Searching for God in the Brain

Is there a “God-spot” in the Human Brain? For years scientists have been working on screening the brain by various techniques to discover if there is a certain spot that is activated when one communes with “God”.
Mario Beauregard of the University of Montreal had developed an experiment using fMRI imaging to pinpoint the areas active in the brain when Carmelite Nuns are being tested. Their instructions were for three different states: one to recall a time of intense communion with God and two other times to recall an intense social experience. The MRI recorded cross sections of their brains every three seconds, therefore roughly the whole brain in two minutes. The researchers found that six specific areas were invigorated by the religious memories. For example there was increased invigoration in the caudate nucleus a central brain region to where scientists have ascribed the role of memory ad falling in love. This according to scientists might be a reason why the nuns feel unconditional love. Another spot was the insula, a small part in the brains outer layers.
Michael Persinger of Laurentian University believes that the “God spot” is in the brain’s temporal lobe. He sought to artificially create feelings of “God” by his device the “God Helmet”. This generates weak electromagnetic fields and focuses them on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. The researchers were able to successfully induce people with the sense that someone was in the room, or a state of cosmic bliss. Because of hid findings Persinger insists that “religious experience and belief in God are merely the results of electrical anomalies in the human brain.” To him when people say that religion is good to have, he believes the only reason is that we have conditioned our minds to think that by associating good things with religion, such as praying before a meal associates prayer with eating. Based off his research, Persinger opines that the religious tendencies of great figures like Saint Paul, Muhammad, Moses, or Buddha only result from their natural neural quirks.
Instead of artificially inducing religious experiences, Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’ Aquili of the University of Pennsylvania decided to study Buddhist monks at the peak of their meditative states. When the monks reached the peak state where they no longer feel separate than the universe, researchers inject them with a radioactive isotope that the blood carries to the most active parts of the brain. They found that the height of activity was associated with the right prefrontal cortex.
In conclusion Mario Beauregard states, “there is no single God spot, localized uniquely in the temporal lobe of the human brain, these states are mediated by a neural network that is will distributed throughout the brain.”
It fascinates me that we could maybe one-day see how God connects with human beings on a scientific level. I do not believe that if a place in the brain was found that it would threaten Christian beliefs. There must be some chemical way that God can put ideas into our minds. This would logically require our brains. Our “spot” would only help prove that the connection between God and humans is real. Unfortunately in this article it seems that the scientists try to put God in a box. They see it as: finding a “spot” means God is only a neural imagination. To Persinger God is just something that we will one day be able to created ourselves with technology only a little better than his “God helmet”. This minimalizes everything we feel about our God. It would be interesting though to see what Christian researchers would discover if they started researching this topic.

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=434D7C62-E7F2-99DF-37CC9814533B90D7&sc=I100322