Just for note, the Phineas Gage story about his personality change has been way overblown. As you say the brain is extremely adaptable, healthy parts of the brain will take over duties of a damage part, and it was the same in Gage's case.
regular comment: 1798 was when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, which many consider an infringement on the First Amendment. If you reverse the middle two digits, you get 1978-the year the Protect the Children Act was enacted which is anti-map
10:32 I wonder if that’s because having an illness that affects your quality of life and makes the future less predictable just makes you less likely to find delayed gratification actually worth it. I wonder how this would be different looking at people with a degenerative illness that doesn’t attack the brain.
@@LearningAndLiberating it reminds me of how some people who, rightly or otherwise, feel disenfranchised don’t really bother thinking about the future because they don’t think they have one.
I am very interested in the idea of animals and religion, especially as a person in the orthodox faith. So many of our stories involve animals. And, there are plenty of examples of monks interacting with wild animals. Also, my dog loves to pray. If I forget to pray in the morning, he goes over to the icon corner and reminds me.
This was fascinating and I am very much looking forward to the next episodes! I still think that your episode on Wicca is one of the best representations by non-Wiccans out there, and much more accessible and comprehensible than pretty much everything by Wiccans. I really appreciate the curious-neutral tone and the complete absence of judgment :)
Very interesting and well done. One problem you touched on but I think is more significant, is whether religious cognitions differ between religious traditions. The language used in measuring religious cognition is based in Western monotheistic understandings of religion. Increasingly people raised in Eastern religions are in the West, and westerners have embrased Eastern religions. It’s unclear whether “prayer” means the same thing experientially or neurally. Even using the term “god” rather than “the divine or sacred” indicates a western bias in spiritual experiences. Sin is a concept based in a commanding god, not a god of the natural world or a family of divine beings as in many polytheistic traditions. Bottom line, we’re just beginning to parse out all the many threads in the neuropsycho-spirituality of religion.
The origin of the word sin, and its translations, essentially refers to “missing the target”. Thus, the word sin can be applied to all religious traditions e.g. following the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism, “Right View” etc.
Religious experiences seem to be associated with a reduction in activity across the "default mode network" (DMN). A reduction in activity in this region is associated with ego-death/disillusionment and psychedelic-type experiences(which can occur naturally, although, typically without the visual aspect) The feeling of, "all is one" or "divine connection" can be repeatedly and predictably produced, with various methods of suppressing the DMN. I used to suppress mine about once a day(or more) through neuro-chemical means.... and i started to think i had a connection with god/the "all-mind".... But the entities i witnessed, never gave me any information or insights that could not be inferred through the information contained in my memories and experience, implying that they only had access to the information contained inside of my brain.... which would (seemingly) not be the case, if they were objectively real... so i stopped thinking they were real. Rather, they're probably - projections of spontaneous neural re -configurations, which are so foreign to the constructs that constitute my sense of identity.... that the only way to process it, is to project it as a separate entity within the experience.. That's just part of the picture though ^~^
I believe at most charitable, it could be an interesting way to experience one's own subconscious, or even repressed emotions. But even then it is clouded and nebulous, kind of like induced dreaming.
I don't know if there's a religious center in the brain. But, I've come to believe that some people are more predisposed to believe in religions than others. For some it's a necessity.
That is something I have been pondering. I was brought up Christian, left the church at age 18, spent 20 years as an Atheist, then sought out an individualistic religiosity. (I don't self-identify as "New Age", but something along those lines.) Thing is, when I got into my spirituality, I got the sense that I had always been spiritually inclined. There where certain things during my decades of Metaphysical Naturalism that seemed to indicate that. For example, I was the kind of person who could get a sense of almost spiritual reverence from Science.
Honestly, I think it has to do with brain types. Most people are just fearful followers. We would have evolved that way for a group necessity but now it's broken in society (Who denies evolution?) and the fearful who cannot distinguish reality are now in charge.
FWIW, I was raised in a Baptist church. But, I never bought into it. It never made sense to me. So I stopped going to church at 12. But, I was always interested in religion and why people believed in them. When I went to university I almost had enough classes in Religious Studies for a major. But, I always looked at it from an Anthropological view.
@@danielpaulson8838 religion isn't just christianity or islam or whatever, you know that right? Pagan religions often escape the common modern preconceptions of religion atheists seem to employ when they use the word
I’m so excited for this series. I hope you really get to dig into these questions. I’ve been trying really hard to find more work on this topic of how the mind interacts or has possibly evolved to be religious but have only found scattered results. I personally find this to be a HUGE question to be asking and testing for answers. I deconstructed from religious, spiritual and superstitious belief these last few years since the coof. It has led me down a path of inquiry as to whether or not we can so easily “turn off” the belief center of our brains. I’ve been seeing more and more evidence that even people can’t turn off these seemingly instinctual behaviors. Even atheists who scoff at religion and god just adopt other non-evidence based ideologies and tribal like defense mechanisms to those beliefs that mirror religious apologetics. I’ve been very interested in the idea of the religious/beliefs systems we fall into being a biological adaptation that we cannot just rationalize our way out of. I’m super excited to see what you have put together in this series. 🤗🤙🙏👍🥳😁😆
There's probably also a link between decreased religiosity after brain surgery to remove a tumor and a loss of immediate pressure, like there are people who get more religious as they grow older because they start worrying about the afterlife now that they're closer to death, the sense of relief from not needing to worry about that as immediately can really swing you in both ways.
