What God does to your brain

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10914137/What-God-does-to-your-brain.html
The controversial science of neurotheology aims to find the answer to an age-old question: why do we believe?


The 'God helmet' (left) is said to use electrical impulses to recreate religious experiences

By Julia Llewellyn Smith5:00PM BST 20 Jun 2014

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, 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.

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”. When he came round, he was convinced he had been possessed by the Holy Spirit. I watched, bemused. Why had he entered this transcendental state, while I was completely unmoved? Was he deluded, or was he genuinely a conduit of God? Or were our brains simply wired differently?

more at link

Another article on this research that is pretty good:

Is Religion all in your Head?

http://www.patheos.com/blogs/standingonmyhead/2014/06/is-religion-all-in-your-head.html