Further Thoughts On 'No More God Spot?'

Regarding my previous blog of a few days ago, discussing the recent research by Kapogiannis et al. (2009) on the psychological and neuroanatomical framework of religious belief they've provided, I had some further thoughts on the study that I'd like to delineate. But first, just a quick note. Some may wonder whether my treatment of the issues reveal a sympathy in me for affairs religious and/or that I might be a - shock horror! - a Creationist (ID) infiltrator. I'm putting that to bed right now: I am NOT an IDiot! :-)

I am simply aware that there may be many in my audience who are religious, and so I treat the subject neutrally as I see no need to offend. But then again, some might take offence at my describing ID proponents as 'IDiots' as I just did above, and before I know it I'll be wallowing in qualifications and disclaimers and everyone'll have forgotten what I came to say. Blah blah, this is my space in the end. In seriousness, however, a neutral attitude is the best attitude to take. To be properly academically trained in matters scientific means to maintain a neutral - and yet sceptical - attitude. Apart from the fact that it helps you save face at a later date when your assertions turn out to be wrong ("Oh well I was always neutral about it anyway"), it is really the only position you can take with any measure of comfort given the extremely fast pace at which scientific research is being carried out and announced. Maintaining an attitude of scepticism is also important as it helps promote an attitude of critical thinking, which itself helps to spot numerous errors in studies (if any) as well as gaps and drawbacks in any research by which further endeavours can plug up.

That said, the Kapogiannis study is being touted by some as "proof" that religious faith is "deeply embedded" in the brain which is "programmed for religious experiences". You know this is a media article when you hear the word 'proof', for only they can give masterclasses in sensationalist articles and headlines. However in my last post I showed that it isn't quite that simple. I spoke of the earlier "God Spot" research that I encountered in 2004/2005 and how this new study seemed to contradict the idea of a single spot in the brain that mediated almost all religious feeling.

I also mentioned how I had not kept up with the research specifically investigating this "God Spot" and that this represents a gap in my knowledge that I'll have to catch up on. (By the way, if anyone has any good links to sites or papers I can read, it'd be appreciated.) But from what I recall of it, God Spot research mainly focused on the capacity of the brain that enabled sufferers of temporal lobe epilepsy to have regular spiritual experiences in the form of "religious visions", which we know as visual hallucinations. In the wider context of the limbic system, it was thought that various elements of the limbic architecture combined together along with amgydala and hippocampal functions (and vague links to the autonomic nervous system, ANS) in order for a visual hallucination to be produced. To me, it seemed like a workable theory that explained several instances of the physiological and emotional phenomena that sometimes characterises the incidence of deeply held faith. However, there are obvious gaps in this argument: Not all temporal-lobe epileptics are religious, and also, not all religious people are temporal-lobe epileptics.

This is why I clearly mentioned that this latest Kapogiannis paper simply set out to understand how religious beliefs and feelings are modulated in "normal" brains. Indeed, you do not get many religious people going around making claims of receiving divine and prophetic visions and the Vatican ain't deluged with nominations for sainthood. Most religious people are "normal" in the sense of going to church on Sundays, scriptural study, prayer, and just having a general religious worldview that is satisfying for them. And this is what Kapogiannis and his colleagues wanted to understand: Do their brains used specialised "God Spot" circuitry to modulate all these feelings, or do they use normal processes?

That the answer turned out to be the latter option does not necessarily contradict previous God-Spot research, in my opinion. I personally find it interesting that studies take place on different ends of the spectrum; how the 'normal' and 'visionary' brains are functionally activated for religious processing.

I still don't think much of the criticism referring to the drawback of testing only 'thinking' participants, those who agreed or disagreed with the statements being read out to them, instead of analysing a 'visionary' brain. How exactly would that work? Who made such a criticism like this? Do they even know what fMRI scans involve and how difficult or expensive they are to do? Ask Andrew Newberg (MD), the guy who apparently thinks it's sooo easy to scan a brain in the middle of a religious experience that he hasn't tried to do it himself. Or has he? Looking over his website and the research papers he's come out with, I notice that most of them were written for Zygon. If you've been following my blog for a while, you'll know exactly what I think of Zygon. Now I don't want to seem like I'm unnecessarily attacking some poor guy without provocation, but it comes to something when a titan like PZ Myers doesn't think much of him either. It is incidences like this that make it so hard for genuine science to reach the public and educate their little cotton socks, because Templeton yes-men like Newberg tend to pop up when you're least expecting them and feed something silly into the public imagination which, when investigated, turns out to be an overblown exaggeration.