This doesn’t take into account the fact that some people will relate surviving brain surgery/tumours to religious experience and a sign that the divine is in their lives.
I am only at the halfway point but I had to stop and thank you for making this video. I already enjoy your content and trust your statements and such but this video really highlights your overall aptitude and the ability to dole it out to us lay people. Very well done sir.
What a fascinating topic! And a fascinating series planned. Your stepping outside the realm of pure religious studies demonstrates that you inherently are a scholar. I've appreciated how you have handled every topic you've investigated without prejudice (IMO) and with a commitment to "critical evaluation." What a body of work you've created! You have made your mark on the world. Thank you.
Missed a marvelous opportunity to talk about our favorite FMRI experiment, "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon: An argument for multiple comparisons correction"
Just to add, the Daoists called an area of the skull/brain that now looks like the pineal gland, the "Mudball Palace." In certain Daoist meditations, one "enters" the head via the mei xin lun point (aka the Third Eye) and travels toward the back of the head, encountering various guardian spirits along the way. But, the destination goal is the Mudball Palace, the seat of entry to the Dao which appears to be located about where the Pineal gland is.
Slight point of contention about Phineas Gage - most of the story about around him is foundational myth. We have very few sources (just 4 documents from 2 people) that could be considered primary sources and the most important one was written 8 years after Gage's death by the doctor who treated him for his injuries. This document uses only 200 words to describe the injuries to his skull and the changes in his demeanor noted by his mother. This is nowhere near as stark a difference in his pre-accident versus post-accident personality that is described later by early scientists who found the story and were trying to prove that certain parts of the brain were related to specific elements of cognition. They happened to be correct of course but they had a vested interest in proving their point and created much of the information that later went on to become part of the Phineas gage myth about his dramatic changes after the accident. Essentially, Gage's story was likely not as dramatic as many people believe. He no doubt had some long term complications of the accident (Indeed he started having epileptic seizures and died of a seizure) but how many personality changes he why through as a direct result of the traumatic injury is very unclear and likely overemphasised.
13:36 "spooky action" he was talking about is wave-function collapse, not entanglement. also entanglement is a correlation, particles are not "influencing" each other
In understanding the relation between brain activity and any subjective experience at all, I find it useful to adopt an idealist ontology and consider our brains and bodies as physical projections of what's happening in a 'higher' mental dimension. Rather than trying to understand the brain as a complex of biological causal structures, consider it a complex projection of archetypal mentation. Then we can reverse the question: Which archetypal processes and complexes deny, suppress or are blind to their own spiritual nature? I am convinced these processes are reflected/projected, among other structures, in the default mode network, prefrontal cortex and in a left-brain dominance of sorts. What I suggest we would also see, is that these processes are largely inhibitory, rather than stimulatory.
You're videos are always so damn interesting! I'm definitely down for a whole series. Also, if I got Parkinson's then I'd have a pretty hard time believing in a god too.
fMRI maps colorful pixelation on a brain scan as a function of task-related statistically significant differences in regional magnetization as a function of differences in blood oxygenation as a function of differences in regional brain perfusion as a function of neural activity. It's easy to fool yourself and/or others if you don't really know what you're working with - a profound problem, given fMRI's broad availability and "user-friendly" tool kits.. The fact that so many different studies find so many different brain areas might relate more to the individual task setup than to a rather vague concept as "religiosity" or "spirituality". Although only mentioned in passing in the video, there had been larger discussions linking religiosity to epilepsy (Dostoevsky being the posterchild here) and schizophrenia (with religious convictions being indistinguishable from psychotic ones). Thanks as always for an interesting video!
"There is no one and only spiritual center of the brain. Any idea of God comes from many different areas of the mind, working together in unison". - Hannibal Lecter from the series Hannibal.
6:22 Statistician here. N=88 is NOT a small sample. Fewer than 20 is a small sample, but still big enough for most studies (depending on effect size). Twelve is a small sample. Eighty eight is really good, even though it's not in the thousands reported by Swedish epidemiology studies.
As someone whose graduate work was spectroscopy and thus *heavily* involved with quantum mechanics, I worry that people are using the dumbed down for the article descriptions of phenomena and then making religious comparisons.
