http://www.nature.com/news/2010/100210/full/news.2010.66.html
This article explains how spirituality was measured in 88 patients with brain tumors. They were assessed before and after their surgeries on different aspects of self-transcendence. I found it interesting that the experimenters found two specific brain regions connected to spirituality. This is something that we usually attribute to being very private and personal, it is hard to view spirituality as something that comes from our brain. However, spirituality like any other feeling or belief is something that comes from our brain. This concept is hard to accept. For me, it put into perspective the idea of people not believing in psychology or believing that the feelings that we have come from our brain activity. This is the same as people who feel that when someone is depressed they just need to get over it, as opposed to actual brain differences that are causing them to feel this way. Spirituality is even harder to use our brain activity as a cause.
I guess I would be interested to hear what some people think about this. Do you think that spirituality, just like other personality attributes, comes from brain activity? Could someone be made more spiritual by performing surgery? Seems a bit far fetched to me.
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