That is why an attitude of neutrality and scepticism is needed. It is indeed hard to maintain neutrality especially in a world where the Creationist/ID movement have drawn 'first blood' in an unwinnable war, but by being on guard through the critical examination of new research (especially hyped research) it may be possible to score a few points in the service of scientific endeavour and public education.

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Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106

No More God Spot?

Back in 2005 when I was an enthusiastic undergraduate, I was amazed at the scientific knowledge that proliferated on theories of religion. After reading Ramachandran's impressive Phantoms In The Brain and gaining an acquaintance with the neurobiological structures that underly religious experience, I became aware of scientific research that was suggesting the existence of a "God Module" in the brain, a system of specialised neural circuitry that appeared to be the central mediator of religious emotions and feelings as well as other things. The evidence seemed to point towards the temporal lobes and the larger limbic system as the location of this "God Spot", as evidenced by this 2004 TIME article: 'Is God In Our Genes?' It sounded great, we were finally boiling down religion to it's essential neural components! And I'll be honest in saying that I was an enthusiastic follower of this theory.

Now I haven't followed the progress of this line of research in the intervening years, and I'm unsure as to where the research stands on that particular point, but I understand through recent developments such as a recent announcement by Scientific American that a much more lateral theory has been developed that basically says that religious feelings co-opt different brain circuits, those that are engaged in more more mundane pursuits such as politics, music, food, and so on. On the face of it, this theory makes much more sense. Religion, like many things, has many facets including contemplation, group activities, dietary requirements, social obligations, and many others, and so it stands to reason that these activites are moderated by the same neural circuits that moderate them in non-religious contexts! In fact the paper, reported in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences this week, claims to reveal three psychological dimensions of religious belief (God's perceived level of involvement, God's perceived emotion, and doctrinal/experiential religious knowledge) in networks that process Theory of Mind (ToM) regarding intent and emotion, abstract semantics and imagery. ToM, in short, is the ability of individuals to understand their own and other people's mental states in terms of beliefs, intents, desires, knowledge, etc. You know your own thoughts, and you know that other people have their thoughts too, because you have a Theory of Mind.

Dimitrios Kapogiannis et al. discuss the aim of their research; to define the psychological structure of religious belief and to reveal the brain areas activated by the cognitive processes involved. They give a nod to previous "God Spot" research by acknowledging how they have largely focused on the neural correlates of rather vivid and unusual experiences, sufferers of temporal-lobe epilepsy (which was mainly responsible for linking religiosity with the limbic structures), executive/prosocial aspects of religion being linked to the frontal lobes, and mystical religious experiences being linked with decreased parietal lobe activity. They mention that all these findings rarely corresponded with each other and generally didn't succeed at discovering a psychological architecture that underlies religious belief. Regarding the dimensions, the authors mention that factor analytic studies showed how the perception of God's involvement and anger are key components of belief, and this formed their first hypothesis that these concepts would quite naturally be related with the prefrontal and posterior regions of the ToM structure that deal with intent and emotion. Remember, ToM is the ability to understand one's own and others' mental states, so it stands to reason that understanding God's involvment in world affairs or his being angry for some reason or other fits nicely under ToM conceptions of intent and emotion. The second hypothesis proposed to test doctrinal knowledge being mediated by neural circuits processing abstract semantics, and that experiential knowledge engages circuits that process memory recall and imagery. The third hypothesis proposed that adoption of religious belief uses networks used in cognitive-emotional processing.

Just so we're clear, this study isn't aspiring to make any kind of statement on religious belief one way or the other. All it's trying to do is figure out whether religious belief uses "normal" neural circuits that are used for a variety of everyday things or thoughts, or whether "specialised" circuits are being used solely to process religious thoughts and ideas.