That’s pretty much what people are doing. Basically New Agers using quantum physics to explain religious phenomenon. Dr. Carbonara’s work is an anthropological study of these individuals.
I'm inclined toward the pineal gland being the center of the individual's hallucination, each individual's experience being an interpretation of material reality
What a fascinating series. Reminded me how the purpose/use of religious practices relates to the therapeutic understanding of the mind as a physical, neurological structure. Perhaps the way religion shows up neurologically depends on the way the brain happens to use religion/how it has learned to use religion in a specific situation etc. Whether it’s used to generate mindful, meditative mental-states via prayer or meditation etc., or if it’s used an “inner drill sergeant” of sorts or otherwise used to elicit mental-states related to shame and “I am bad” - type of thoughts, emotions, and inner conflicts.
A thought about those who reported a decrease: Is it possible that recognizing a sudden change in their own personality affected their sense of self, and this change led to questioning everything they believed up until then?
I wonder if there’s some sort of observer effect where the meditative state of the monks is hindered by their heads being wired to machines, or simply by them meditating on request for an experiment, instead of for its own sake. I also can’t wait to be told by enlightened headline readers that the reason I’m not religious is because I have brain damage ❤️
Fascinating. I haven't heard much of neurological studies on religious belief. I wonder whether there is a link to aging as well? Just from personal experience I suspect that religiousity becomes more important when people enter their their later 50s or 60s. Brains change of course in that stage of life too, perhaps this might influence religious belief in older demographics too? Perhaps some of the pathways in the brain that are particularly associated with religious belief change somewhat significantly when we reach a certain age? Assuming that people more commonly become religious when they get older, no idea whether thats actually true
Another problem with the term "God Spot" is that it suggests that some part or parts of the brain are structured as they are _for the purpose_ of generating religious cognition. This seems pretty unlikely. Like language, I suspect that religious cognition is a side effect of whatever functions the brain regions involved actually evolved to perform.
In my opinion, the spirit or life force interfaces with the physical world, in part, through living bodies - including the human nervous system. However, materialistic reductionism (which reduces spirituality to material phenomena) is insufficient to fully explain the life force and religious mysteries and their impact on our lives. It's like reducing a complex and subjectively meaningful phenomenon like "love" to nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain. People with materialistic cultural biases (including many scientists) often tend to read their own preconceptions into scientific data on physically observable phenomena (such as brain activity during religious experiences) that, in reality, neither confirms nor denies their prejudices about things that are very difficult to directly observe with the physical senses.
About parkinson's disease, Muhammed Ali the boxer had it, and his religiousity didn't falter as far as we know it. I think certain conditions on brain definitely effect our behavior but our own notion of faith before the emergence of those conditions is also effective. It is like if you are a short tempered person then any negative stimulation to our brain may result in your angry behavior but if you were to be patient or melancholic it may lead you to go into depression and show sings of extreme sorrow. 12:00 that idea of distinction between religious and mundane is called secular thought. That's a broken view on religion itself anyway. İf the study had been made on Muslims or more religious monist Uniterian Christians or pantheistic mystics both view and results would be unimaginably different.
"Religious cognition", this is such a US way to explain the world. I guess in 200 years people will laught at it as we laught now at alchimistry... love your videos nte and it's an interesting topic for you to cover... religiosity is such a social phenomenon that of course it is linked to many areas of our vbain, it is an epiphenomenon of being a social being
"...the link between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents may be unique to the United States." What does that mean? Would you please explore that further (and other cultural factors too)? Thanks!
It would be interesting for you to make a video discussing how society has historically differentiated the religious from the mentally ill. Is it just a question of numbers ? Why are some who hear voices or have visions considered to be prophets and others to be in need of treatment?
Way to go! This is just what I have wanted to know about. So not surprised about the prefrontal cortex on cognitive flexibility. So how do you explain “all the knocks in the head”, we have overall become a nation promoting inflexibility.
I just watched this video on Nebula. I also watch a lot of videos on TH-cam. I was wondering if creators that are on both get more income per view from Nebula, or from TH-cam. I'd like to support them in, admittedly, a small way, and I would like them to get as much from my individual view as possible, even if it's a matter of less than a penny. If anyone knows I'd appreciate them telling me.
With the comparison of people with Parkinson's versus not, I'd like to know if those with permanent disabilities or long-lasting ailments have different levels of religiosity. I'm permanently disabled and find it hard hard to relate to the religious, there may be a relation.
The frontal cortex damage-fundamentalism connection is interesting because it correlates with the studies of Saroglou about humor and fundamentalism. PS: As a just from time to time watcher (atm), do you use the term religion here because of simplicity for a wider and general audience instead of spirituality? Because the medium (spirituality) and the form (religion) difference (Luhmann) seems to be more functional otherwise, especially when you already critize the term "god spot" as to monotheistic sounding.
