Chapter 6

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OK, now let's talk about the religious nuts,

the crazy people,

the fanatics.

 

            Let's talk about those folks who have serious brain pathology that causes them to be hyper-religious.  No, wait, let's call them "abnormally" religious.  Yeah, that's probably more accurate. 

            We have been talking about how and why the normal human brain does religion but now let's talk about the abnormal human brain and how and why it does religion.

            Finally, something that I actually know something about.  As I have clearly stated, I'm not really an anthropologist or an evolutionary psychologist but I am an UCLA-NPI trained neuropsychiatrist.  So, in this chapter I will talk about the different kinds of brain pathology that can result in abnormal-religiosity.  I will talk about epilepsy, dementia, bipolar disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia, pharmacology, and personality disorders such as narcissistic personality disorder. 

            I don't know, do you think that guys like Falwell, Swaggart, Haggard, Bakker, and Hinn could be a bit narcissistic?  You think?

            For a long list of evangelists who were probably raving narcissists and got busted for homosexuality, pedophilia, prostitution, etc., go to this site:  Christian_evangelist_scandals

            Actually, I don't mean to make fun of people who have genuine psychiatric illness.  The Falwell types are not who this chapter will be about.  I want to talk about stuff that is much more interesting.  I mean, things like temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) causing a woman to experience giving birth to Jesus.  And firmly believing that it was real.  You know, things like that.  

            Actually, it is the limbic system (amygdala and hippocampus) and the anterior temporal and prefrontal cortex that are most frequently related to abnormal religious experience.  These are the systems that do emotion connected to the systems that think about having done emotion. 

            The human brain is not great at making reality determinations but it is pretty good at rationalizing experiences.  An unusual emotional experience will get explained one way or another. 

            In any case, let's start with some case histories.  Then, we'll look more closely at the medical conditions that result in religious experience.  If you aren't familiar with this stuff, then I'm sure you will find it very surprising and also very interesting.

            Finally, we will talk a bit about imaging normal brains as they do religious activity.  It turns out that the same circuit seems to be involved.

            Let's start with a dementing illness called fronto-temporal dementia FTD.  When I was a fellow at UCLA we saw quite a few of these individuals.  It was not uncommon for them to have unusual thoughts related to religion.   

 

            Terri Edwards-Lee was a very cute and wonderfully intelligent woman who came to me because she had an interest in the behavioral symptoms associated with FTD.  She was impressed with a paper that I had written and ... well ... OK ... this story would get really exciting at this point except that she was already married.

            In any case, she published a case history of a patient that I had consulted on.  Here it is:

            Case 1.   A 59 year old right handed man made errors in calculations and over 2 years was demoted from an estimator to a handyman and was forced to retire.  He wore unmatched shoes and socks, tucked his jacket into his pants, buttoned shirts inside out and put deodorant or shaving lotion on his hair.  He waved to pictures on walls.  Initially easy going, he became stubborn and irritable.  A religious awakening led him to spend hours in church; he argued with his wife and friends regarding his new religious ideas.  He became emotional, cried when people left him and refused to attend his father's funeral.  His eating habits changed; he nibbled constantly, repetitively spat, and ate coffee and banana peels.  He was alternatively placid and irritable with a remote, bizarre and robot-like affect.  He had severe difficulty with calculations and naming things but his reading, drawing and memory were reasonably intact.  His frontal brain atrophy was most marked in the right anterior temporal lobe. 

            The distribution of brain atrophy in FTD is highly variable and most patients do not experience abnormal religious behavior.  Those that do tend to have the worst atrophy in their right anterior-temporal lobe.  There is also frontal and limbic involvement but not as severe as the anterior temporal involvement.  At least early in the course.   

            There are two psychiatric disorders that also effect these same circuits, Schizophrenia and Obsessive-Compulsive disorder OCD.  Individuals with these conditions have significantly elevated frequency of abnormal religious thinking.  I will give some case histories in a moment that will astound you.

            There is also a form of epilepsy called temporal lobe epilepsy TLE.  The overwhelming majority of these patients do not show any unusual religious thinking.  However, a few of them do.  The ones that do tend to have either bilateral or right unilateral anterior temporal lobe epileptiform activity. 

            Despite very different pathophysiology, TLE, schizophrenia, OCD, and FTD all affect the same brain circuit.  The "sub-cortex" or limbic system that does emotion is connected to the "cortex," or in this case the pre-frontal cortex, that does rationalization of stimuli such as emotion.  Deep brain structures are in a feedback loop system with the most anterior external part of the brain called the pre-frontal cortex.  The circuit goes like this: 

pre-frontal cortex --- caudate --- globus palidus --- thalamus --- pre-frontal cortex  

            The idea is that if you interrupt this circuit in just the right way it will malfunction.  For example, if frontal cortex activity goes down and limbic activity goes up then heightened emotions might be rationalized less well.  We could say that the emotions would be ir-rationalized.  That is just one example that I made up and it may not be literally accurate but you get the idea.

