My Bed Slats Keep Falling

'Module' OF SPIRITUALITY IN THE BRAIN (2)

By: Antonio Chávez
hnc.correo @ gmail.com

In a previous article we saw had been achieved isolate the feature 'self-transcendence '(AT) through cognitive effect that produced the surgical removal of tumors in posterior regions of the brain, " confirms the specificity of anatomic and clinical relationship between the injury after brain areas and increased AT" ( Urgesi et al. 2010 pp. 311-312). The specific region is the inferior parietal cortex. Also previously discussed the role of this and other regions of parietal lobe, temporal lobe and especially one that limits with respect to virtually the whole matter of spiritual experiences . In short, being highly consistent with the functions of both lobes, these experiences can be explained due to hyper or underactive visuospatial awareness and recognition of self as independent of the surrounding space.

Now a new study published in Brain Research last November, and reported by Epiphenom a couple of weeks ago (This article is where I draw details of the study), also underlines the importance of the temporal lobe in the AT. Schuerbeek et al. (2010) correlations between temperament and character profiles (depending on the model of Cloninger eg Gardini et al. 2010 ) with specific brain regions known as substrates of conduct proposed by Cloninger associated with the features of his model. Schuerbeek et al. measured the thickness of gray matter (cortex) and white (the wiring that connects the regions of the cortex) to find this correlation. Thus, in this study with young women, " character traits correlated with the thickness of the gray and white matter in the frontal, temporal and limbic regions involved in the relevant cognitive tasks: self-reflection for [homing] awareness and empathy with others to [ cooperative] and religious belief [AT]. "

And according to Epiphenom , the authors' found that women with a high sense of self-transcendence had more gray matter in the right brain in the region temporal gyrus, middle and inferior parietal turn "(see image below left). Additionally, had " less gray matter in the left side of the brain in the inferior temporal gyrus and understeer (in the parietal lobe). They also had less gray matter in the superior frontal gyrus . "Schuerbeek et al. conclude that " this study shows that individual variations in brain morphology may be related to the dimensions of temperament and character, and supports the hypothesis of a neurobiological basis of personality traits ."


Another previous study ( Johnstone & Glass 2008) examined the brains of 26 people with traumatic injury to check spirituality, according to previous studies (without doubt should refer to eg Newberg et al . 2002 p. 43) is associated with increased frontal activity (and temporary) and decreased parietal activity. On the one hand, contrary results were compared to the frontal cortex / temporal, but managed to corroborate parietal hypofunction corresponding to the profile of spirituality. " The neuropsychological data support a model that proposes that spiritual experiences are related to the decrease of right parietal lobe activity, which may be associated with decreased self-consciousness (transcendence) and increase in left temporal lobe activity, which may be associated with certain archetypal religious experience (religious figures and symbols) . "

These findings add to others and reviewed as very strong evidence of the important role of parietal cortex temporal and inferior in terms of what I call the outer space intentional agent ~ a core of religious cognition. What is unknown is the exact neurological mechanism, considering the many shafts interhemispheric, hypo / hyperfunction and parietal / temporal obviously intersect to produce the AT. While, in one way or another parietal cortex is the neural basis of the TA. I mean, hyper and hypofunction of the right side (with the corresponding contralateral functional compensation) also lead to the experience and / or conduct autotrascendental within a range under the influence of gender, and that note, it became obvious in schizophrenia. For example, the parietal cortex thicker than women's right (healthy) more spiritual, shown by Schuerbeek et al., Is consistent with the volume of the same region found similar in healthy women as schizophrenic (or rather, the difference is not significant), and is typically higher than in men ( Frederiksen et al. 2000). Meanwhile, it is widely known that women are more attached to religion (eg McCullough & Larson 1999 p. 131 ; Miron 1999).

This may explain neurocognitive female addiction, having also a complex relationship with his tendency to depression. Moreover, all of which support the specific modular nature and inferior parietal cortex on the AT, because men with schizophrenia have the same region not only significantly larger compared with healthy men, but even for women themselves schizophrenia (Frederiksen et al . 2000). Of course, schizophrenia comes about precisely because the inferior parietal volume imbalance is the substrate of the visuospatial system dysfunction and agentive (~ perceive inner speech as coming from a foreign agent). Suggestively I mentioned earlier the case of Einstein's brain , with parietal cortex (lower) abnormally large, as the explanation of its transcendentalism. In short: there is a continuum hiperagentividad → AT → schizophrenia, where healthy people, from atheists, irreligious people with a particular spirituality to committed religious believers, fill the first two cognitive links.


