens with the intriguing proclamation that his theory is based on the nding that there is " anatomical overlap between the brain sites implicated in religious experience and the brain sites implicated in the sense of Self and self-consciousness " (McNamara 2009: xi). It is this anatomical overlap that explains how religious experience can facilitate the transformative process of the self. Therefore it is fair to assume that the evidence presented in his chapters on the neurology of the self and of religious experiences are crucial for his argumentation. McNamara's notion of anatomical overlap rests on two postulates: (1) that the self can be identied in specic regions of the brain as a neural entity; and (2) that the neural correlates of religious experience can be identied as a consistent
Religion and Neuroscience: An Integrative Literature Review to Decode the Dive.
NeuroQuantology|, 2021
The comparative study of religion and neuroscience has gained increasing attention in recent years, as researchers seek to understand the neural mechanisms underlying religious beliefs, practices, and experiences. This integrative literature review provides an overview of the current state of research in this field, with a reference to the emerging discipline of neurotheology. A comprehensive search of electronic databases was conducted, and articles were reviewed and analyzed thematically for their relevance, rigour, and theoretical contributions to the study of religion and neuroscience. The findings suggest that religious beliefs, practices, and experiences are associated with specific neural pathways and brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and parietal lobes. Neurotheology, a field that seeks to integrate neuroscience and theology, has contributed to our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying religious experiences, including meditation, prayer, and mystical experiences. However, the study of religion and neuroscience is not without its challenges, including the potential for cultural bias and the limitations of neuroimaging techniques. Despite these challenges, this integrative literature review provides valuable insights into the complex relationship between religion and the brain and highlights the potential contributions of neurotheology to our understanding of religious experience and spirituality.
From Brain Imaging Religious Experience to Explaining Religion: A Critique
Recent functional neuroimaging data, acquired in studies of religious experience, have been used to explain and justify religion and its origins. In this paper, we critique the move from describing brain activity associated with self-reported religious states, to explaining why there is religion at all. Toward that end, first we review recent neuroimaging findings on religious experience, and show how those results do not necessarily support a popular notion that religion has a primitive evolu- tionary origin. Importantly, we call into question an assumption—key to that account of religion— concerning a conceptual relation between ‘religion’ and ‘religious experience’. Then, we examine the conditions that must be met in order to explain religion on the basis of brain imaging findings. Moreover, we list principled reasons to be sceptical of explanations of religion in terms of the neural underpinnings of experiences. We conclude that the data from neuroimaging studies are not suited for an explanation of religion.
Neural correlates of religious experience
European Journal of Neuroscience, 2001
The commonsense view of religious experience is that it is a preconceptual, immediate affective event. Work in philosophy and psychology, however, suggest that religious experience is an attributional cognitive phenomenon. Here the neural correlates of a religious experience are investigated using functional neuroimaging. During religious recitation, self-identi®ed religious subjects activated a frontal±parietal circuit, composed of the dorsolateral prefrontal, dorsomedial frontal and medial parietal cortex. Prior studies indicate that these areas play a profound role in sustaining re¯exive evaluation of thought. Thus, religious experience may be a cognitive process which, nonetheless, feels immediate.
Religion and Psychiatry in the Age of Neuroscience
Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease, 2020
In recent decades, an evolving conversation among religion, psychiatry, and neuroscience has been taking place, transforming how we conceptualize religion and how that conceptualization affects its relation to psychiatry. In this article, we review several dimensions of the dialogue, beginning with its history and the phenomenology of religious experience. We then turn to neuroscientific studies to see how they explain religious experience, and we follow that with two related areas: the benefits of religious beliefs and practices, and the evolutionary foundation of those benefits. A final section addresses neuroscientific and evolutionary accounts of the transcendent, that is, what these fields make of the claim that religious experience connects to a transcendent reality. We conclude with a brief summary, along with the unresolved questions we have encountered.