How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [7]
GOD AND THE NEUROPLASTICITY OF THE BRAIN
Contemplating God will change your brain, but I want to point out that meditating on other grand themes will also change your brain. If you contemplate the Big Bang, or immerse yourself in the study of evolution—or choose to play a musical instrument, for that matter—you'll change the neural circuitry in ways that enhance your cognitive health. But religious and spiritual contemplation changes your brain in a profoundly different way because it strengthens a unique neural circuit that specifically enhances social awareness and empathy while subduing destructive feelings and emotions. This is precisely the kind of neural change we need to make if we want to solve the conflicts that currently afflict our world. And the underlying mechanism that allows these changes to occur relates to a unique quality known as neuroplasticity: the ability of the human brain to structurally rearrange itself in response to a wide variety of positive and negative events.∗2
In the last two years, advances in neuroscience have revolutionized the way we think about the brain. Rather than seeing it as an organ that slowly matures during the first two decades of life, then withers away as we age, scientists now look at the human brain as a constantly changing mass of activity. In mammals, dendrites—the thousands of tentaclelike receptors extending from one end of every neuron (or nerve cell)—rapidly grow and retreat in a period of a couple of weeks. In fact, recent evidence has shown that neuronal changes can take place in literally a matter of hours. “The development of particular neurological connections or skills does not occur gradually over time,” says Akira Yoshii, a brain researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “Instead such changes tend to occur suddenly, appearing in short intervals after robust stimulation. It is as if there is a single important trigger and then a functional circuit rapidly comes online.”14
The Nobel laureate Eric Kandel, who proved that neurons never stop learning, demonstrated another important dimension of neuro-plasticity. If you alter the environmental stimulus, the internal function of the nerve cells will change, causing them to grow new extentions called axons capable of sending different information to other parts of the brain.15 In fact, every change in the environment—internal and external—will cause a rearrangement of cellular activity and growth. Even more interesting, every neuron has its own “mind,” so to speak, for it can decide whether to send a signal, and if it does, how strong a signal to send.16
Scientists used to believe that neurons deteriorated with old age, but the mechanisms are far more complicated than that. For example, we now know that certain neurochemicals wear out, and this alters nerve cell activity and growth. Sometimes neural connections die off, and sometimes they become too active and overconnected, bringing chaos and confusion to our internal organizational maps. Our research with memory patients suggests that meditation can help maintain a healthy structural balance that will slow the aging process.
Brain-scan technology allows us to watch a living brain in action, and what we see is amazing. Each feeling and thought changes the blood flow and electrochemical activity in multiple areas of the brain, and it appears that we never repeat the exact same feeling or thought. In fact, the mere act of recalling a single memory changes its connection to other neuronal circuits—another interesting example of the enormous plasticity of the brain.
How fast do the neural connections change within the brain? Imagine filming a hundred years