There is none. But as with anything in structure there are limitations to everything. So we e cannot deviate along crooked ways without being forced to return on correct path, While travelling along the right path of thinking does not entail that thus making us believe we were wrong in first place , so deviated from god and was brought back to correct path , so corrected by divine intervention but when we were already on correct path we have increasing tendency to veer away from it as we increasingly become oblivious of all the wrong alternatives which might have had happened msking us vulnerable and fearful intrinsically and ultimately leafing us the wrong path only to be corrected again. The god spot is therefore an illusion but it can also be used to give name to that sweet correct spot.
Well considering there's people claiming god is talking to them and that they can see people's auras and stuff like that... yeah, of course there is. Everything is in the brain, so there's a center for everything, just like there's a center for remote vision and for whatever people see when they meditate (aphantasia here)
Hey Andrew would love if you did a video about what scripture says about drinking alcohol. Did Jesus actually turn water to wine? Is wine the only acceptable liquor to have? Thanks and love your content!
I think the Bible condemns drunkenness instead of just drinking alcohol. You don't have to abstain entirely, just keep it in moderation. Also wine/beer back then was generally safer to drink than water, so it'd have been foolish to ban it outright.
It’s funny an all powerful God would pick out ethanol as a molecule of interest out of the multitudes and have an opinion about it yet he never mentions mitochondria or DNA. Quite curious.
So....related to this topic, I vaguely remember some research group finding a way to artificially stimulate someone's brain to cause that sense of connection with God that many Christians talk about (I don't know the terminology that people of other religions would use.) Has that been discredited? Or did you choose not to mention it for some other reason? Or did you just not come across it at all?
Register for our lecture Quantum Mysticism: When Quantum Physics Meets Spirituality: religionforbreakfast.eventbrite.com/
Just for note, the Phineas Gage story about his personality change has been way overblown. As you say the brain is extremely adaptable, healthy parts of the brain will take over duties of a damage part, and it was the same in Gage's case.
The lecture sounds interesting, but i'm not available at that time. If I buy a ticket can I watch it whenever or do I have to watch it live?
I'm bummed out, I'll have to miss because of the time.
regular comment: 1798 was when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, which many consider an infringement on the First Amendment. If you reverse the middle two digits, you get 1978-the year the Protect the Children Act was enacted which is anti-map
you are not qualified in that field mate. obviously.
2:18 "if you dig beneath the headlines"
That's a nice way to say "if you actually read the article"
Before now, if someone asked me where the "God spot" was, I would have pointed to a very different place indeed.
You rascal!!!
OH MY !!!
🎉😮😅
Oh God!
@@milosminion nice 😆
10:32 I wonder if that’s because having an illness that affects your quality of life and makes the future less predictable just makes you less likely to find delayed gratification actually worth it. I wonder how this would be different looking at people with a degenerative illness that doesn’t attack the brain.
@@LearningAndLiberating it reminds me of how some people who, rightly or otherwise, feel disenfranchised don’t really bother thinking about the future because they don’t think they have one.
I am very interested in the idea of animals and religion, especially as a person in the orthodox faith. So many of our stories involve animals. And, there are plenty of examples of monks interacting with wild animals. Also, my dog loves to pray. If I forget to pray in the morning, he goes over to the icon corner and reminds me.
This was fascinating and I am very much looking forward to the next episodes!
I still think that your episode on Wicca is one of the best representations by non-Wiccans out there, and much more accessible and comprehensible than pretty much everything by Wiccans. I really appreciate the curious-neutral tone and the complete absence of judgment :)
Oh damn this is gonna be a series!? Excellent!
Very interesting and well done. One problem you touched on but I think is more significant, is whether religious cognitions differ between religious traditions. The language used in measuring religious cognition is based in Western monotheistic understandings of religion. Increasingly people raised in Eastern religions are in the West, and westerners have embrased Eastern religions. It’s unclear whether “prayer” means the same thing experientially or neurally. Even using the term “god” rather than “the divine or sacred” indicates a western bias in spiritual experiences. Sin is a concept based in a commanding god, not a god of the natural world or a family of divine beings as in many polytheistic traditions. Bottom line, we’re just beginning to parse out all the many threads in the neuropsycho-spirituality of religion.
This is a very good point.
The origin of the word sin, and its translations, essentially refers to “missing the target”. Thus, the word sin can be applied to all religious traditions e.g. following the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism, “Right View” etc.
Religion is something created by humans to serve complex social and psychological needs.
Religious experiences seem to be associated with a reduction in activity across the "default mode network" (DMN).
A reduction in activity in this region is associated with ego-death/disillusionment and psychedelic-type experiences(which can occur naturally, although, typically without the visual aspect)
The feeling of, "all is one" or "divine connection" can be repeatedly and predictably produced, with various methods of suppressing the DMN.
