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Neurotheology is the interdisciplinary study of religion using neurological tools. Research is conducted using brain imagining and other techniques, and results are evaluated scientifically rather than philosophically or theologically. Some scholars dispute the field's validity because of its merger between scientific and non-scientific idea.

Neurotheology promises to explain religious experiences without regard to their veracity; Neurotheology does not take a position of the existence of any god or gods. Instead, neurotheology examines the brain circuitry which enables such religious experiences. Andrew Newberg and Eugene d'Aquili, two prominent proponents of neurotheology, conducted an experiment which involved measuring the brain activity of Buddhist monks and Christian nuns who were undergoing a mystical experience. :1 They used the resulting brain scans to understand which brain structures are involved in certain religious experiences. In their work, they have shown that religious experience—even though it may be quite unlike other, non-religious experiences—is borne out of the same mental structures which animate the rest of our lives.

Introduction
In Why God Won't Go Away, Newberg and d'Aquili tell the story of a man whom they invited to meditate in their lab. They describe using a SPECT machine to measure the man's brain activity at the peak of his meditation.They found that the area of the brain which drives spatial awareness was less active than normal. From this observation, Newberg and d'Aquili speculate that the brain structure, which they term the orientation association area, or the OAA, must have been cut off from its usual stimulus. :6 They argue that without such stimulus, the OAA would be forced to conclude that there was no boundary between the self and its surroundings. Tellingly, this feeling of oneness with the universe is central to many religious traditions. They cite an ancient Hindu verse which describes the feeling of meditation metaphorically as "forgetting that there were ever separate rivers / so do all creatures lose their separateness / when they merge at last into." :7 They combine these observations to conclude that a stimulus-deprived OAA must be responsible for a collapse of the physical self. In its place, a feeling of absolute oneness emerges. Most importantly, Newberg and d'Aquili report that, because this feeling of oneness uses the same neural circuitry as other experiences, this feeling must be "utterly and unquestionably real." :6

Newberg and d'Aquili use this observation to conclude that religious experience can be explained neurologically. Likewise, neurotheology sets out to explain how the other elements of religious experience might be a result of neurological phenomena. The rest of this article will explain how various facets of religious experience spring from our brains using Newberg and d'Aqulili's research, as presented in Why God Won't Go Away.

The Mind
In order for religious experiences to be, as Newberg and d'Aquili claim, "real", there must be a disconnect between reality and the way we perceive it. This is because religious experiences, while perceptually real, violate some of the objectively-measured properties of reality. Newberg and d'Aquili begin their discussion by exploring the mental structures which allow for this disconnect between reality and perception. To explain, they begin by dividing the nervous system into its constituents: the autonomic nervous system and the central nervous system. The autonomic system is further divided into the sympathetic and parasympathetic systems. While these systems normally arouse and quiet our brains, some circumstances activate them simultaneously. The result can be experiences of a religious character.

Autonomic Nervous System
This system is responsible for the lower-order functions of the brain. It controls some fundamental activities, including respiration, the heart, digestion, sleep, and the fight-or-flight response. The parasympathetic system controls quiescent functions while the sympathetic system controls arousal functions. Under most circumstances, they operate opposite each other such that only one of the two systems is active at once. Under these circumstances, our brains operate as we expect them to. Even though the autonomic system is not directly in control of higher-order behaviors, like mood or rational thought, it influences those behaviors. In everyday life, to the extent our brains are ever entirely rational or objective, the autonomic nervous system interacts with the world in a predictable, "normal" fashion. Under other circumstances, however, the autonomic system can overwhelm us, and drive us to "alternative" mental states. :38

Newberg and d'Aquili refer to four such alternative states.


