Scientists Think They Just Found The Brain’s Spirituality Network

Scientists spent years looking for the ‘God Spot’ in the brain before concluding it didn’t exist. Early candidates like the temporal or parietal lobes never panned out. And differences in how researchers define spirituality has also complicated things, because different areas of the brain light up when we use moral reasoning vs when we experience awe. But what has remained clear is more than 80% of humans worldwide report being spiritual or religious.

Now, a group of researchers have used a method known as “lesion network mapping” to find the home of spirituality in the brain. In their study, published in Biological Psychiatry, the researchers report that they have located a specific brain circuit for spirituality, found in the periaqueductal gray (PAG).

Only time will tell if that finding holds true or goes the way of other potential god spot candidates. But spirituality, which can be broadly defined as a sense of connection with something greater than the self, is worth studying. Many of the components associated with spirituality, namely connection, awe, empathy, altruism and compassion, are also solidly associated with happiness in the research. 

The brain’s spiritual circuit

For this study, the researchers used a technique that has a long history in neuroscience, namely using the location of lesions in the brain to figure out what certain areas do.

Using a previously published dataset that included 88 neurosurgical patients with lesions in a variety of different places in their brains who were going to have the tumors surgically removed. They compared their results with another dataset of >100 patients who experienced penetrating head trauma from combat during the Vietnam War. These are two very different datasets, reflecting the challenges of doing this kind of research.

The surgical patients were surveyed about spiritual acceptance as contrasted with religiosity, with questions like “Do you consider yourself a religious person?” before and after their surgeries.

Before and after their neurosurgeries to remove brain tumors, 30 of the 88 patients showed a decrease in self-reported spiritual belief, 29 showed an increase, and 29 showed no change. The researchers mapped this self-reported spirituality mapped to a particular brain circuit in the PAG.

The spiritual brain, as visualized by study author Michael Ferguson.

Michael Ferguson

Of particular interest, the researchers found both positive and negative nodes in the PAG circuit. In other words, a person’s spiritual beliefs either increased or decreased depending on which node was interrupted by their brain lesion. The researchers reported that both results from the Vietnam War dataset and case reports of patients who became hyper-religious when they had lesions impacting the ‘negative nodes’ of their proposed circuit backed up their findings.

The PAG is an interesting place for a spirituality circuit, because it has been previously associated with a wide range of functions: fear conditioning, pain modulation, altruistic behaviors and unconditional love.

"Our results suggest that spirituality and religiosity are rooted in fundamental, neurobiological dynamics and deeply woven into our neuro-fabric," said author Michael Ferguson, PhD, a principal investigator in the Brigham's Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics, in a press release. "We were astonished to find that this brain circuit for spirituality is centered in one of the most evolutionarily preserved structures in the brain."

The value of spirituality

The argument that religion and/or spirituality have evolutionary value has been made before. "Religious belief and behavior are a hallmark of human life, with no accepted animal equivalent, and found in all cultures," says Professor Jordan Grafman, of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke, in a 2009 article. Regarding his own research, Grafman says, "Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and they support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary-adaptive cognitive functions."

Theories on why spirituality may have evolutionary value tend to fall into a couple of categories. First, that religious beliefs comfort those in hardship, perhaps allowing them to survive when others despaired. Second, that spirituality in general and religiosity in particular is an off shoot of our brain’s main function: creating meaning. When meaning isn’t clear, the brain creates a narrative.

But to those who consider themselves spiritual, such arguments either suggest that their experiences are less than authentic or are simply irrelevant. The benefits to happiness and wellbeing of experiencing awe, or a deep sense of compassionate connection to greater humanity are well-documented.

And given the profound tensions in our communities and world right now, a reminder that humans are wired for connection is a welcome one.

#News | https://sciencespies.com/news/scientists-think-they-just-found-the-brains-spirituality-network/