Multidimensional scaling (MDS, similar to factor analysis in concept) was applied to ratings of conceptual dissimilarity so that they appropriate correlated within the structures of the three aforementioned dimensions. They don't appear to have mentioned the use of any standardised scale measuring religious beliefs so I can only assume they created their own list of statements (can be seen in supplementary data). 26 particpants with variable levels of self-reported religiosity performed the ratings. Interestingly, Dimension 1 (D1) correlated negatively with God's perceived level of involvement (-0.994), D2 correlated negatively with God's perceived anger (-0.953) but positively with God's perceived love (0.953), and D3 correlated positively with doctrinal (0.993) and negatively with experiential (-0.993) religious content. After that, they fMRI-scanned 40 new participants and measured their brain activity while they listened to the statements being read out to them.

Excuse me for getting bogged down in the details, but at the end of the day this is what was discovered: "the neural correlates of these psychological dimensions were revealed to be well-known brain networks, mediating evolutionary adaptive cognitive functions." In other words, religious beliefs and feelings use the same brain networks as beliefs and feelings about politics, food, martial arts, music and whatever else form your hobbies and interests.

D1 indeed hit ToM circuits in order to "understand God’s intent and resolve the negative emotional significance of his lack of involvement." D2 indeed hit the more emotional ToM circuits when, considering God's emotions of love or anger, activated the same areas that respond to fear and happiness respectively. And finally, D3 engaged areas dealing with the decoding of metaphorical meaning and abstractness (doctrinal), and areas that generate memory and language-based projections of oneself (experiential).

This image shows the effect of D3 on the brain: Experiential (above) and Doctrinal (below). Activations for experiential knowledge are displayed as a spectrum whereas doctrinal activations are represented in purple. This seems intuitively reasonable; theoretical or 'bookish' knowledge of religion is localised in a small area when activated, as compared with experiential knowledge that recruits larger areas in order to 'remember' spiritual experiences, projecting it within one's mind with all of the emotion associated with the event. This isn't necessarily a good or bad thing, it's simply a descriptive statement of what's going on neurologically under different religious circumstances. However, in assessing the overal effect of religiosity on the brain, it was discovered that religiosity is modulated in brain areas that tend to be related with stronger episodic (mainly autobiographical) memory retrieval and imagery, and suggested that the religious participants had a greater and more meaningful understanding of the religious statements that were read out to them. Hardly a surprise.

Regarding the last hypothesis dealing with the acceptance or rejection of religious beliefs, some interesting results were reported for the religious group. Disagreement with religious statements among the religious group activated anterior insulae areas commonly associated with emotional-cognitive integration, suggesting that rejection of religious beliefs involves a larger role for emotions in that process. The researchers explain away this finding as saying that negative emotions (such as aversion, guilt, fear of loss) in the religious participants may have been triggered by disagreeing with the statements, and that this could be viewed as a normal event where one encounters statements that go against one's belief system. Results were not reported for the non-religious participants, implying nothing worthy of reporting, so this activation amongst the religious must have been pretty high to merit a mention. The lady doth protest too much, methinks! ;-)

The researchers conclude their paper by relating their findings to their hypotheses and basically patting themselves on the back for a job done well. An important disclaimer relates to the fact that the measured religiosity was that of a sample of modern Western society, and the findings may differ with respect to other cultures. Quite an obvious experimental drawback but it remains to be seen whether the results will remain relatively consistent if or when replicated.

But what does all of this mean for research on the neuropsychological effects of religion? For a start, it shows rather well that religious feeling cannot strictly be said to be located in a single area (as per "God Spot"), but employs general neural circuitry. One may dream of a blissful holiday in quite the same way as one dreams of a blissful afterlife, one may respond well to smiles or bullying in quite the same way as one may respond to "God's love" or "God's anger", and one may interpret theological metaphors and relate them to one's life in quite the same way as one may enjoy reading and analysing a good piece of literature, and relating that to one's life!

Another interesting consideration relates to the evolutionary development of the brain. As the authors suggest that their findings now provide a "psychological and neuroanatomical framework for the processing of religious belief" that may be a specialised human function. Kalanit Grill-Spector, an assistant professor of neuroscience at Stanford University, notes that other primates share the same brain structures although it is debatable as to whether they use them in the same capacity. Other critics note that this study simply analyses a "thinking" brain as opposed to a brain actively undergoing a religious experience. This is such a lazy methodological criticism that I wonder how it can even be considered seriously. It is facetious to think or even expect a "visionary" or prayerful brain can be appropriately analysed, difficult as the process is already, what to speak of asking others to do so. I suggest that this type of armchair logic is unsuitable and unhelpful in further understanding this already very complex topic.

