Neurobiology of spirituality

[rpm]

Came accross this article recently really interesting:
http://www.msmonographs.org/article...e=6;issue=1;spage=63;epage=80;aulast=Mohandas

"Abstract

Spiritual practices have been proposed to have many beneficial effects as far as mental health is concerned. The exact neural basis of these effects is slowly coming to light and different imaging techniques have elucidated the neural basis of meditative practices. The evidence though preliminary and based on studies replete with methodological constraints, points toward the involvement of the prefrontal and parietal cortices. The available data on meditation focus on activated frontal attentional network. Neuroimaging studies have shown that meditation results in an activation of the prefrontal cortex, activation of the thalamus and the inhibitory thalamic reticular nucleus and a resultant functional deafferentation of the parietal lobe. The neurochemical change as a result of meditative practices involves all the major neurotransmitter systems. The neurotransmitter changes contribute to the amelioration of anxiety and depressive symptomatology and in part explain the psychotogenic property of meditation. This overview highlights the involvement of multiple neural structures, the neurophysiological and neurochemical alterations observed in meditative practices."

Moreover, the article suggests that psychedelics cause similar chages to meditation, explaining the profoundly positive or spiritual experiences that users report from their use.

Going further, I might speculate that the increases in long distance conectivity between neurons would explain the hightened sense of consciousness that people experience with psychedelics and meditation (given that our current best theories of the neural substrates of consciouness define it as a state of optimal information transfer over a complex system).

I probably haven't explained the last bit that well as it's getting late and I've had a few ciders 8), but if you want a fuller explination then just ask and I'll oblige tomorrow.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

It's getting harder to argue that spirituality and drug use have no common ground, that's all I've got to say.

 

[stonerfromohio]

I read that article and I do not understand half of what that means... it seemed from what I could gleam of it to be trying to point all effects experienced during meditation to increases in dopamine, seratonin, dmt etc. and activation of certain neural circuits as causing the dissasociation, images and obe's experienced... I just dont buy that everything is neuro-chemical interactions.

 

[swilow]

I just dont buy that everything is neuro-chemical interactions.

Everything in your mind does have a neurochemical basis; but I don't feel it detracts from spiritual experience ie. we may say DMT/LSD etc and the agonising of serotonin receptors is responsible for the effects of psychedelics, but we are still left with the question as to why we have these receptors and why there are exogenous compounds with a stronger affinity for serotonergic receptors then serotonin itself; in fact, it would be fair to say that while a LOT is understood about neurotransmitters, more ISN'T known; for science, a biological source is imperative and, indeed, will always be found; but because the exact workings of these things are not truly understood.

Our brains are physical, and therefore if we except that conciousness either arises from or is 'beamed' in to the brain, there must be a physical source and reason for this- most likely to be found in the brain. To me, that doesn't matter, because science can not describe happiness or love; it can describe aspects that appear due to these experiences, such as oxytocin or DMT, but whether its cause or effect, nobody knows.

Everything we experience must have a physical basis; and that includes spirituality. The reverse could be said as well; everything we experience must have a spiritual basis, and that includes physicality. Both are true at the same time....Brain is mind and mind is brain, and a bit more too

 

[Papa1]

Everything we experience must have a physical basis

Why?

 

[rpm]

Everything in your mind does have a neurochemical basis; but I don't feel it detracts from spiritual experience ie. we may say DMT/LSD etc and the agonising of serotonin receptors is responsible for the effects of psychedelics, but we are still left with the question as to why we have these receptors and why there are exogenous compounds with a stronger affinity for serotonergic receptors then serotonin itself; in fact, it would be fair to say that while a LOT is understood about neurotransmitters, more ISN'T known; for science, a biological source is imperative and, indeed, will always be found; but because the exact workings of these things are not truly understood.

Right on. I wasn't trying to discount spiritual experience as purely physical, quite the oposite. I was saying that the psychical patterns of spirtual, psychadelic and conscious experience are very similar. This gives rise to the thought - are these connections due to a unifying power or force that we don't fully understand.

