Brain differences of atheists and believers
Jeanwah
Posts: 6,363
***Note that this is a science related thread and NOT a "God" thread. I didn't start this so people can bicker about God, it's about brain differences in people according to beliefs. I thought this article was pretty interesting.
Is There a Difference between the Brain of an Atheist and the Brain of a Religious Person?
Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia, responds
By Andrew Newberg | January 16, 2012
Is there a difference between the brain of an atheist andthe brain of a religious person?
—Emma Schachner, Utah
Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia, responds:
Researchers have pinpointed differences between the brains of believers and nonbelievers, but the neural picture is not yet complete.
Several studies have revealed that people who practice meditation or have prayed for many years exhibit increased activity and have more brain tissue in their frontal lobes, regions associated with attention and reward, as compared with people who do not meditate or pray. A more recent study revealed that people who have had “born again” experiences have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in emotions and memory, than atheists do. These findings, however, are difficult to interpret because they do not clarify whether having larger frontal lobes or a smaller hippocampus causes a person to become more religious or whether being pious triggers changes in these brain regions.
Various experiments have also tried to elucidate whether believing in God causes similar brain changes as believing in something else. The results, so far, show that thinking about God may activate the same parts of the brain as thinking about an airplane, a friend or a lamppost. For instance, one study showed that when religious people prayed to God, they used some of the same areas of the brain as when they talked to an average Joe. In other words, in the religious person’s brain, God is just as real as any object or person.
Research also suggests that a religious brain exhibits higher levels of dopamine, a hormone associated with increased attention and motivation. A study showed that believers were much more likely than skeptics to see words and faces on a screen when there were none, whereas skeptics often did not see words and faces that were actually there. Yet when skeptics were given the drug L-dopa, which increases the amount of dopamine in the brain, they were just as likely to interpret scrambled patterns as words and faces as were the religious individuals.
So what does the research mean? At the moment, we do not have a clear way to connect all the dots. For now we can say that the religious and atheist brains exhibit differences, but what causes these disparities remains unknown.
http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/is_ther ... ous_person
Is There a Difference between the Brain of an Atheist and the Brain of a Religious Person?
Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia, responds
By Andrew Newberg | January 16, 2012
Is there a difference between the brain of an atheist andthe brain of a religious person?
—Emma Schachner, Utah
Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia, responds:
Researchers have pinpointed differences between the brains of believers and nonbelievers, but the neural picture is not yet complete.
Several studies have revealed that people who practice meditation or have prayed for many years exhibit increased activity and have more brain tissue in their frontal lobes, regions associated with attention and reward, as compared with people who do not meditate or pray. A more recent study revealed that people who have had “born again” experiences have a smaller hippocampus, a part of the brain involved in emotions and memory, than atheists do. These findings, however, are difficult to interpret because they do not clarify whether having larger frontal lobes or a smaller hippocampus causes a person to become more religious or whether being pious triggers changes in these brain regions.
Various experiments have also tried to elucidate whether believing in God causes similar brain changes as believing in something else. The results, so far, show that thinking about God may activate the same parts of the brain as thinking about an airplane, a friend or a lamppost. For instance, one study showed that when religious people prayed to God, they used some of the same areas of the brain as when they talked to an average Joe. In other words, in the religious person’s brain, God is just as real as any object or person.
Research also suggests that a religious brain exhibits higher levels of dopamine, a hormone associated with increased attention and motivation. A study showed that believers were much more likely than skeptics to see words and faces on a screen when there were none, whereas skeptics often did not see words and faces that were actually there. Yet when skeptics were given the drug L-dopa, which increases the amount of dopamine in the brain, they were just as likely to interpret scrambled patterns as words and faces as were the religious individuals.
So what does the research mean? At the moment, we do not have a clear way to connect all the dots. For now we can say that the religious and atheist brains exhibit differences, but what causes these disparities remains unknown.
http://digg.com/newsbar/topnews/is_ther ... ous_person
Post edited by Unknown User on
0
Comments
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
Godfather.
Throw Medulla Oblongata in there and i'm just happy as a pig in shit.
They should do a frontal lobotomy on those boys in the "Boys will be boys" thread.
I got this from his website bio:
He is considered a pioneer in the neuroscientific study of religious and spiritual experiences, a field frequently referred to as – neurotheology. His work attempts to better understand the nature of religious and spiritual practices and experiences.
