How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [49]
Circles and spirals, as I noted earlier, are one of the most common themes used to represent spirituality by religious adolescents and adults. Interestingly, intersecting circles, lines, and triangles were also used by abstract painters like Kandinsky to represent the spiritual nature of the world:
Every man who steeps himself in the spiritual possibilities of his art is a valuable helper in the building of the spiritual pyramid which will some day reach to heaven…. A yellow triangle, a blue circle, a green square, or a green triangle, a yellow circle, a blue square—all these are different and have different spiritual values.34
In every child, and perhaps every adult, there is an artist that is capable of reaching out beyond the confines of a limited human mind to touch some deeper essence of life. So wherever you turn, and whomever you ask, it appears as though everyone has some image of God, even if it is represented by nothing other than a blank sheet of paper. To a neuroscientist this suggests that believers and disbelievers may harbor a “God neuron” or a “God circuit” somewhere inside the brain. For one individual, such a neuron might connect with feelings of pleasure and awe, but for another, to feelings of disappointment or pain. There may even be people who lack the neural circuitry to construct either a positive or negative image of God. Instead, they must find meaning and purpose somewhere else.
IS THERE A GOD NEURON IN YOUR BRAIN?
In a recent neuroimaging study published in Nature, researchers demonstrated that a single neuron in an individual's brain would only fire when the person was shown a well-recognized face.35 They implanted electrodes in several epileptic patients’ brains prior to surgery, and each was shown a large number of photographs of people, places, and objects. For one patient, a single neuron fired to images of Jennifer Aniston and nothing else. For another, a neuron responded when the patient was shown a picture or a drawing of Halle Berry, the actress who played the role of Catwoman in a Hollywood film.
In a previous study, the same team found an individual who had a single neuron that would fire to Bill Clinton. Another patient's neuron responded to images of the Beatles. The researchers also discovered that individual neurons will fire selectively to images of animals, buildings, or scenes. Thus, it is possible for some people to have a single neuron that will only fire when they see a familiar image of Jesus, a sitting Buddha, or the Jewish star of David. That neuron could represent the cornerstone of their religious training and belief.
Is it possible that some people could have a neuron, or specific set of neurons, that would fire when they are asked to envision God? Yes, but it would probably be associated with the image they were introduced to in early childhood. For many people, that neuron might be associated with one of the most famous paintings in the world: the image portrayed by Michelangelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (which, by the way, is similar to ancient pictures of Zeus). This God—that wise, compassionate, and powerful man with the long white beard and flowing robe—is the image that remains imprinted in my mind.
Today, my memory circuits of God have entwined themselves with my neurological research and childhood beliefs. And the same thing happens in every person's brain. We all begin with a simple neural circuit that captures our earliest impressions of God, and as we associate new meanings and qualities, these circuits interconnect, becoming larger and more complex over time.
As brain-scan technology becomes more refined, I suspect we will see that each human being has a unique neural fingerprint that represents his or her image of God. The East German students were not encouraged to contemplate religious beliefs, so their neurological sense of God included little more than a primitive image of a face, one that was fused with the negative messages they were taught. But Religious Science congregants transformed their childhood