 * Hyperquiescence occurs when the parasympathetic system, which is responsible for functions like relaxation, sleep, and energy conservation, dominates. It induces a state of deep relaxation in which the body and mind have a sense of "oceanic tranquility." 40
 * Hyperarousal occurs under the opposite circumstances, when the sympathetic system creates a state of arousal and excitedness. Certain fast-paced religious rituals can induce this state; distances runners and swimmers report it, too.
 * Hyperquiescence with arousal breakthrough occurs when the more usual hyperquiescent state is so overwhelmed that the sympathetic system produces a hybrid state. This "spillover" effect may create a feeling of being "absorbed" into the object of one's meditation. :41
 * Hyperarousal with quiescent breakthrough occurs under the opposite circumstances, when the hyperarousal state is overwhelmed to include elements of quiescence.

Some basic brain structures
Brain structures such as the hypothalamus, amygdala, and hippocampus partially account for these states, along with many other, entirely standard parts of people's mental processes. The hypothalamus is a go-between for the autonomic and central nervous systems. It's two parts, split between an inner section and outer section, are attached to the parasympathetic and sympathetic systems, respectively. Together, the sections drive certain basic emotions, and communicate with the rest of the brain, which allows the hypothalamus to regulate the entire body's basic functions. The amygdala is another very primitive structure. It processes the results of higher-order operations, and searches for sensory input which requires an immediate response. In this way, the amygdala is responsible for part of the fight-or-flight response, which is a part of the sympathetic nervous system. Meanwhile, the hippocampus is a regulator for other parts of the brain. It can help filter input to create a sense of focus on certain simuli over others, and can try to avoid the exceptionally aroused or quiescent states described above. Together, these systems combine to create a part of the enormously complex system of emotions, responses, and ideas that form the mind.

How the mind emerges from the brain
All of these structures do not, by themselves, create anything more than an instinctively driven machine of a brain. There is no mind to speak of. The mind, Newberg and d'Aquili say, is formed through the nuance, variation, and complexity of the cognitive operators. 46-52 The various operators work together to process incoming information into more refined analysis. They allow us to create abstractions and to apply abstractions to real-life fact patterns. Another operator gives us the sense that what we're seeing is real. Together, they create the mind out of a mess of meaningless signals.

Myth
Newberg and d'Aquili's chapter on myths and their role in religion emphasizes that myths are not mere delusions or fabrications. In ancient Greek, they say, mythos, which is the forerunner of our word myth, simply meant word, though it carried a connotation of inviolable truth. Even today, that connotation remains. Myths, though they are not normally true in a literal sense, have great metaphorical weight. They deliver truths which we might not know how to communicate directly. This is why, they argue, it is no coincidence that all religions use myths to teach and explain about the world. :57 At the same time, humans' abstract thinking ability, combined with our ability to project hypothetical situations on our real neural circuitry, means that we can imagine particular circumstances and then imagine their consequences. Newberg and d'Aquili postulate that this must have rendered the primordial world a very frightening place to live. Because our minds are so powerful, we always have to urge to use them to explain the unexplainable things which surround us at all times. Newberg and d'Aquili call this is "cognitive imperative." This imperative has driven us to escape the world's natural dangers, and humans have been astonishingly effective. But death comes still, and no human creation seems to be able to stave it off permanently. Accordingly, this cognitive imperative has sought alternate means of explaining death. This drive to explain death also, they say, raised many other un-answerable questions. We invented myths as a way to answer those questions. Newberg and d'Aquili say that, "by learning these stories, our questions about suffering, good and evil, and numerous other metaphysical problems suddenly become answerable, knowable." :62 The result is a tamer, more human-friendly world—one where we can live without the kind of anxiety we might have experienced in pre-history.

Other neural structures contribute to myth-making, too. The binary operator—one of the cognitive operators the authors defined in their chapter on the mind—also serves to create dichotomies which make it easier to navigate the world. Meanwhile, the causal operator serves to assign causes to things which may not have an obvious cause—even when the identified cause is entirely incorrect. But the veracity of the brain's judgments are not necessarily paramount. Instead, our brains' judgments simplify our worlds. Myths, in many ways, sate our brains' anxiety about dangers, and they do so by taking advantage of our brains other characteristics. And this may explain global similarity in religious myths. They share many common elements, possibly because all of our brains have the same operators and predilections. On a fundamental level, and averaged over thousands of generations, myths' substance conforms to deep truths embedded in our neural circuits.