Everything we experience must have a physical basis; and that includes spirituality. The reverse could be said as well; everything we experience must have a spiritual basis, and that includes physicality. Both are true at the same time....Brain is mind and mind is brain, and a bit more too

Couldn't have put it better myself Do I detect an element of Spinoza?

 

[swilow]

Why?

I don't know why; it just appears that there is an underlying order to the universes architecture which suggests that either objects are in existence, or we have the neccesary elements to appreciate existece. Entropy exists sugesting physical change to a lot of reality over time; that sees to point to a physical nature of existence. Even things like the invisible realm of time is, somewhere in our brain/minds "constructed" in both a phyical and scientific concept.

 

[daysonatrain]

i think eventually science will reduce everything to a neurochemical reaction. that doesnt. however discount the spiritual experience. after all, imo, we are all consciousness running through a physical body.

"It's getting harder to argue that spirituality and drug use have no common ground, that's all I've got to say. "
+1 MDAO

 

[Papa1]

I don't know why; it just appears that there is an underlying order to the universes architecture which suggests that either objects are in existence, or we have the neccesary elements to appreciate existece. Entropy exists sugesting physical change to a lot of reality over time; that sees to point to a physical nature of existence. Even things like the invisible realm of time is, somewhere in our brain/minds "constructed" in both a phyical and scientific concept.

I think in which case you were asserting physicalism. Unless I missed some arguments in your posts. It should be noted that to a large number of people it does not intuitively appear that all experiences have a materialistic basis.

The closest that neuroscience gets to describing experience e.g. spirituality is by correlating brain states (physical chemistry) with mental states (qualia). Cognitive neuroscience is in extreme infancy at the moment; there is no generally accepted rigorous mechanistic theory for how conscious experience occurs. The brain is definitely connected to experience, different parts are more strongly connected to different kinds of experience, the activity of populations of neurons are related to specific experiences, and the activity individual neurons can be related to behaviour. That's pretty much it. This does not rule out non-materialist contributions to experience, nor does it imply that the brain is the 'prime mover' of experience. As a semi-stupid analogy, maybe what neuroscience is measuring is the sound of a race car as the immaterial driver takes it around the track; maybe the brain is just the throne, consciousness the king. Who knows?

I would say that neurobiology is definitely related to spirituality. I'd also say that you can affect spirituality by affecting neurobiology. But I would not say that spirituality must have a solely physical basis.

 

[rpm]

I think in which case you were asserting physicalism. Unless I missed some arguments in your posts. It should be noted that to a large number of people it does not intuitively appear that all experiences have a materialistic basis.

No I really don't think he's asserting materialism. As far as I can see he is talking about meutral monism, which to quote wiki as I can't be bothered is

the metaphysical view that the mental and the physical are two ways of organizing or describing the very same elements, which are themselves "neutral," that is, neither physical nor mental. This view denies that the mental and the physical are two fundamentally different things. Rather, neutral monism claims the universe consists of only one kind of stuff, in the form of neutral elements that are in themselves neither mental nor physical. These neutral elements are like sensory experiences: they might have the properties of color and shape, just as we experience those properties. But these shaped and colored elements do not exist in a mind (considered as a substantial entity, whether dualistically or physicalistically); they exist on their own.

I personaly think this is the most sensible philosophy of mind. I think it's a great shame that it, and the pantheism hat usually goes along with it has been dismissed as materialism dressed up since it's conception. People said that Spinoza was an athiest, and Richard Dawkin's, in his book the God dillusion (don't get me started, never seen such a lot of straw men in one place) dismisses it as materialism in a short paragraph!

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

The thing is, if you are, at the bottom of it all, a spirit from another world on a physical journey in the present physical world, you'll still need some physical form with which to interface with the physical world. A human body and brain will do nicely.

 

[stonerfromohio]

1. I am not this person, this body-mind, or any thing.

As I can't be what I perceive, I am not this body-mind or any thing that I am conscious of.

