This is Your Brain on God :: Biology Essays Research Papers

With all your science can you tellhow it is, and whence it isthat light comes into the soul? Henry David ThoreauBelief in God has long been held to be a superstition by the scientific community as the existence of such a higher power cannot be demonstrated through objective observation. maculation science is unable to prove whether or not God is real, the field of neurotheology has instead posed a new question that we can find answers to is at that place activity in the mentality specific to religious experience? Can science in fact shed light on Thoreaus question?through and through the use of brain imaging technology, Dr. Andrew Newberg has conducted research in an attempt to find answers to these questions. The participants in his study were Buddhists well-versed in meditation. Newberg used a SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) camera to work up an image of the brain of an individual at the moment he reaches the climax of meditation. Such a picture would enable us to look at the brain as it experiences God.The peak of meditation is clearly a subjective state, with each individual attaining it in different manners and having different time requirements. However, the sensation and implication behind this moment is consistent among all who reach it. At the peak, the subjects indicate that they lose their sense of individual existence and feel inextricably bound with the universe. in that location are no discrete objects or beings, no sense of space or the passage of time, no line between the self and the rest of the universe (Newberg 119).As the river flowing east and westMerge in the sea and become one with it,Forgetting that they were ever separate rivers,So do all creatures lose their othernessWhen they merge at last . . . (Newberg 6-7)Newberg first took baseline images of the brains of the meditators to use as a standard for comparison (Newberg 5). It was important that these scans of the brain be taken opus the subjects were at rest so that brain activity while one is simply relaxed could be differentiated from brain activity while one is having a spiritual experience. The baseline scans showed an even distribution of activity throughout the brain, characterized by a large amount of activity in the posterior, superior parietal lobe and a moderate amount in the prefrontal cortex (Newberg 4).1The subjects then meditated. When they reached the peak, they pulled on a string attached at one end to their finger and at the other to Dr.