Brain surgery boosts spirituality:
Removing part of the brain can induce inner peace, according to researchers from Italy. Their study provides the strongest evidence to date that spiritual thinking arises in, or is limited by, specific brain areas.
To investigate the neural basis of spirituality, Cosimo Urgesi, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of Udine, and his colleagues turned to people with brain tumours to assess the feeling before and after surgery. Three to seven days after the removal of tumours from the posterior part of the brain, in the parietal cortex, patients reported feeling a greater sense of self-transcendence. This was not the case for patients with tumours removed from the frontal regions of the brain….
The authors pinpointed two parts of the brain that, when damaged, led to increases in spirituality: the left inferior parietal lobe and the right angular gyrus. These areas at the back of the brain are involved in how we perceive our bodies in spatial relation to the external world. The authors of the study in the journal Neuron1, say that their findings support the connection between mystic experiences and feeling detached from the body.
Read the paper. One major problem with it: in spite of all the lovely charts and lesion mapping, etc., at the conclusion of the research, participants were simply asked how they felt when ablation was done. With highly subjective questions, and very general subjects, as to feeling a oneness, etc. Could care less about nice lovely numbers, when the core of the research contains no actual data. Were the brains of participants thoroughly measured, at least by a simple look into brainwaves? No. Is there likely to be a follow up on participants, a few months down the line, if any are still alive? Unlikely. WIll there be any research on those other than some healthy subjects and those with brain tumours, such as those with mental illness, different types of brain damage? Very unlikely. It amounts to a carefully prepared bias , lacking in sufficient clarity, and data. Any attempt to ‘prove the theory wrong’? No. Deeply unsatisfied that Cosimo and associated scientists feel their a priori reasoning (and no predictive models were offered. Can this be used in any meaningful, predictive way? No.) is sound, while being based on mere questions (and I note that the so-called ‘personality tests’ were not described in the paper. Ya’ll gonna do the science, there needs to be everything. All bases covered.) that have no meaningful data associated with them. Most of the measuring and such was done before the personality tests. Surely other scientists will rip holes in this fatuous pile of crap. Listen, if ya’ll are gonna prove the whole ‘mind as by-product of brain function’ angle, stringent, thorough, unnassailable research is required. This paper seems just supposition, with no relevant data, at best, an awkward predictive model-if it can even be called that much, and no practical application. In other words-will we get any meaningful medical research that advances our knowledge from this? Some will say yes, it will advance neurological research. But for people, what, if any, practical advantages? In what way does allegedly locating feelings of transcendence further medical science, such as the creation of drugs that assist in neurochemical balance? None. Why do I say that? Well, what exactly can one get out of knowing where the god part of the brain is? Knowing that it’s there. It has no practical value in actual brain science, and has only the value of feeling nice. So subjects felt nice, and transcendent. Wow. Completely useless knowledge, useless paper.