            Now for case number two.

            Case 2.   A 23 year old right handed woman with no history of religious affiliation but who was born and raised in Salt Lake City, Utah, begins to recite Mormon prayers multiple times per day.  At first her friends are impressed and believe that she has had a religious conversion.  Then, she starts to knock on random doors in her neighborhood and recite these prayers.  Many of her neighbors are Mormon and have some tolerance for this behavior.  However, she continues to stand in the doorway and recite prayers until the door is closed even at homes where she is informed the residents are devout Mormons.  Eventually, she is reported to the authorities because she is standing in a busy intersection in her night gown and reciting prayers.  She spends two weeks on the psychiatric in-patient unit where she is placed on Prozac 20mg/day.  It is not clear if she has responded to treatment or simply chosen to stop talking.  Her dose is increased to 40mg/day and within one week she appears markedly calmer and her hygiene improves dramatically.  She no longer attempts to read prayers and upon interview she can speak insightfully about her symptoms in the past tense.

            It may be that a religious overlay to a psychiatric illness is due to environmental influence alone and not due to the brain circuit that is involved.  However, this form of OCD (called scrupulosity) seems to draw non-religious people to religion.  These people may recede from religious practice when treated.  It's hard to know for sure but I believe that it is most likely a combination of environmental influence and the specific brain circuit that is affected.

            Here is another case:

            Case 3.   A 19 year old man who had a been a loner in high school and who had difficulties being sociable joined the US Army.  He successfully completed his training and was sent to Ft. Hood to join the 1st Cavalry Division.  

            His training had been uneventful but once on base he incurred two minor reprimands.  Once he was cited for wandering the base at 2:00am and, on another occasion, his bunk caught fire due to a candle that he was burning for religious purposes.  He got several tattoos on his arms and chest that had religious themes but these were hidden and only discovered later.  Then, he went AWOL on a Friday when his unit had a planned training mission over the weekend.  Two weeks later he appeared disheveled at a local convenience store.  He wore army fatigues that were soiled and he had a head band with alternating crucifixes and stars of David.  He was speaking incoherently and he had a threatening demeanor so the cashier called the police.  On the psychiatry unit he was combative and required sedation and seclusion.  He received Haloperidol and was able to converse in a calm manner the next day.  He told the treating physician that he was Jesus and had returned to Earth to eliminate sinners.  He no longer seemed convinced that this was true but related an intricate plan he had devised that would trick sinners into coming to the forest where he could shoot them.  He had no weapons when he was brought in and there were none missing from the base.  In addition, his thought processes seemed to be so disorganized that he would have been unlikely to be able to carry out such a plan.  The threat was considered minimal.

            Schizophrenia frequently produces religious delusions.  At any given moment in time there are likely to be several schizophrenics and/or bipolar patients on the psychiatry unit who claim to be Jesus.  The other most popular individual that they claim to be is Napoleon.  I don't know why that is.

            If the real Jesus was psychiatrically ill he would have probably claimed to be Moses, as Jesus did not exist yet.  I bet the psych units in .5 AD were filled with people claiming to be Moses.  Or maybe Zoroaster.  After all, good 'ol Zoro could sing and dance.  All the Jew could do was tell jokes.

              Case 4.   A 60 year old male who was diagnosed with bipolar disorder at age 17 moves to Rockwall, Texas, and starts the Church On The Rock with 12 people.  Soon he is the pastor of one of the nation's largest churches.  Before long he is the star of an ABC News Nightline expose´ with Diane Sawyer.  It seems that he made millions of dollars pretending to raise money for a church in Germany.  He bought an enormous mansion near Dallas but couldn't sell his old house so he pretended to move back into it and then burned it down. He asked viewers to give him money as he cried in his burned down home.  Then, he went back home to his huge mansion.  This did not sit well with the evangelical community and he lost his church and his marriage and everything else.  Now, he is re-married and has re-built his ministry on-line.  Check it out: Larry Lea Ministries

            Bipolar disorder may be caused by chemicals more than by anatomy.  It may have no direct effect on the circuit we are talking about but it may be the result of a large increase in specific neurotransmitters.  These chemicals affect this circuit as well as everything else.  But maybe this circuit is more sensitive to the fluctuation in neurotransmitter concentration.

            Hey, come to think of it, exogenously ingested pharmaceuticals are great for seeing God.