I used to suppress mine about once a day(or more) through neuro-chemical means.... and i started to think i had a connection with god/the "all-mind".... But the entities i witnessed, never gave me any information or insights that could not be inferred through the information contained in my memories and experience, implying that they only had access to the information contained inside of my brain.... which would (seemingly) not be the case, if they were objectively real... so i stopped thinking they were real. Rather, they're probably - projections of spontaneous neural re -configurations, which are so foreign to the constructs that constitute my sense of identity.... that the only way to process it, is to project it as a separate entity within the experience..
That's just part of the picture though ^~^
I believe at most charitable, it could be an interesting way to experience one's own subconscious, or even repressed emotions. But even then it is clouded and nebulous, kind of like induced dreaming.
It makes sense to me that the brain can spontaneously generate ideas independent of consciousness, because that's basically what creativity is.
I had similar experience. When the "God" I was talking to had nothing new to say I knew I was just talking to myself
Well I'll be DMNed.
How did you repress it?
The first episode of Morgan freeman's into the wormhole talked about Neurotheology and it literally changed my life, thanks for researching about this
I had a brain amoeba once, poor fella died of hungry
why are youtube comments section no longer funny
@@tunistick8044 maybe say something funny instead of whining about it
@@tunistick8044 fix the problem by saying something funny
@@tunistick8044 got a smile n chuckle outta me
@@tunistick8044 When so many people are posting jokes, 90 % of them suck. They must be seeking a dopamine rush via likes.
Damn, last time I was this early, Christianity was still called the Jesus movement
U deserve recognitionnif its original
It was originally called the Way, or the Nazarenes
@@DaffroDuckjust a note: the word cult had very different connotations back then
@@livrowland171 sounded like the chinese
This is fantastic! I am so happy to see the extent to which science is helping to elucidate and quantify matters of religion. Wow!
I don't know if there's a religious center in the brain. But, I've come to believe that some people are more predisposed to believe in religions than others. For some it's a necessity.
I totally agree
That is something I have been pondering.
I was brought up Christian, left the church at age 18, spent 20 years as an Atheist, then sought out an individualistic religiosity. (I don't self-identify as "New Age", but something along those lines.)
Thing is, when I got into my spirituality, I got the sense that I had always been spiritually inclined. There where certain things during my decades of Metaphysical Naturalism that seemed to indicate that. For example, I was the kind of person who could get a sense of almost spiritual reverence from Science.
Honestly, I think it has to do with brain types. Most people are just fearful followers. We would have evolved that way for a group necessity but now it's broken in society (Who denies evolution?) and the fearful who cannot distinguish reality are now in charge.
FWIW, I was raised in a Baptist church. But, I never bought into it. It never made sense to me. So I stopped going to church at 12. But, I was always interested in religion and why people believed in them. When I went to university I almost had enough classes in Religious Studies for a major. But, I always looked at it from an Anthropological view.
@@danielpaulson8838 religion isn't just christianity or islam or whatever, you know that right? Pagan religions often escape the common modern preconceptions of religion atheists seem to employ when they use the word
I’m so excited for this series. I hope you really get to dig into these questions.
I’ve been trying really hard to find more work on this topic of how the mind interacts or has possibly evolved to be religious but have only found scattered results.
I personally find this to be a HUGE question to be asking and testing for answers. I deconstructed from religious, spiritual and superstitious belief these last few years since the coof. It has led me down a path of inquiry as to whether or not we can so easily “turn off” the belief center of our brains. I’ve been seeing more and more evidence that even people can’t turn off these seemingly instinctual behaviors. Even atheists who scoff at religion and god just adopt other non-evidence based ideologies and tribal like defense mechanisms to those beliefs that mirror religious apologetics. I’ve been very interested in the idea of the religious/beliefs systems we fall into being a biological adaptation that we cannot just rationalize our way out of.
I’m super excited to see what you have put together in this series.
🤗🤙🙏👍🥳😁😆
I'm thrilled to receive this knowledge and over the moon that there is so much interest!! Funny thing! My heart goes out to Benny Hinn in this moment.
because as burk said , man is a religous animal , you cant turn it off we always well have ideologies fighting between us.
There's probably also a link between decreased religiosity after brain surgery to remove a tumor and a loss of immediate pressure, like there are people who get more religious as they grow older because they start worrying about the afterlife now that they're closer to death, the sense of relief from not needing to worry about that as immediately can really swing you in both ways.
This doesn’t take into account the fact that some people will relate surviving brain surgery/tumours to religious experience and a sign that the divine is in their lives.
I am only at the halfway point but I had to stop and thank you for making this video. I already enjoy your content and trust your statements and such but this video really highlights your overall aptitude and the ability to dole it out to us lay people. Very well done sir.
