Spirituality affects This region of your brain

Spirituality affects This region of your brain

Are you an atheist, an agnostic or a believer? Whatever your faith is like, science for sure is pinpointing towards the existence of a higher purpose. Now, scientists have revealed the part of the brain that responds to spiritual experiences, such as those which make us feel connected to a higher meaning or purpose in life.

The region in the brain where transcendental moments are processed has been identified as the parietal cortex. Scientists say that this region is where beyond-the-ordinary experiences are processed.

"Spiritual experiences are robust states that may have profound impacts on people's lives. Understanding the neural bases of spiritual experiences may help us better understand their roles in resilience and recovery from mental health and addictive disorders," said neuroscientist Marc Potenza from Yale University, one of the researchers.

To understand how spiritual experiences impact us, a study was conducted by Potenza's team. They interviewed 27 English-speaking healthy individuals from Connecticut and asked them to recall a spiritual episode that they had encountered in their lives by creating a personalized imagery script.

After a week, the participants were recalled and their experiences were read to them in a neutral female voice, while their brains underwent fMRI. This helped scientists register the area of the brain where those spiritual experiences registered cognitively.

What they recorded was that the participants showed a reduced activity in the left inferior parietal lobe (IPL), along with a reduced activity in medial thalamus as well as caudate. The IPL is associated with the awareness of the self and others, while the latter regions are associated with emotional and sensory processing.

"Taken together, the present finding suggests that spiritual experiences may involve a perceived encounter with a spacious 'presence' or entity external to oneself. This interpretation is consistent with a strong feeling of connection or surrender to a deity or other revered figure, as often reported in religious and spiritual literature," the researchers write.

However, considering the limiting aspects of the research with regard to the location and number of participants, an improvement in the empirical understanding of the subject is still pending.