Related Topics:

• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (I): neural correlates of supernatural beliefs
• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (II): Dopamine, MAGICAL THINKING AND RELIGION
• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (III): PALEONEUROLOGÍA, MATHEMATICS AND SUPERNATURAL BELIEF
• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (IV): THE ROLE OF SEROTONIN
• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (V) : WHEN THE INTENTIONS OF THE ENVIRONMENT HAVE FACE
• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (VI): THE ROLE OF TEMPORAL LOBE
• NEUROSCIENCE OF RELIGION (VII): THE ROLE OF THE PARIETAL LOBE
• PRAY TO GOD IMPLIES NORMAL SOCIAL neurocognition
• INFERENCES ARE LIKE A GOD ON INFERENCES ON SELF
• the left hemisphere: PATTERNS, HYPOTHESES AND DELUSIONS
• Neural correlates of religious and nonreligious
• IS are genetically predisposed to be religious?
• 'Module' OF SPIRITUALITY IN THE BRAIN (1)

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HAS EXPLODED War II COLD

What is now the photo of the alleged Cold War?

If you're reading this post, I imagine it will be:

a) For the title.

b) Because I know, a possibility very common in social networks.

If your choice is the holder, you may be thinking:

1) This guy has gone mad.

2) is a provocateur.

3) As I told you lately strange things were happening in the world.

4) Everything is a conspiracy.

5) None of the above.

What can I say. All true, in its way. As it is relatively certain that:

i) The last ceremony for the Nobel Peace Prize had all the markings of a maneuver of the Cold War, both the Chinese boycott and treatment in their means, for the bombing of the Western media image of the chair empty as a symbol of individual freedom.

ii) The foreign war that is taking place between the U.S. and China no longer a confrontation between two models that look the same but different. The first makes the market (economy) to the State. The second gives freedom to the economy, but the state prevails as higher power.

iii) If the U.S. and China had wanted to engage in a war, they would have done. There North Korea is giving reasons for both (if there is war, therefore, will be economic or not).

Unfortunately, half-truths are no more than that. What is troubling are the uncertainties:

• What is the point that China buys 80% of Portuguese debt as things are?
• The bombing of investors to weaker European states, does something to do with the capitalist offensive against China crisis? Because if so ill go.
• If there Cold War? Is the territory of the conflict returns to Europe as the first time?
• someone will die "? In the first Cold War, once consolidated blocks, hardly revolutionary infiltrators and spies died naive. Now no longer die (except of hunger, of course). If it is not dying to see whole families languish because of unemployment and the crisis long expected.
• may live very well in the past. But are the ordinary people to blame for this war for power that has been established between the capitalist neo-liberal elites and the Chinese Communist Party elite thanks to the incompetence of European politics?

If you've come to the end do not despair, thinking that everything is relative (less poverty, and death). Just do not think it's going to end up like this:

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RELIGION WHY DO PEOPLE HAPPIER? (HINT: NO GOD)

Original in English LiveScience: " Why Religion Makes People Happier (Hint: Not God) "by Stephanie Pappas, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 07 December 2010 5:37 a.m. ET
Translation and adaptation: Antonio Chávez
hnc.correo @ gmail.com

Religious people are more satisfied with their lives than non-believers, but a new study finds that there is a relationship with God that brings happiness to the devotees. Instead, stimulation of satisfaction can come from closer ties with neighboring terrestrial.

According to a study published on 07 December in the journal American Sociological Review , religious people increased life satisfaction through social networks built to attend religious services. The results are applicable to Catholics, evangelicals and Protestants. The number of Jews, Mormons, Muslims and people of other religions interviewed was too small to draw conclusions on these groups, according to study investigator Chaeyoon Lim, a sociologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

" show that [the life satisfaction] is almost entirely on the social aspects of religion, rather than the theological or spiritual religion," Lim told LiveScience. " We found that people are more satisfied with their lives when they go to church, because they build a network within your congregation ."

Happiness is a bench full of people

Many studies have found relationship between religion and satisfaction with life, but all research faced a "problem of chicken and egg," said Lim. Does religion make people happy or do happy people religious? And if religion is the cause of satisfaction with life, what is the responsible thing - spirituality, social relationships, or some other aspect of religion?