What a fascinating topic! And a fascinating series planned. Your stepping outside the realm of pure religious studies demonstrates that you inherently are a scholar. I've appreciated how you have handled every topic you've investigated without prejudice (IMO) and with a commitment to "critical evaluation." What a body of work you've created! You have made your mark on the world. Thank you.
I'm looking forward for the lecture. Thank you so much for you work!
Missed a marvelous opportunity to talk about our favorite FMRI experiment, "Neural correlates of interspecies perspective taking in the post-mortem Atlantic Salmon:
An argument for multiple comparisons correction"
This is great, and really look forward to the series! Kudos to both you and Templeton Foundation, a great way to do science education...
Yes!!! The topics you mention are all so interesting!! Especially the question about religion and evolution
Just to add, the Daoists called an area of the skull/brain that now looks like the pineal gland, the "Mudball Palace." In certain Daoist meditations, one "enters" the head via the mei xin lun point (aka the Third Eye) and travels toward the back of the head, encountering various guardian spirits along the way. But, the destination goal is the Mudball Palace, the seat of entry to the Dao which appears to be located about where the Pineal gland is.
Andrew is looking extra fancy today.
Fr he looks delightful
Both fancy AND schmancy! The grad student I started watching all those years ago has grown up
Slight point of contention about Phineas Gage - most of the story about around him is foundational myth. We have very few sources (just 4 documents from 2 people) that could be considered primary sources and the most important one was written 8 years after Gage's death by the doctor who treated him for his injuries. This document uses only 200 words to describe the injuries to his skull and the changes in his demeanor noted by his mother. This is nowhere near as stark a difference in his pre-accident versus post-accident personality that is described later by early scientists who found the story and were trying to prove that certain parts of the brain were related to specific elements of cognition. They happened to be correct of course but they had a vested interest in proving their point and created much of the information that later went on to become part of the Phineas gage myth about his dramatic changes after the accident.
Essentially, Gage's story was likely not as dramatic as many people believe. He no doubt had some long term complications of the accident (Indeed he started having epileptic seizures and died of a seizure) but how many personality changes he why through as a direct result of the traumatic injury is very unclear and likely overemphasised.
Thanks for including science in your study of religion.
13:36 "spooky action" he was talking about is wave-function collapse, not entanglement. also entanglement is a correlation, particles are not "influencing" each other
You’re less correct than you think
@@Nosirrbro wow, what an exellent rebuttal
@@haroldshea3282 I know right
Totally captivated. Can't wait for more. Great work!
I listened intently. It was like being on a sail boat.
In understanding the relation between brain activity and any subjective experience at all, I find it useful to adopt an idealist ontology and consider our brains and bodies as physical projections of what's happening in a 'higher' mental dimension. Rather than trying to understand the brain as a complex of biological causal structures, consider it a complex projection of archetypal mentation. Then we can reverse the question: Which archetypal processes and complexes deny, suppress or are blind to their own spiritual nature? I am convinced these processes are reflected/projected, among other structures, in the default mode network, prefrontal cortex and in a left-brain dominance of sorts. What I suggest we would also see, is that these processes are largely inhibitory, rather than stimulatory.
Very excited about your new religion and science series!
Love this new section of the channel. Definitely interested in this concepts. Keep going!
bro i love your channel so much.
Absolutely beautiful sourcing in the video!
Love this! Can’t wait for the series!!!
This is a very interesting video. I look forward to future videos in this series!
Looking forward to this series!
So excited for the new series!
an old but good book in the realm of the topic is "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, 1976
You're videos are always so damn interesting! I'm definitely down for a whole series. Also, if I got Parkinson's then I'd have a pretty hard time believing in a god too.
Good job, neuroscience can be confusing, but you explained it very well, even the pronunciation was on point
fMRI maps colorful pixelation on a brain scan as a function of task-related statistically significant differences in regional magnetization as a function of differences in blood oxygenation as a function of differences in regional brain perfusion as a function of neural activity. It's easy to fool yourself and/or others if you don't really know what you're working with - a profound problem, given fMRI's broad availability and "user-friendly" tool kits.. The fact that so many different studies find so many different brain areas might relate more to the individual task setup than to a rather vague concept as "religiosity" or "spirituality". Although only mentioned in passing in the video, there had been larger discussions linking religiosity to epilepsy (Dostoevsky being the posterchild here) and schizophrenia (with religious convictions being indistinguishable from psychotic ones). Thanks as always for an interesting video!
I've been a fan for quite a while but this is my favorite series so far. Very excited for more!
That guy feeling one with the divine. Really stoked.
"There is no one and only spiritual center of the brain. Any idea of God comes from many different areas of the mind, working together in unison". - Hannibal Lecter from the series Hannibal.
Outside of novels and philosophy, God isn’t a unifying force.