            Case 5.   A 47 year old right handed man who has multiple sclerosis tastes a lick-'n-stick transfer he got from his 11 year old son.  Soon, he is floating in strawberry fields and seeing Lucy in the sky.  Low and behold, he is astonished to realize that he is standing before GOD!  He thinks it is a little odd that God is in the form of an 11 year old Gary Coleman but he listens intently.  He now realizes his true calling in life.  He must create a new religion that is based on baseball.

                Actually, I think that the LSD on lick-'n-stick transfers was just some made up paranoid bullshit. 

            I hope that you realize this case is about me and there is a real story that I simply don't wish to share.  He...he...

            The neurotransmitter story centers mostly around dopamine and serotonin.  The idea is that there is a transient inhibition of function in the pre-frontal cortex while the limbic system is overly stimulated by these chemicals.  Then, there is a gradual rebound and normalization that results in religious experience.  This makes sense and there is evidence to suggest it is accurate but it is still to general an explanation for me.

            Finally, there is this guy named Andrew Newberg who I don't fully trust.  He looked at Tibetan Meditators with functional brain imaging and concluded that their prefrontal cortex is activated by meditation.  OK, I buy this finding but I am still dubious about him in general.  His academic father is Michael Persinger who is a well established nut case.

            There is also other evidence to suggest that normal brains involved in religious behavior use the anteriotemporal-limbic-prefrontal cortex circuit.  I apologize for this indirect reference but look up Andrew Newberg on-line and you can read all about it. 

            An interesting point is that there is no other brain circuit that has been implicated in religious activity in any way. 

            Now, I would like to expand into the realm of total speculation. 

            The amygdala experiences fear and pleasure.  The pre-frontal cortex is capable of abstract thinking.  The two are intimately connected.  Therefore, perhaps, our brains evolved to have programming that takes emotionally stimulating multisensory integrated input and rationalizes it for the purpose of increasing social bonds. 

            Once this programming evolved and was in our brains it would need to be used in order for us to be happy and healthy.  If there was a change to the environment in which we live, then we could still find ways to exercise our innate programming.  Perhaps, we could do religion?

            As an analogy, we own a Scarlet Macaw that loves to play with a toy that is made of leather and cloth.  I am certain that she did not evolve a program in her little brain to chew on leather.  She most likely developed this program to chew on nuts and berries from trees and bushes.  She is not currently hungry and this rain forest creature lives in a cage in a bedroom in Colorado.  She is using her innate programming to play with a toy. 

            Macaws that are not given toys to play with are not as happy.  They sometimes pull out their own feathers and lose weight and look horrible.  Especially if they don't have a leader of the flock that shows them attention.  My wife is the leader of Nicky's flock but probably not the leader that she evolved to follow.

            Homo sapiens, on the other hand, are programmed to do religious-type behavior.  Even though we are no longer running around in little hunter-gatherer groups out on the plateau, we still need to exercise our innate programming.  If we don't, we start pulling our feathers out and losing weight and looking horrible.

            To support this idea there is a wealth of data that demonstrates that people who are religious are happier and healthier and live longer etc.   

            Now I will get way out on a limb with total and unadulterated speculation.  It could be that the strength of this circuit and/or it's sensitivity to neurotransmitters determines the degree to which an individual does religious-like behavior.  And like all human characteristics there is a bell shaped curve for the size and strength of this circuit.  Some people are genetically predisposed to have a more active circuit.

            Also, neurons in the brain can increase their function when they are exercised.  If an individual spent a lot of time meditating or chanting or singing or doing religious-like behavior then this circuit would be hypertrophied.  If an individual does very little of this behavior it would atrophy.

            You are born with either a small, medium, or large circuit and you can increase it a little if you work it out. 

            I also suggest that if you have a small or weak or minimally responsive circuit then you have a greater disconnection between the part of your brain that does emotion and the part that thinks logically.  The greater this disconnection the more you are able to think scientifically and independently.  However, you may be less able to bond socially. 

            I am pretty sure that Einstein was socially awkward, wasn't he?

            And I am equally sure that the social queen, Sarah Palin, has no clue how light travels through space.

            In any case, I would love to conduct an experiment in which you measure the strength of this circuit and correlate it with the degree that an individual does religious-like behavior.  You could also measure this circuit before and after 6 months of meditation training.  Wouldn't that be cool?

            I'm pretty sure that measuring this circuit in a meaningful way would be difficult at this time but it might be more easy to do in the future when the technology improves.  You could measure it with fMRI but all you could do is see where the blood is flowing in the brain when certain mental tasks were being performed.

            Our current ability to measure what the brain is up to is very limited.  I think that a lot of folks over estimate the degree to which imaging findings give us an understanding of cognitive function.

            I am now feeling emotionally drained so I think that I will go and try to be sociable with my wife.  If I'm lucky, a little Talisker 57 North will shut down my pre-frontal cortex and open up my limbic system enough that I might say the right things.  He...he... 

 

Conclusion

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