How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [8]
If we combine all of the research on neuroplasticity, we must conclude that neurons do not have fixed properties or positions.17 Instead, they are changing all the time, triggered by competition, environmental changes, and education.18 Learning takes place continually, and memories are being constantly revised. New ideas emerge, flow briefly into consciousness, then quickly fade away to make room for the next brief moment of awareness.
So what does neuroplasticity have to do with God? Everything, for if you contemplate something as complex or mysterious as God, you're going to have incredible bursts of neural activity firing in different parts of your brain. New dendrites will rapidly grow and old associations will disconnect as new imaginative perspectives emerge. In essence, when you think about the really big questions in life—be they religious, scientific, or psychological—your brain is going to grow.
NEUROSCIENCE 101
In this book, we'll keep the brain anatomy to a minimum. However, when it comes to understanding how God and spiritual processes affect the brain, there are six structures that we want you to keep in mind: the frontal lobe, limbic system, anterior cingulate, amygdala, thalamus, and parietal lobe. On page 44 you'll find a drawing of these structures, but I'd like to show you a simple way to envision these important parts of the brain.
First, put two imaginary almonds (without the shells) in the palm of your hand. These are the two halves of your amygdala, which governs your fight-or-flight response to a perceived or imagined fear. Next, place two halves of an imaginary walnut (again, no shell) into the palm of your hand. This is your thalamus∗3 which sends sensory information to all the other parts of the brain. It also gives you a sense of meaning, and what reality may actually be.
Now, make a fist and bend your forearm so your knuckles are pointing to the ceiling, Your forearm is your spinal cord, and your fist (along with the almond halves and the walnut) is the limbic system, the oldest part of the brain that every reptile, fish, amphibian, bird, and mammal has. Your limbic system is involved with memory encoding, emotional response, and many other bodily functions.
Next, take four sheets of eight-by-ten-inch paper and place them on top of your fist. Crumple the paper up so it fits snugly, and voilà!—you have a human brain. Those four sheets of paper are the approximate size and thickness of your neocortex, and all the memories, beliefs, and behaviors you have learned over a lifetime are stored on them, along with all of your visual, auditory, motor, language, and cognitive processing centers of the brain. Thirty percent of that paper is your frontal lobe, which sits directly behind and above your eyes. It controls nearly everything you are conscious of: your logic, reason, attention, language skills, and voluntary motivation.
Notice where the crumpled paper touches your thumb. That area approximates the location of the anterior cingulate, which processes social awareness, intuition, and empathy. It also contains a unique type of neuron that only humans and a few primates have. These neurons have only been around for about 15 million years, whereas your amygdala (the almonds in your fist) has been happily generating fear for 450 million years. Spiritual practices specifically strengthen the anterior cingulate, and when this happens, activity in the amygdala slows down.
There's one more area that I want you to keep in mind: your parietal lobes, located above and slightly behind your ears. They take up less than a quarter of those sheets of paper, but provide you with a sense of yourself in relation to other objects in the world.