Loved this! Thank you so much
6:22 Statistician here. N=88 is NOT a small sample. Fewer than 20 is a small sample, but still big enough for most studies (depending on effect size). Twelve is a small sample. Eighty eight is really good, even though it's not in the thousands reported by Swedish epidemiology studies.
As someone whose graduate work was spectroscopy and thus *heavily* involved with quantum mechanics, I worry that people are using the dumbed down for the article descriptions of phenomena and then making religious comparisons.
That’s pretty much what people are doing. Basically New Agers using quantum physics to explain religious phenomenon. Dr. Carbonara’s work is an anthropological study of these individuals.
@ Oh, okay, a study of the people doing it rather than promoting it itself makes my stomach less clenched.
I'm inclined toward the pineal gland being the center of the individual's hallucination, each individual's experience being an interpretation of material reality
2:57 literally displaced my tab from my hands I just wasnt ready for that 😂
Congratulations on your grant!
What a fascinating series. Reminded me how the purpose/use of religious practices relates to the therapeutic understanding of the mind as a physical, neurological structure. Perhaps the way religion shows up neurologically depends on the way the brain happens to use religion/how it has learned to use religion in a specific situation etc. Whether it’s used to generate mindful, meditative mental-states via prayer or meditation etc., or if it’s used an “inner drill sergeant” of sorts or otherwise used to elicit mental-states related to shame and “I am bad” - type of thoughts, emotions, and inner conflicts.
0:01 That is glowing diodes. Our minds interpret it as an image of the human brain. (Yes, I got that from René Magritte.)
A thought about those who reported a decrease: Is it possible that recognizing a sudden change in their own personality affected their sense of self, and this change led to questioning everything they believed up until then?
fascinating. I will listen to this again.
Amazing, thank you very much ❤️❤️❤️
Thanks for open this topic ❤ It is very interesting 👍
I wonder if there’s some sort of observer effect where the meditative state of the monks is hindered by their heads being wired to machines, or simply by them meditating on request for an experiment, instead of for its own sake.
I also can’t wait to be told by enlightened headline readers that the reason I’m not religious is because I have brain damage ❤️
Is not in the brain, is where we point when presenting ourselves to others.
Smirked every time Andrew mentioned the God Spot. 😅
And we know where that is, don't we?
Nice.
Please please please more videos on these topics please amazing knowledge
I know this is a longshot but I would love a future film from Pixar's Inside Out or TV spin-off to tackle the God Spot
I am my awareness. My awareness is dynamic and emergent. I am dynamic and emergent.
Well there ya go! The mind is a marvelous thing
Fascinating. I haven't heard much of neurological studies on religious belief.
I wonder whether there is a link to aging as well? Just from personal experience I suspect that religiousity becomes more important when people enter their their later 50s or 60s. Brains change of course in that stage of life too, perhaps this might influence religious belief in older demographics too? Perhaps some of the pathways in the brain that are particularly associated with religious belief change somewhat significantly when we reach a certain age? Assuming that people more commonly become religious when they get older, no idea whether thats actually true
Nice. I like this whole quantum physics angle. Someone needs to debate this and who better than you!
Another problem with the term "God Spot" is that it suggests that some part or parts of the brain are structured as they are _for the purpose_ of generating religious cognition. This seems pretty unlikely. Like language, I suspect that religious cognition is a side effect of whatever functions the brain regions involved actually evolved to perform.
In my opinion, the spirit or life force interfaces with the physical world, in part, through living bodies - including the human nervous system. However, materialistic reductionism (which reduces spirituality to material phenomena) is insufficient to fully explain the life force and religious mysteries and their impact on our lives. It's like reducing a complex and subjectively meaningful phenomenon like "love" to nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain. People with materialistic cultural biases (including many scientists) often tend to read their own preconceptions into scientific data on physically observable phenomena (such as brain activity during religious experiences) that, in reality, neither confirms nor denies their prejudices about things that are very difficult to directly observe with the physical senses.
About parkinson's disease, Muhammed Ali the boxer had it, and his religiousity didn't falter as far as we know it. I think certain conditions on brain definitely effect our behavior but our own notion of faith before the emergence of those conditions is also effective. It is like if you are a short tempered person then any negative stimulation to our brain may result in your angry behavior but if you were to be patient or melancholic it may lead you to go into depression and show sings of extreme sorrow.
12:00 that idea of distinction between religious and mundane is called secular thought. That's a broken view on religion itself anyway. İf the study had been made on Muslims or more religious monist Uniterian Christians or pantheistic mystics both view and results would be unimaginably different.
Oh I’m gonna love this series
I'm super excited about this .
Is that where Bulgakov got the idea for Heart of a Dog?
Nah that guy was just a freak
Please do a video on divine council in Bible and other ANE religions and how monotheism developed from polytheism.
If you want results, I suggest not talking to other people like you're giving a prompt to chatGPT.
