Nature offers a publicly accessible summary of a new study that suggests a physiological explanation for, among other things, out-of-body experiences, ghosts, alien surveillance and "the creepy feeling that somebody is close by." This is yet another example of how we're learning that the human brain is capable of manufacturing a paranormal virtual reality.
The scientific article (Arzy S., Seeck M., Ortigue S., Spinelli L.& Blanke O. Nature, 443. 287), refers to "a disturbance in the multisensory processing of body and self at the temporoparietal junction." In other words, errant electrical signals are at work and may explain a good deal of the legends and ghosts stories that transcend just about every culture's mythology and literature.
Doctors treating the patient, a 22-year-old woman with epilepsy, found that when they stimulated a brain region called the left temporoparietal junction, the patient sensed the presence of a sinister figure behind her who copied her actions. They suspect that the effect is due to the mind projecting its own movements onto a phantom figure conjured up by the brain, an effect that is seen in some patients with serious psychiatric conditions.
Similar studies have shown that properly conducted stimulation of the brain can induce "spiritual" feelings in test subjects, including nuns who describe it as divinely inspired. Much is an outgrowth of early investigations into the effects of hallucinogens like mescaline, which is widely reported to induce mystical sensations in users.
This new field of "neurotheology" is controversial to say the least. The Nature story includes speculation that schizophrenia may be related to such dysfunction. This brings to mind Richard Dawkin's choice of a title for his latest attempt at describing his favorite whipping boy, religion, as a "delusion." The story also acknowledges, however, that schizophrenia is probably far too complex to be reduced to a simple explanation, and religion probably poses similar challenges. I suspect that, while some reports of voices in the head, alien probes and burning bushes are the result of misfiring neurons, many others are rooted in wishful, imitative thinking and other purely psychological problems.
Still, studies like this continue to pop up from time to time, and the field is probably worth pursuing, if for no other reason that it helps shed light on the least-understood organ in the body. If we come up with a solid materialist explanation for the popularity of religion, then that would be great bonus.
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This is a trend in modern neuroscience, more and more of subjective paranormal phenomena is being explained in terms of material causes. Overall I think these studies reveal more and more that our minds arise from processes in the brain.
This is a trend in modern neuroscience, more and more of subjective paranormal phenomena is being explained in terms of material causes.
I'd be much more interested in paying attention to such research if "normal, everyday" subjective experience had been explained in terms of material causes. And of course it hasn't, in fact there is not the slightest suggestion of how a lump of proteins and fats is somehow supposed to create subjective experience and consciousness.
As it is, such research smacks of an attempt by materialistic science to perform a "rationalist" exorcism of those phenomena which threaten the hegemony of its world-view. "Ahh, yes, we've explained away the Near Death Experience. Now we can go back to our safe comfortable little models of how the world works". Not really any different than any other form of apologia for a belief system. Of course to adherents of reductionistic materialism, their view is only the "correct, scientific" viewpoint. They have forgotten that real science is about questioning models and testing them, not adopting a set of "scientific" dogmas and defending them.