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Researchers at Duke University Medical Centre in the US claim to have discovered a correlation between religious practices and changes in the brains of older adults.
The study, published in the open-access science journal, Public Library of Science ONE, asked 268 people aged 58 to 84 about their religious group, spiritual practices and life-changing religious experiences. Changes in the volume of their hippocampus, the region of the brain associated with learning and memory, were tracked using MRI scans, over two to eight years.
Protestants who did not identify themselves as born-again were found to have less atrophy in the hippocampus region than did born-again Protestants, Catholics or those with no religious affiliation. Frequency of worship was not found to have a bearing on results, while participants who said they had undergone a religious experience were found to have more atrophy than those who did not.
Although the brain tends to shrink with age, atrophy in the hippocampus has been linked with depression and Alzheimer's disease.
The study authors Amy Owen and David Hayward said the changes were not explained by other factors that affect hippocampal atrophy, such as age, education, depression or brain size.
by a vision or by an aural, or audio, hallucination. Often the
experience is accompanied by an overwhelming sense of
euphoria almost sexual in nature. Religionists call this an
'ecstasy'. It is a kind of mental orgasm. It is not unusual for
percipients to change their entire way of lite after the experience,
quitting their jobs, divorcing or abandoning their wives
and families, and changing their names. (Earlier percipients
adopted biblical or angelic names, while modern UFO contactees
often become convinced that they are spacepeople
themselves and are given space names. For example, one prominent
contactee of the 1950s became 'Prince Neosam' of
Saturn.) Generally speaking, exposure to this phenomenon is
ultimately destructive to the individual. He or she is reprogrammed
to self-destruct. Saul/Paul died in prison. Others
have been murdered or assassinated. Suicide is common, as
are complete emotional breakdowns. At best, the victims are
reduced to fanaticism. The pale religious zealots proudly
exposing themselves to laughter and ridicule on city street
corners are often victims of this visionary process. So, too, are
the fiery-eyed flying-saucer advocates who preach the plurality
of inhabited worlds and the arrival of the Brothers from
space who are coining to save us from ourselves.
- John Keel, The Eight Tower
fwiw