Neurotheology

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Neurotheology

• God and the Brain

Greg Billock Jan 14, 2006
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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

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Brain Science

• The brain is a dogs 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?
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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 bodys energy
• Most of the bodys internal milieu is sensed and
  regulated by the brain

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Figuring out how the brain works

• Direct imaging (fMRI, PET, SPECT, EEG)
• Study animals
• Wait for someone to have an accident
• Psychophysics
• Mathematical models

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Brain geography

• The brain has different anatomical parts (lobes)

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Brain systems and regions

• The brain can be thought of as composed of
  specific functional areas
• The most explored is the visual system.

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Visual pathway
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Functionally mapping the brain

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

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Specific sensory regions
Speech areas
Auditory pathway
Motor cortex
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Basic trick brain-body maps
Motor homunculus
Ocular dominance -- depth perceptions
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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.
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Attention system Stroop task
FG
OG
SPL
Frontal gyrus Superior parietal lobe Occipital
gyrus
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Parietal Lobe--Spatial Attention System
Brain activity during shifting spatial attention
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Neurobiology of cognition

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

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Neurobiology of cognition

• The mind automatically categorizes (associative
  recall)

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Neurobiology of cognition

• Causality
• Existential
• Emotional value

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The Autonomic Nervous System

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

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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

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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
• --gt Immediate, overpowering belief in the
  explanation of the leopard

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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 minds 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 bodys
  systems reinforce the conviction and freight it
  with body emotional response.
• Because the verbal centers participate, the
  experience is memorizable and communicable.

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Putting it together on purpose--ritual

• Body movements -- often unusual movements
• Rhythm -- music, dance, repetition
• Familiarity and predictability
• Smells
• Existential weight

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Putting it together -- transcendence

• Newberg and dAquili propose several paths to
  transcendent experiences
• A path of stimulating the quiescent system by
  denying any arousal until theres 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.

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Other approaches

• Drugs
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (Persinger)
• Adaptive--Social utility of religion
• Psychiatric conditions (temporal lobe epilepsy)

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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

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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?

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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.

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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?

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Interpretations

• Absolute Unitary Being is realer than real --
  Newberg and dAquili
• 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

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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.

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Further Reading
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Discussion Questions

• 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?
• 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?
• 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?
• 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?
• 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?
• If you could investigate the religious brain
  function of an historical person, who would you
  pick? What would you look for?
• Are there pathological expressions of brain
  religious function? That is, would it be possible
  or advisable to medically treat a disease of
  spiritual experience?