Godfather.
Not today Sir, Probably not tomorrow.............................................. bayfront arena st. pete '94
you're finally here and I'm a mess................................................... nationwide arena columbus '10
memories like fingerprints are slowly raising.................................... first niagara center buffalo '13
another man ..... moved by sleight of hand...................................... joe louis arena detroit '14
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
And if switching beliefs cause changes in the brain, or vice versa.
i cant imagine swtiching beliefs from say christianity to islam would make a difference... after all youre still a monotheist. id also be interested in seeing if there was a difference if one switched from christianity/islam to buddhism. and what of those agnostics??? and does the brain of a fundamentalist differ from the not so zealous believer?
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Yeah, I was thinking going from being, say, Christian, to atheist. The biggest extreme.
I also believe that we create obstacles to learning and truth... when we think we already have the answers.
Hail, Hail!!!
i see the opposite as being the bigger extreme.. i can not even imagine what it would be that would have me turn into a believer.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Imagine what your brain might look like!
I love that song.
not believing and just not knowing for sure are two different things. i find the term belief/believe to be loaded. its not that i dont believe tis just for me God doesnt exist... much like unicorns. but if i said i dont believe in unicorns people would look at me weird as if to say well who would?.
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
im busting to see what my brain looks like.... maybe one day when i go to the doctors to see if 40 years of headaches is normal..
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Point taken.
Along those same lines... why don't people who utilize the part of the brain that triggers religious and/or spiritual belief... believe in Unicorns?
Hail, Hail!!!
lack of evidence perhaps. :think:
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
Too bad Mary and Joseph didn't ride into Bethlehem on a Unicorn.
Actually, that would have been pretty awesome if they did.
Hail, Hail!!!
not sure unicorns are native to that area ... BUT in one of my bibles there is this colour plate of noahs ark and there is a unicorn standing there. so maybe....
take a good look
this could be the day
hold my hand
lie beside me
i just need to say
That's right. I remember hearing that the reason WHY there are no Unicorns today was because they were out there pissing rainbows or something, when the Ark left port, right?
I also heard that the reason why my Manx Cat, Higgins, was missing his tail was because his ancestor was the last animal onto the Ark and the door closed on his tail.
Hail, Hail!!!
Such a great song from such a great album, probably my favorite. Even Imagine touches on this subject.
thinking about God may activate the same parts of the brain as thinking about an airplane, a friend or a lamppost
There's a song or a poem in there, I just know it. It might also explain a little about the guy in another town I often used to see talking to a phone booth. He was on to something. Same thing with the longshoreman I met years ago who snuffed out his cigarette in the palm of his hand and had hair like flames. He was on to something. We call these people crazy, but many of the so-called "crazy" people I've met don't proclaim to know God. They just seem to see things we don't. I wonder what the study would show about their brains?
-Eddie Vedder, "Smile"
http://www.scientificamerican.com/artic ... t-of-brain
amazing our brains and so much unknown
and for me an airplane or lamp post wouldn't be how I would think of a friend
And God
Emotion/feeling is the key, complex reactions within the brain, longterm memory,
life time experiences negative positive these are contributing factors for
being a believer, in my opinion. Having come from being an atheist to a believer,
I have met many now who have, I too wonder what the brain changes are.
Perhaps a miracle experience changes the brain ... being based in electrical waves
I can see how this could happen. Maybe my brain grew 3 times that day
there I thought it was my heart
Hippocampus
Is particularly involved with memory phenomena, specially with the formation of long-term memory (the one that, sometimes, lasts forever).
I like saying the word too
Peace
*MUSIC IS the expression of EMOTION.....and that POLITICS IS merely the DECOY of PERCEPTION*
.....song_Music & Politics....Michael Franti
*The scientists of today think deeply instead of clearly. One must be sane to think clearly, but one can think deeply and be quite INSANE*....Nikola Tesla(a man who shaped our world of electricity with his futuristic inventions)
I know, I love that line too! Yeah, I wonder about eccentric habits and how the brain would resemble that, but I'd bet that if you took a Schizophrenic brain, there would be obvious differences... I'd think.
Is believing a 'learned' experience, 'physically' created by our brain if one is so pre-disposed?
It's fact that different 'types' of people have differences in the physical appearance of their brains (eg. psychos, criminally insane, etc.). Is this just a manifestation of 'type'?