As there must be something unchanging to register discontinuity, I am not this body-mind, which is neither continuous nor permanent.

As the person is a changing stream of mental objects that I as the subject take to be my body-mind, I cannot be a person. I am, but I can't be this or that.

As it is my presence, which is always here and now, that gives the quality of actual to any event, I must be beyond time and space. I was never born, nor will ever die.

2. I am the Self, the Witness of Consciousness, pure Awareness.

I am only the Self , which is universal and imagines itself to be the outer self, a person.

I am not an object in Consciousness but its source, its Witness, pure shapeless Awareness.

Only the feeling "I am", though in the World, is not of the World nor can be denied.

3. The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part One

As I only know the contents of my consciousness, and as an outside world is unprovable, all perceivables are only in my mind.

Transient things only appear and have no substance.

What changes has no reality. Time and space are imagined, ways of thinking, modes of perception. Only timeless reality is, and it is here and now.

The World exists only as a dream in my Consciousness: Part Two
Whatever has a form is only limitations imagined in my consciousness.

The World is but a show, a make-belief.

The World I perceive is entirely private, a dream.

Desire and fear come from seeing the World as separate from my-Self.

While I see the dream as real, I'll suffer being its slave.

Nothing in the dream is done by me.

4. There is only one dreamer, the one Self, dreaming many dreams.

In every body there is a dream, but the dreamer is the same, the one Self, which reflects itself in each body as "I am".

All the dreams are of a common imaginary World and influence each other.

Love is seeing the unity under the imaginary diversity.

5. I alone am, the One, the Supreme.

Not only the multiplicity of selves is false: even the duality of I/World, Subject/Object, is a transient appearance in my
Consciousness.

There is only my-Self, Consciousness.

I am not even Consciousness, which is dual and perceivable: I am the unknown Reality beyond.

Though unknown and unknowable, my real being is concrete and solid like a rock.

I am the light that makes Consciousness possible, pure Awareness, the non-dualSelf, the Supreme Reality, the Absolute, the Beingness of being, the Awareness of consciousness.

6. The big cycle: part one

The alternation of manifested (existence, becoming) - unmanifested
(pure being).

The manifestation of the Absolute.

The big cycle: part two

The return to the Absolute.

There are no real differences. Only the One is.

7. The goal: Liberation through Self-Realization

The gospel of self-realization

The enlightened one (gnani)

8. The way to Self-Realization: Part One

Not through activity. No effort is necessary, but there is a precondition: earnestness now

The way to Self-Realization: Part Two

Not through knowledge of things or experiences, but through self-knowledge.

The way to Self-Realization: Part Three

Not through the mind.

See everything as a dream, a show, a film.

The way to Self-Realization: Part Four

See that happiness is not pleasure; see that desires and fears create bondage; and be free and happy through detachment.

The way to Self-Realization: Part Five

As self-identification with the body-mind is the poison that causes bondage, seek liberation by seeing that oneself is not any thing personal or perceivable.

The way to Self-Realization: Part Six

Meditation, Witness attitude, Awareness.

No thought but "I am".

 

[Papa1]

No I really don't think he's asserting materialism. As far as I can see he is talking about meutral monism, which to quote wiki as I can't be bothered is

Well, Swilow used the physical, which seems more like physicalism than neutral monism. But whichever...

Like MDAO said, the state of the science really doesn't say one way or another beyond a correlation of mental and physical states.

 

[rpm]

Like MDAO said, the state of the science really doesn't say one way or another beyond a correlation of mental and physical states.

I think that the fact that the spiritual, phychadelic and consciouss experience all have similar mechanism hint at something. Many spiritual people say that they are raising their level of consciousness, and I think science is saying something similar.

 

[Papa1]

I think that the fact that the spiritual, phychadelic and consciouss experience all have similar mechanism hint at something. Many spiritual people say that they are raising their level of consciousness, and I think science is saying something similar.

What mechanism is that? We have no idea what mechanism leads to consciousness.

