In the god's hunting

In Greater Sudbury, Ontario, Canada, the neurocientífico Michael Persinger is pawned in discovering what is the cerebral boss that generates the feeling of being along with God, of the mystical sensations. In fact, he affirms that exciting certain specific regions of the brain with electromagnetic pulses religious experiences can be induced. Persinger belongs to a limited group of scientists, called neuroteólogos, that believe that the spirituality has a neurological base. This investigator feel to his bunnies of indies in a completely silent room where it brings in a light not even beam and the “God's helmet” places them in the head: a device that believes a weak magnetic field on the right parietal and temporary lobes of the brain. Apparently 80 % of the participants has felt this divine presence. Between another 20 % there is the politically active atheist Richard Dawkins, who four years ago sought employment like volunteer and went out disappointed for not being able “to have entered communion with the universe”.

For Persinger the magnetic field shoots the electrical activity of the temporary lobes provoking the spiritual experience. In 2004 a group of Swedish scientists of the University of Uppsala led by Pehr Granqvist it did not manage to reproduce his results; according to Persinger, the subjects had not been exposed to the field during the sufficient time.
Andrew Newberg, of the University of Pennsylvania, also has gained himself his position in this peculiar branch of the neuroscience on having taken cerebral images SPECT (single-photon-emission computed tomography) to Tibetan and Franciscan monks. His work discovered that the meditation deactivates the areas of the brain that regulate the personality – on having lost the aptitude to differ from the others, it is easy to feel identified with the totality – and that the activity of the brain sees modified, being intensified in the frontal part of the brain. The descent of the activity in the parietal lobes, which function is to face our bodies as regards the world, gives place to abnormal spatial perceptions and makes the mystical experience possible. In fact, who have damaged these areas of the brain usually lose his aptitude to move with ease for the environment because it turns out to be to them a difficult knowledge where it finishes his body and the exterior world begins.

“That these experiences should be common to persons of any Indian confession that we are treating with the same processes neuronales”, adds Newberg. The neurocientífico treats in health on having affirmed that it neither should be other studies they cannot even say anything on the God's existence. “It is like taking the images of a brain that is looking at a picture”, he tells. “We can see what areas are activated, like the visual cortex, but we cannot say anything if really he is contemplating it or is imagining it”. The fascinating thing is that certain coincidence exists between the cerebral activity tied to the autotranscendency and that of the sexual pleasure: both break loose for a rhythmic activity – in the religious case dancing, singing or repeating mantras – and both produce sensation of use, of unit … it does not turn out to be strange that Santa Teresa was using a language loaded with romanticism and sexual touches on having described his delight.

Lars Farde, teacher of psychiatry in the Institute Karolinska of Stockholm, has put again in the forum a substance that has been always orbiting in the mind of the scientists when one speaks about the religious fact: the serotonina. In his investigation published in 2003 in American Journal of Psychiatry, Farde and his collaborators they measured the levels of serotonina of 15 men between 20 and 45 years. His interest in this neurotransmitter, and especially for the recipient 5-HT1A, “one of the most important, since it serves like scoreboard of the whole system serotonínico”, tells Farde, he is because a high interrelation exists between the cerebral functions and the personality; in fact, this team was the first one in demonstrating it. Studying the relation between the serotonina levels in the depression and in the anxiety, they discovered that a connection exists between those and the spirituality of the individuals: this one is major the more fall is the thickness of recipients of serotonina. Might a chemical base exist to believe in a top being? If a substance that segregates our body is capable of making us have mystical visions, might they be induced artificially if we consume the famous “sacred fungi”? Shamans and wizards have used hallucinogenic drugs to reach the certain states “of communion with the universe”. Although this fact is well-known, it was not possible to have tried with the whole necessary rigor until last year, when a few doctors of the University Johns Hopkins led by Roland R. Griffiths submitted 36 volunteers without previous experience in hallucinogenic to different doses of psilocibina – a present alkaloid in many fungi species–.

