Dear Tamera,
The article, "Brain lobe linked to spirituality," was from the L.A. Times
News Service. The research was done at the University of California at San
Diego. They reported that the human brain may be hard-wired to hear the
voice of heaven and was the first effort to directly address the neural
basis of religious expression. The experiment was done with patients
suffering from an unusual form of epilepsy. The researchers determined that
the parts of the brian's temporal lobe--quickly dubbed the"God module"--may
affect how intensely a person responds to religious beliefs. People
suffering this type of seizure have long reported intense mystical and
religious experiences as part of their attacks but also are usually
preoccupied with mystical thoughts between seizures. This lead the
researchers to investigate the relationship between the physical structure
of the brain and spiritual experiences. The researchers determined that one
effect of the patient's seizures was to strengthen their brain's involuntary
response to religious words, leading the scientists to suggest a portion of
the brain was naturally attuned to ideas about a supreme being. The
scientists emphasized that their findings in no way suggest that religion is
simply a matter of brain chemistry.
Moorad
p.s. The name of the researchers was not mentioned in the article.