Revisiting the 2016 neuroscience study
Posted: Fri Jan 14, 2022 6:06 pm
In April 2016, a study based on young, yet devout RMs led neuroscientists to conclude that religious experience triggers the same reward mechanism in/part of the brain as sex and drugs. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/10.1080 ... 16.1257437
This study was reported in Medical News Today, as
The reason for my bringing this study and topic back up almost 6 years after the fact is that I do not recall what if any was the response to it and its findings and conclusions by the LDS hierarchy or its self-appointed defenders. Was there any reaction? What was it? Or did the LDS church and its defenders just choose to ignore this study?
This study was reported in Medical News Today, as
So it seems that perhaps the "sins" of sex (outside marriage), gambling, and drugs are competitors to "feeling the spirit" (the Mormon hook, as well as that of several other religions). The LDS Church encourages some music, while discouraging other types.The researchers selected a group of participants that were more likely to experience recognizable spiritual feelings in a controlled environment. As such, they excluded individuals who did not report experiencing spiritual feelings on a daily basis or who did not report going to church regularly.
Participants had the average age of 27.4 years. Seven of the participants were women and 12 were men. All of the participants were former religious missionaries.
The Mormon religious practice consists of prayer, scripture study, audiovisual presentations of religious music, and teaching of church leaders and authorities.
To simulate these practices in a controlled environment, researchers designed a 1-hour session, which is the typical length of a Mormon religious service.
Participants were exposed to religiously evocative audiovisual material while their brains were scanned using multiband fMRI.
Recreating religious experience in a controlled environment
The test treated each participant as their own control, so the intensity of religious experiences was compared with their own individual baseline.
The session started with a 6-minute resting state, where participants were asked to close their eyes and let thoughts go through their mind without focusing on anything in particular.
Then, for 6 minutes, devotees looked at a video detailing membership statistics of their Mormon church and the details of an internal financial audit. This was meant as an audiovisual control.
For the following 8 minutes, participants were exposed to 24 quotations by Mormon and non-Mormon world religious leaders.
Each quotation was displayed for 10 seconds and followed by the question: “Are you feeling the Spirit?”
Answers ranged from 1 – not feeling, 2 – moderately feeling, 3 – strongly feeling, and 4 – very strongly feeling. Participants had been instructed before the test to select an answer by pressing a button.
This was followed by another question: “How spiritually meaningful is this quotation to you?”
Responses ranged from 1 – less spiritually meaningful, 2 – moderately spiritually meaningful, 3 – very spiritually meaningful, and 4 – deeply spiritually meaningful.
The visual stimuli, including the questions and answer options, were synchronized with the brain scanning process, which used blood-oxygen-level-dependent (BOLD) contrast.
The questions enabled scientists to later separate the cognitive effects of decision-making and button-pressing from the neuroimaging results.
Participants were then asked to close their eyes and pray for 6 minutes.
Next, subjects were told to read familiar passages from the Book of Mormon for 8 minutes. Each scriptural passage was shown for 20 seconds and then followed by the questions: “Are you feeling the Spirit?” and “How spiritually meaningful is this passage to you?,” with appropriate answer scales.
Subsequently, participants were exposed for another 12 minutes to audiovisual content, namely a video of family, biblical scenes, and other religiously evocative content produced by the church. Participants could press only one button when feeling the peak of a religious experience, or press it multiple times if the feelings were more intense.
Finally, the session ended with 8 minutes of the last 24 quotations, designed and administered the same way as the first time.
Ensuring the accuracy of the results
Before the imaging session, participants were asked to self-report on their religious behavior using a questionnaire.
After the neuroimaging session, each of the subjects also took part in a debriefing session where they were asked to describe and rate the quality of the religious experiences had during the brain-scanning session.
This enabled scientists to compare the religious practice in the scientific environment with the feelings typically experienced in regular religious practice. As the authors mention, the results indicate the experiences felt during the scanning session “conformed in quality and magnitude with meaningful experiences in private and group religious practice.”
Throughout the functional imaging sessions, researchers also recorded physiological responses in the participants, such as heart rate and respiratory rate. These data were synchronized to the beginning of the BOLD imaging.
Spiritual experience activates same reward circuits as sex and drugs
Religious devotees reported progressive and sustained subjective experience during the scan. They identified feelings of peace and physical sensations of warmth.
“When our study participants were instructed to think about a savior, about being with their families for eternity, about their heavenly rewards, their brains and bodies physically responded,” says co-lead author Michael Ferguson, Ph.D.
Religious experience, equated with “feeling the spirit,” was associated with brain activation in areas commonly associated with reward.
These areas are the bilateral nucleus accumbens, as well as the frontal attentional and ventromedial prefrontal cortical loci.
Participants’ hearts beat faster and their breathing deepened as they were experiencing peaks of religious experience.
The study shows that religious and spiritual experiences activate the same brain reward circuits as love, sex, gambling, drugs, and music.
The striatum was also activated during prayer, an area that had been associated with the practice in previous studies.
The reason for my bringing this study and topic back up almost 6 years after the fact is that I do not recall what if any was the response to it and its findings and conclusions by the LDS hierarchy or its self-appointed defenders. Was there any reaction? What was it? Or did the LDS church and its defenders just choose to ignore this study?