The results were amazing: 61 % had finished mystical experiences. After two months of ingestion, 79 % of the participants affirmed that they were sorry more satisfied with his life. Relatives and friends confirmed that they had seen in them a change to better. Rick Strassman, a psychiatrist Buddhist of New Mexico, defends that, to understand the conscience it humanizes, it is essential to bear in mind another substance that also is related to the recipient 5-HT1A: the dimetiltriptamina or DMT, which he the flame the spiritual molecule. In addition to producing our metabolism in small quantities, it is the principal component of the ayahuasca. His ingestion produces visions as that it had the alternative ecologist Terence MacKenna, who has described his meetings with a few beings that it calls Elves of the Machine.

Strassman, the first investigator in obtaining a federal permission to experiment with psychedelic drugs on human beings in the 70s, believes that the DMT is synthesized in the pineal gland – the famous third eye and place where there take place precursors of this molecule, like the triptófano, an essential amino acid–. The explosions of mystical sensation can stem, it adds, to that the pineal gland produces it in excess – it would be as to receive a "shot" – or that, for any motive, our own organism is not capable of regulating it. According to this psychiatrist the DMT also he is responsible for the experiences near to the death, the supposed extraterrestrial abductions and the whole suit of armor of cognitive exotic phenomena. In his more than 400 meetings with DMT, most of 60 volunteers experienced sensations of delight, happiness, inexpressibility, a certain conscience of which the life goes beyond the death and the contact with a “powerful, wise and affectionate presence”. It was clear that also 47 % of the subjects found with so slightly religious beings like robots, elves, clowns, aliens … that not always were friendly.

Bearing in mind that our metabolism and, therefore, the handling that our body does of all these substances is guided by the genes: might we be "programmed" to believe in God? A quarter of century does psychologists and anthropologists were assuming that the religion was a product of the socialization, which one believed for influence of the environment. And this way it had kept on being if it was not for a research program begun in 1979 in the University of Minnesota with twins monozigóticos.

The most interesting and polemic results have been realized studying the personality and cultural features of twins raised separately. The game position is simple: two twins possess the same genetic load; if they have been educated in different ambiences, we will be in knowledge predisposition until point the genes influence his behavior. The problem is not so simple as to measure the load of the electron and it is subject to numerous variables, but it can give us certain tracks. In the first studies, the scientists compared identical twins with normal brothers – who share only 50 % of the genes – all of them separated servants. They thought that the twins were coinciding at the time of believing in God the double that not twins. Curiously, it was on having had to fulfill the rituals of the organized religions where the results were equal between two groups.

Seemingly, to believe in God can be influenced genetically, but be present at mass every Sunday is completely cultural. In 2005 Laura Koenig was publishing a review of the longest questionnaires that realized twins and relatives in Minnesota during the 90s. Analyzed the information, the result was hitting in the eye: during the childhood and the adolescence both the twins and the normal brothers possess practically the same religious faith as in his house. It is in the adult age when the differences arise: while the twins develop common religious rules, which it are not usually do not coincide with faith questions. Finally, during the ripeness the genetics turns into a domineering factor, be already strengthening or reducing the initial religious impetus.

Before similar perspective it is no wonder that any of them have thrown themselves to look for the “God's gene”. The one who says to have found it, or at least to have a candidate, is the North American geneticist Dean Hamer. In 2004, he published the hypothesis of which one of two possible versions that of the gene VMAT2 we have the human beings is the culprit of that we have this autotranscendency sense.

To understand why it exists the religious feeling in the human beings is a recent scientific company: it even is right in little it was a topic taboo. The evolutionary psychology, with Pascal Boyer, takes only 15 years to the head faced to the problem. Many people think that there must be something in the circuitry of our brain that makes us inclined to it and to all the variants of religion that exist; there are someone where the gods die, in the majority the salvation element is not a head office of the doctrine … We will see what the future provides to us and if to believe in God is, as thinks Dawkins, a by-product of our need that someone should say to us how to act to survive or it is, essentially, a necessary idea so that the brain does his work. In Newberg words, “the principal reason so that God does not want to go away is because our brains do not allow to do it”.

(Pompous original in very Interesting)