 

[rpm]

What mechanism is that? We have no idea what mechanism leads to consciousness.

We don't know for certain, but the best guess is symetrical information interchange over a complex system. This theory, or varients of it are the cutting edge of the search for the neural substrate of consciousness.

Increased long distance conectivity is also involved in meditation and psychadelic use.

 

[Papa1]

Hmm, that's interesting. I'm reading the article now. Do you know if the theory has been tested? I see 307 (!) references to it on Scopus, so that's a lot to wade through.

I'm semi-naive on the topic, but there seems to be a fundamental limitation with studying consciousness. If someone asks 'can we study consciousness', my knee-jerk response is to direct someone to a web page and say 'Yes, of course. Look, they're doing it right now.' But thinking about it I get less sure. If consciousness is responsiveness and awareness to either external or internal stimuli (and not just the asleep/awake kind of unconscious/conscious) then, surely, the only way to measure it is through self-report: it's an *experience* after all. However, this seems extremely problematic. 'I was conscious at time t' is not at all a direct and reliable measure of conscious state, for any number of reasons. Take for example Blade Runner, where a being can present any and all attributes we're used to associating with a fellow sentience and not be experiencing, or be experiencing in a qualitatively much different manner than our own. Or for example someone who simply doesn't remember correctly. Or someone who lies to experimenters. If consciousness is experience then I can't think of an experiment that could decouple that experience from the communication of that experience.

Studying consciousness seems to always come down to correlating brain states and mental states. I don't know if getting to what causes the mentals states can be got at this way.

 

[Papa1]

We don't know for certain, but the best guess is symetrical information interchange over a complex system.

Just wanted to emphasise that (as qwe said in another thread) causes of consciousness are not known, and it shouldn't be implied that they are. Of course, there have been numerous 'best guesses'...

 

[rpm]

Just wanted to emphasise that (as qwe said in another thread) causes of consciousness are not known, and it shouldn't be implied that they are. Of course, there have been numerous 'best guesses'...

I think you have misunderstood me. I'm not saying we have solved the hard problem. We are narrowing down on the parameteres that have to be active in the human brain to allow consciousness. As to whether that theory has been tested. Yes it has, with mixed results. The idea usually is to take someone who would be expected to be less consciouss, use a brain scanning tool to take a reading of whatever measure is being suggested. I'm not in the mood for digging up the references just now, mostly because my isi web of knowledge password is playing up - but I'll get back to you.

Just because we don't understand why x brain state causes consciousness, doesn't meen we don't have a pretty good idea of the range of brain states involved. Having a working theory of what brain states cause consciounsess is knowing the causes of conscioness. I'd be willing to bet that the neural makeup which corrolates with consciounsess is something similar to what I previously posted.

It's the hard problem and the soft problem, it's definatly possible to find what causes consciounsess, but to understand what consciousness is is a different question.

For example take the zombie argument. Suppose Tononi & Edelmans theory is right, it still isn't a logical necccesity given the way the physical word is. Another universe identical to our might exist in which people don't have consiounsess.

All I was saying is the converging evidence from two decades of neuropychological research indicates that the brain processes implicated in consciounsess are more present in those who are meditating, having a spiritual experience, or on psychadelic drugs.

 

[Papa1]

Just because we don't understand why x brain state causes consciousness, doesn't meen we don't have a pretty good idea of the range of brain states involved. Having a working theory of what brain states cause consciounsess is knowing the causes of conscioness. I'd be willing to bet that the neural makeup which corrolates with consciounsess is something similar to what I previously posted.

You're assuming here that brain states cause consciousness. As was said before, maybe the brain is an interface between consciousness and the physical world. Who knows? Not us. Correlating brain states with modes of consciousness is not sufficient for causation.

All I was saying is the converging evidence from two decades of neuropychological research indicates that the brain processes implicated in consciounsess are more present in those who are meditating, having a spiritual experience, or on psychadelic drugs.

Right, but that's correlation, not causation.