The current issue of Scientific American Mind discusses how neuroscientists are using brain scans to study the biology of spiritual experiences; they are, for instance, taking MRIs of the brains of people when they are recalling “religious experiences,” to see what parts of the brain light up. University of Montreal researcher Mario Beauregard says, “These experiences have existed since the dawn of humanity. They have been reported across all cultures. It is as important to study the neural basis of [religious] experience as it is to investigate the neural basis of emotion, memory or language.”<\/p>\n
This part of the article just creeps me right out:<\/p>\n
Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine–a new discipline with the warring titles “neurotheology” and “spiritual neuroscience”–not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people\u2019s lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Imagine a government that could induce religious experiences in its citizens.<\/p>\n
Link<\/A> (via BoingBoing<\/A>)<\/I><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The current issue of Scientific American Mind discusses how neuroscientists are using brain scans to study the biology of spiritual experiences; they are, for instance, taking MRIs of the brains of people when they are recalling “religious experiences,” to see what parts of the brain light up. University of Montreal researcher Mario Beauregard says, “These […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,8],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=495"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/495\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=495"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=495"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/other-worlds-cafe.com\/news\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=495"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}