St. Theresa.
CREDIT: ARCHIVO ICONOGRAFICO, S.A./CORBIS |
Nuns replaying past mystical experiences have made the latest contribution to the burgeoning field of "spiritual neuroscience."
Psychologist Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal in Canada and his student Vincent Paquette recruited 15 Carmelite nuns, all of whom had had at least one intense mystical experience. The two researchers looked at the nuns' brains using functional magnetic resonance imaging while the sisters tried to re-evoke such experiences. As a control, the nuns' brains were also imaged while they tried to relive "the most intense state of union with another human" they had ever felt.
Beauregard says that some researchers have theorized that religious experiences involve epilepsy-like seizures in temporal lobes. But the mystical condition activated dozens of brain areas involved in perception, emotion, and cognition, he and Paquette reported last week in Neuroscience Letters. The pair also conclude that although there is much overlap with the feelings of peace and love from the control condition, the mystical condition has its own signature, with "relatively different regional patterns of brain activation."
Physician Andrew Newberg, head of the newly established Center for Spirituality and the Mind at the University of Pennsylvania, says the study indicates that a mystical state activates a larger brain area than would ordinarily be involved in focusing on a specific problem or memory, so such states are "extremely complex."