Lim and his colleague, the Harvard researcher Robert Putnam, addressed both issues in its study. In 2006, they contacted a nationally representative sample of 3.108 adult Americans by telephone and asked them questions about their religious activities, beliefs and social networks. In 2007, they called the same new group were 1.915 of them to meet the same batch of questions again.

Surveys showed that across all faiths, religious people were more satisfied than non-religious. According to the data, 28% of people attending a weekly religious service were "extremely satisfied" with their lives, compared with 19.6% of people who never attended services.

But satisfaction could not be attributed to factors such as personal prayer, the strength of belief or subjective feeling of God's love or presence. Instead, satisfaction was linked to the number of close friends who said had your faith. People over 10 friends in their congregation were nearly twice as satisfied with their lives than people without friends in their congregation. Are

special friends of the church?

Importantly, said Lim, the study suggests a causal relationship between religion and life satisfaction: the people who had begun attending church more often between 2006 and 2007 surveys became happier . Once again, happiness was explained entirely by an increase in close friendships in the church.

" We think it has something to do with the fact that you're with a group of close friends on a regular basis, together as a group and participating in certain activities that are meaningful to the group "said Lim. "At the same time, they share certain social identity, a sense of belonging to a community of moral faith. The sense of ownership seems to be the key to the relationship between church attendance and satisfaction with life . "

While more secular close friendships were also associated with satisfaction with life, friendships church seem to imply something that adds to the satisfaction, "said Lim. Additional research by Lim and Putnam, book published in the American Grace: How Religion Divides Us and States United States Us (Simon & Schuster, 2010) has found that, too, the religious propensity to charity and volunteering is associated with the close friendship in the church.

Theoretically, Lim said, membership in a secular group of friends who engage in meaningful activities and share a social identity can also increase life satisfaction. The researchers plan to conduct a third round of surveys with the same group of participants in 2011 in which they hope to collect data on age-old friendship groups.

***

Comments

Well once again we have data on hand, such as the recent study Berghammer (2010) , which shows that the dilemma of the "chicken and egg" debate and within the adaptationism / exaptation about religion, this is not the causal factor of social satisfaction. And directly related employment terms 'satisfaction' / 'social' because at least it was known that on the one hand, socialization is linked to the production of oxytocin (and vasopressin) (Uvnäs-Moberg 1998 ; Kirsch et al . 2005 ; Hollander et al . 2006) and therefore feels good. Oxytocin is especially connected with the close ties and strong empathic that arise between individuals (eg in a sexual partner, mother / child, human / dog). Neurobiology that operates on the impact of intimate friendships on perceived satisfaction with life here a mechanism is obviously very likely, as indeed has been that oxytocin acts as a mediator of welfare ( Uvnäs-Moberg & Petersson 2005 ; Ishak et al . 2010). On the other hand, satisfaction with life, the welfare , has proved to be practically determined by the social context (cf .'s extensive international study Helliwell et al . 2009 ); what, resulting in the above, could be linked neuro-social mechanism that includes a sense of pleasure and reward expectation. Similarly, religiosity has been seen as a form of identity ( Ysseldyke et al . 2010). Pray

just is not fun, and the directional arrow of causality is cognition / social emotion → religion and not vice versa. However, although I personally hope the same results here with respect to the secular friends (I have argued that atheists are also largely due to socio-emotional factors ), religion and religiosity constituents have certainly unique (and therefore close friendships with that religion itself shares that would be special), what exactly have to do with the supernatural agency, the agency of death and spirituality. We have seen that as an anxiolytic religion offers more of what they do politics and sport: the agency of death (and the feeling of control). That is, although the success of religion, just something so fundamental as the satisfaction and well-being is not determined by it per se but by neurobiological and social mechanisms that facilitate their success, it is likely that there is a reverse causal arrow in cognition / emotion ← social religion, while their constituents are demonstrably aspects linked to the feeling of control and reducing anxiety and stress .

What should be clear is that there is, again, religion per se so that clearly has adaptive value, but those constituents associated with the control and modulation of anxiety that can be summarized as 'magical thinking', which is not equivalent because of religion and which is present both believers and atheists and skeptics (a " supersense " in terms of Hood), as opposed to theology or prayer, yes can be implanted or removed through cultural learning. For God is not the cause of life satisfaction, although it seems that we are predisposed to feel neurobiological far to share with close friends some system of beliefs and behaviors.