How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [61]
We also know that the von Economo neurons are especially vulnerable to degeneration in patients who suffer from Alzheimer's disease and other aging disorders.29 As we saw in Chapter 2, patients with cognitive disabilities improved their memory by meditating for only twelve minutes a day, which suggests that spiritual practices may indeed enhance the functioning of this rare primate neuron.
The best way to describe the relationship between your emotional limbic system, your frontal lobe, and the anterior cingulate is to visualize an imaginary seesaw:
The anterior cingulate acts as a kind of fulcrum that controls and balances the activity between the frontal lobes and limbic system.
In this example, the emotional limbic system, which includes the fear-producing amygdala, has a reciprocal relationship with your frontal lobe and your ability to use logic, reason, and language. The anterior cingulate, which sits right on the boundary between the limbic system and the frontal lobe, acts like a fulcrum, balancing your feelings and thoughts. If you get too emotional, blood flows into the limbic system, stimulating alertness, defensiveness, and fear in the amygdala. Just like a seesaw, as activity goes up in the limbic area, activity goes down in the frontal lobe. Thus, when you're angry or anxious, you stop being logical or reasonable, and your cognitive skills are suppressed.
When the amygdala becomes active, the anterior cingulate shuts down, which allows your reptilian brain to run the show. Empathy and intuition decline, and you lose your ability to accurately assess how other people feel.
On the other hand, if your frontal lobe becomes active, you stimulate the anterior cingulate, which slows down activity in the amygdala. Thus, logic and reason subdue anger and fear. It's that simple. When one side of the imaginary seesaw goes up, the other side goes down. But if the anterior cingulate is damaged—through a stroke, a lesion, or even too much anger—everything becomes unbalanced. Thus, it is essential that you nurture that inner negotiator, which is what meditation and spiritual practices do. They strengthen the frontal lobe—which stimulates the anterior cingulate—and this allows you to pursue your conscious goals in life with greater purpose and serenity. A strong frontal–anterior cingulate circuit also inhibits anxiety, depression, and rage.
EMBRACING COMPASSION AND PEACE
Based on our research and that of others, it seems that the more you activate your anterior cingulate, the less you'll perceive God as an authoritarian or critical force. It's quite easy to do. Simply focus on compassion or an image of peace as you breathe deeply and relax. Hold this thought for at least twelve minutes a day, and in a matter of a few months you'll begin to build and strengthen new neural circuits of compassion, and these will interrupt the neurological tendency to shy away from people who appear to be different than you.
Of course, you don't need to believe in God to establish empathy and serenity; you simply need to absorb yourself in memories associated with the feelings of kindness and love. If you consciously interrupt pessimistic thoughts and feelings with optimistic beliefs—even if they are based on fantasies rather than reality—you'll stimulate your anterior cingulate. Fear, anxiety, and irritability will decrease, and a sense of peacefulness will slowly take its place. However, if you obsess on your doubts and worries, your emotional limbic system will slow down those parts of the frontal lobe that generate logic, empathy, and pleasure. Again, it's a simple seesaw effect. Love goes up, and fear goes down. Anger goes up, and compassion goes down. If you focus on a benevolent God, the authoritarian God recedes. The choice is entirely yours—that's how easy it is to control nonconscious circuits in your brain.
But meditation, prayer, and a belief in a loving