by Andy Coghlan
Excerpted from New Scientist online
Once we had evolved the necessary brain architecture, we could "do" religion, brain scans indicate. The research shows that, to interpret a god's intentions and feelings, we rely mainly on the same recently evolved brain regions that divine the feelings and intentions of other people.
"We're interested to find where in the brain belief systems are represented, particularly those that appear uniquely human," says lead researcher, Jordan Grafman of the US National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.
The researchers found that such beliefs "light up" the areas of our brain which have evolved most recently, such as those involved in imagination, memory and "theory of mind" – the recognition that other people and living things can have their own thoughts and intentions.
"They don't tell us about the existence of a higher order power like God," says Grafman. "They only address how the mind and brain work in tandem to allow us to have belief systems that guide our everyday actions." ...
Overall, the parts of the brain activated by the belief statements were those used for much more mundane, everyday interpretation of the world and the intentions of other people. Significantly, however, they also correspond with the parts of the brain that have evolved most recently, and which appear to which give humans more insight than other animals.
"Our results are unique in demonstrating that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known brain networks, and support contemporary psychological theories that ground religious belief within evolutionary adaptive cognitive functions," say the researchers.
"It's not surprising that religious beliefs engage mainly the theory-of-mind areas, as they are about virtual beings who are treated as having essentially human mental traits, just as characters in a novel or play are," comments Robin Dunbar, an anthropologist at the University of Oxford. Read the full article here.
Journal reference: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106).