@@jamesnomos8472 you are right. I deleted key words.
John Horgan reported on using magnetic stimulation to induce religious experiences in his book "Rational Mysticism."
Love this new direction
Anyone here read the His Dark Materials trilogy? Were the Tartars messing with the pineal gland when they were practicing trepanning?
I often wonder how my TBI affects my thoughts and behaviors though I've never considered the religious aspect, interesting.
"Religious cognition", this is such a US way to explain the world. I guess in 200 years people will laught at it as we laught now at alchimistry... love your videos nte and it's an interesting topic for you to cover... religiosity is such a social phenomenon that of course it is linked to many areas of our vbain, it is an epiphenomenon of being a social being
"...the link between mentalizing and belief in supernatural agents may be unique to the United States." What does that mean? Would you please explore that further (and other cultural factors too)? Thanks!
Have all the G[od]-Spot jokes been made yet?
I find it weird that your channel never touched that topic before 😇
Great video! Thank you!
It would be interesting for you to make a video discussing how society has historically differentiated the religious from the mentally ill. Is it just a question of numbers ? Why are some who hear voices or have visions considered to be prophets and others to be in need of treatment?
I must be missing that part on my brain
I'm concern of the implication that lack of religion would consider a "disability" when comparing them with disorders.
“Beavis and Butthead noises” haha “G”! Spot!
Way to go! This is just what I have wanted to know about. So not surprised about the prefrontal cortex on cognitive flexibility. So how do you explain “all the knocks in the head”, we have overall become a nation promoting inflexibility.
You mean other than over half the nations citizens not having the same political beliefs as you?
I just watched this video on Nebula. I also watch a lot of videos on TH-cam. I was wondering if creators that are on both get more income per view from Nebula, or from TH-cam. I'd like to support them in, admittedly, a small way, and I would like them to get as much from my individual view as possible, even if it's a matter of less than a penny. If anyone knows I'd appreciate them telling me.
With the comparison of people with Parkinson's versus not, I'd like to know if those with permanent disabilities or long-lasting ailments have different levels of religiosity. I'm permanently disabled and find it hard hard to relate to the religious, there may be a relation.
Hmm I watched a video on this topic a few years ago and I kinda disregarded it. But now that you mention the same thing, I might rethink it.
The frontal cortex damage-fundamentalism connection is interesting because it correlates with the studies of Saroglou about humor and fundamentalism.
PS: As a just from time to time watcher (atm), do you use the term religion here because of simplicity for a wider and general audience instead of spirituality? Because the medium (spirituality) and the form (religion) difference (Luhmann) seems to be more functional otherwise, especially when you already critize the term "god spot" as to monotheistic sounding.
There is none. But as with anything in structure there are limitations to everything. So we e cannot deviate along crooked ways without being forced to return on correct path, While travelling along the right path of thinking does not entail that thus making us believe we were wrong in first place , so deviated from god and was brought back to correct path , so corrected by divine intervention but when we were already on correct path we have increasing tendency to veer away from it as we increasingly become oblivious of all the wrong alternatives which might have had happened msking us vulnerable and fearful intrinsically and ultimately leafing us the wrong path only to be corrected again.
The god spot is therefore an illusion but it can also be used to give name to that sweet correct spot.
Well considering there's people claiming god is talking to them and that they can see people's auras and stuff like that... yeah, of course there is.
Everything is in the brain, so there's a center for everything, just like there's a center for remote vision and for whatever people see when they meditate (aphantasia here)
I wonder if those numerous spots around the brain are also responsible for naivety, gullibility and an inability to research one’s beliefs? 🙏
Neat, memetic evolution could be a good topic.
If there is a relationship between Dopamine regulation and religiosity, how does ADHD affect religiosity?
What’s the PLOS ONE article?
It's a mechanism that acts as an anchor and a receiver. The boundary between heaven and earth.
This is fascinating
Hey Andrew would love if you did a video about what scripture says about drinking alcohol. Did Jesus actually turn water to wine? Is wine the only acceptable liquor to have? Thanks and love your content!
Just being pedantic, wine isn't a liquor.
@@LimeyLassen didn’t know how else to ask the question lol.
I think the Bible condemns drunkenness instead of just drinking alcohol. You don't have to abstain entirely, just keep it in moderation.
Also wine/beer back then was generally safer to drink than water, so it'd have been foolish to ban it outright.
It’s funny an all powerful God would pick out ethanol as a molecule of interest out of the multitudes and have an opinion about it yet he never mentions mitochondria or DNA. Quite curious.
Nice vest! 0:13
🤓
So....related to this topic, I vaguely remember some research group finding a way to artificially stimulate someone's brain to cause that sense of connection with God that many Christians talk about (I don't know the terminology that people of other religions would use.) Has that been discredited? Or did you choose not to mention it for some other reason? Or did you just not come across it at all?