The final sentence is worth a quote: "Regardless of whether God exists or not, religious beliefs do exist and can be experimentally studied, as shown in this study."

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This article carries further thoughts.

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Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106

Is the brain irrelevant to psychology?

This interesting item in the BPS Research Digest caught my eye: Is the brain irrelevant to psychology? Hmmm, at first glance I'd say no. But then I'm rather biased since I've spent the best years of my life making brain function the centre of my universe, but seriously, it still astounds me as to who can ask a question as ridiculous as this?

Lately I've had discussions on this topic on two separate occasions, both with people who seemed somehow convinced (yet producing little to no evidence to support their views) that brain function is either something that is "not quite fully understood" or that it's relevance to psychology is marginal until fully understood. Both these views were held by people with degrees in something other than psychology (anthropology and biology, actually) and it was plainly obvious that their viewpoints smacked of dualism, which, in all entirety, is almost completely irrelevant to the neuroscience field which employs a monistic viewpoint. With extremely good reason too.

However, this item was irritating for another reason: Opposing arguments are almost always brought by philosophers! Jerry Fodor, in this case. I don't know about you, but I've always been mildly irritated by how philosophers who talk about neuroscience topics almost always serve to act as a spanner in the works. If I was an optimist (which I am, but not an overly enthusiastic one) I'd appreciate their arguments as something to think about and which can provide good ideas for further research. But that's just it: We neuroscientists end up having to do all the hard slog while the philosophers sit around like armchair critics trying to poke holes in studies.

But anyway, enough of my Friday night rant, have a look at the item for yourselves and see how silly dualistic/philosophical arguments can be easily consigned to the garbage heap:

Cognitive neuroscience explores how our mental faculties emerge from, and are organised in, the slimy tissue of our brains, and it's currently a thriving field. But some critics argue it's a dead-end, that biology is irrelevant to psychological accounts of how our minds work. In the words of philosopher Jerry Fodor, "If the mind happens in space at all, it happens somewhere north of the neck. What exactly turns on knowing how far north?"

Now, writing in a special journal issue on the interface between psychology and neuroscience, language expert Peter Hagoort has hit back, arguing that knowing something about the biology of cognition can help to shape psychological models.

Hagoort cites two key examples to support his claims. A little background is required.

When we encounter an unexpected word in a sentence ("He spread his warm bread with SOCKS."), a negative spike in electrical activity recorded from the surface of the scalp is detectable 400ms later and is thought to reflect the extra brain processing required for the surprise word.

Meanwhile, when we encounter a grammatical anomaly (e.g. "The boys kissES the girls") - there is a positive, more posterior, spike of activity, 600ms afterwards. This latter effect is observed even with nonsense sentences that violate grammatical rules, thus showing that the spike is independent from the processing of meaning.

Taken together, Hagoort says these findings have implications for psychological models of language processing because they endorse the idea that meaning and grammar are not handled by a "general-purpose language processor", as he puts it, but rather they are "domain specific" - in other words, processed independently.

For his second example, Hagoort points to a brain imaging study that showed the pleasantness of a smell was rated differently depending on whether it was accompanied by the label "cheese" or "body odour". Crucially, the brain imaging data showed the verbal label affected processing in the actual smell centre of the brain. "This example illustrates something that would not so easily be found out with a behavioral method: that language information acts directly in the olfactory input system," Hagoort said.

Reference: Hagoort, P. (2008). Should Psychology Ignore the Language of the Brain?. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 17(2), 96-101. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8721.2008.00556.x (Access is currently free).

Addendum: Yes, I have heard of Jerry Fodor and ideas on modularity and, while he is not just a philosopher, he is also a cognitive scientist and is thus in a position to know something of what he's talking about. My remarks against philosophers were directed to people such as Daniel Dennett. Shock horror! Yes, Daniel Dennett. As an undergraduate I hugely enjoyed studying the 'Consciousness' module and devoured the textbook, and found that Dennett was a prime example of one of those who act as the proverbial spanner. As Blackmore described issue after issue, Dennett seemed to pop up everywhere as a naysayer.

Ah well, perhaps I'm wrong and I was just in a bad mood when I read that book.