Ritual
For Newberg and d'Aquili, ritual is a way to find unity with others and the world. Its goal, they say, is "the transcendence of the soul and the blending of the self into some larger reality." :80 Meditation, like that performed by the man Newberg and d'Aquili describe in their opening chapter, is a ritual. So are religious services. A concert can be a ritual, and so can a nationalist speech. All of these experiences share common threads. Rhythm and repetition, they say, are one. In some rituals, the action of the ritual creates a response in the autonomic nervous system. The hippocampus, which regulates the results of the autonomic system, then takes note of an increased—even excessive—level of either arousal or quiescence. In reponse, the hippocampus cuts off the flow of information. One side-effect of this decision is that the orientation association area loses its incoming stimulus. This creates a vacuum which the OAA fills with a sense of unitary being with one's surroundings. Most rituals do not create an especially pronounced effect, but they—in addition to their social and emotional values—create a sense of oneness with one's surroundings. This is called deafferention. This feeling can ease social tensions, or inspire better teamwork. It can calm anxiety or create wisdom. Most importantly, it can shorten the distance between gods and people, which may help to resolve some of the same problems myths aim to solve. :91

Myths and ritual reinforce each other. Myths might develop to ascribe special value to rituals; rituals can create a feeling of intimacy with the god concepts invoked in the myths. In this way, myth and ritual work in tandem. Newberg and d'Aquili write that "all religious rituals, to be effective, must combine the essential content of a mythic story with the neurological reactions that bring the myth to life." :95 Even if certain rituals do not deliver the kind of absolute unitary being as others—intense meditation is less effective, presumably, than a typical prayer group—they still serve as a kind of proof that the myths are true, and that we need not be scared of the world around us. The cognitive imperative drives us to create myths while other parts of our brains reinforce the myths our brain has already created. It is a kind of positive feedback loop.

Certain traditions embrace mysticism as a kind of ritual. Mysticism is the feeling of oneness with the absolute, whether god, the Tao, the Buddha, or something entirely different. But not all mystical experiences are the same; they each occur at a different place along the unitary continuum, which describes degrees of mysticism. There are two approaches to reaching this continuum. The first is the "negative approach", which does not involve focusing on anything in particular on the way up the continuum. It creates a blockage in the input to the OAA by manipulating the attention association area into blocking such input. Meanwhile, the "active approach" involves focusing on a single object or idea to the exclusion of all others. As this focus deepens, that object becomes the extent of reality, and the OAA loses its ability to tell the difference between the self and object. The result, in certain Christians' cases, is a feeling of oneness with the crucifix, which represents Jesus. :123

Religion in Neurotheology
The above neurotheological framework raises many questions, some of which Newberg and d'Aquili address. One of the most interesting asks how religion came to be in the first place. Starting on page 70, the authors create a hypothetical in which a prehistoric tribe chieftain reflects on a peer's death and creates a mythology concerning an afterlife. But this sort of hypothetical is unsatisfying. Newberg and d'Aquili expand on a hypothetical to show how theology might spring from an episode of unintentional mysticism. :137 Over time, ritual develops, which begins to reinforce the primitive religious stories which compose a primitive theology. The authors' hypothetical clan, they say, would "begin to define itself by the ritual they perform, and the spirit who is the focus of those ceremonies." :137 This sort of example demonstrates how a clan might go from unreligious and terrified of its surroundings to, over the course of many years, well-equipped with religion and theology. They would begin to develop a social structure which corresponds with their religion. As their society develops, so would their religion. In many ways, that is Newberg and d'Aquili's takeaway: religion is a reflection of something much deeper. But the ultimate root of that something is not known. It might be neurological, or theological, or something quite different. The authors conclude that God won't go away because He is built into us. But they make no progress—nor do they claim to—in answering the more fundamental question: Is God real? All we know is that He feels real.