What god does to your brain

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Some believe that worshippers respond to brain activity that enables heightened feelings of connectedness with things.

Some believe that worshippers respond to brain activity that enables heightened feelings of connectedness with things. Photo: Reuters

When neuroscientist Andrew Newberg scanned the brain of ”Kevin”, a staunch atheist, while he was meditating, he made a fascinating discovery. ”Compared with the Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns, whose brains I’d also scanned, Kevin’s brain operated in a significantly different way,” he says.

”He had far more activity in the prefrontal cortex, the area that controls emotional feelings and mediates attention. Kevin’s brain appeared to be functioning in a highly analytical way, even when he was in a resting state.”

Would Newberg find something similar if he scanned my brain? I, too, am an atheist. This is largely the result of my upbringing (my father is a theoretical physicist, who, as a former director-general of Cern, the European Organisation for Nuclear Research, set up the Large Hadron Collider that is searching for the Higgs boson, or so-called ”God” particle – though many physicists loathe that phrase), but also of prolonged investigations into other religions to see if I was ”missing” something central to billions of people worldwide.

Neuro-scientist Michael Persinger tried to simulate these feelings with his God helmet in the 1990s.

Neuro-scientist Michael Persinger tried to simulate these feelings with his God helmet in the 1990s.

In this spirit, several years ago, I attended an ”Alpha” course, a 10-week introduction to evangelical Christianity. It utterly failed to convince me but, during a service, another ”recruit”, Mark, fell to his knees, babbling ”in tongues”.