Does Landmark Forum seem likely to affect your brain? If so, how? This question is an example of the religiobiological stance, an approach for analyzing phenomena related to religion. (“Religion” here has a broad interpretation which encompasses the personal growth that Landmark claims to enable.) If we can identify ways in which Landmark could affect your brain, that makes it more plausible that it actually does have a long-term impact on behavior or happiness, and of course the converse is true as well.

We will split this analysis into two posts.

The Landmark Forum is a three-day seminar, put on by Landmark Education, which claims to be specifically designed to bring about positive and permanent shifts in the quality of your life. These shifts, it says, will be the direct cause for a new and unique kind of freedom and power. 94% of participants surveyed said The Landmark Forum made a profound, lasting difference in the way they live their lives. Nearly a million people are said to have undergone the training. Landmark Education offers a number of other follow-up programs, but here we will confine ourselves to the Forum.

Let’s jump right in and take the religiobiological stance in addressing some of the major aspects of the Landmark Forum.

Talking. Although the Landmark website characterizes the forum as a “conversation” or even a Socratic dialog, rather than a “lecture”, in fact the 45 hours or so are dominated by the facilitator (picture is of Jerry Baden) talking at the 200 or so attendees. It’s actually jarring to some extent, to hear the leader announce that he is going to have a “conversation” and then proceed to talk for the next 15 minutes.

The talking is occasionally interrupted by questions from other attendees, or by quick interludes of sharing with surrounding participants.

In general, mere talking is a very poor bet for causing any meaningful neurostructural changes, even when the person doing the talking is an engaging, charismatic speaker as all Forum leaders are, unless it is talking about something of huge emotional significance. Therefore, Landmark’s focus on one-way oral communication would argue against its potential effectiveness, from the religiobiological stance.

Language. Throughout the Forum new terminology is introduced, such as “get it” for in-depth and/or visceral understanding; “racket” for repetitive, self-defeating behavior patterns; “possibility” for seeds of future potentiality embedded in the present; and “distinguishing” for identifying and highlighting a useful concept.

In my opinion, the centrality of language processing in the higher human brain layers is such that new terminology can, in fact, act as a lens leading to new modes of perception and consequent neurological change. Unfortunately, Landmark’s new terminology is both piecemeal and overused to the point of meaninglessness. For instance, “distinction” is used for any old concept. Taking the religiobiological stance, then, the promise offered by Landmark’s new terminology to correlate to neuroplastic events remains unfulfilled.

Practice. One way to apply the religiobiological stance is to start with known ways to affect neurophysiology and see if the phenomenon being examined might contain anything related. The single most well-known way to change your brain in a religiously meaningful way is some sort of sustained meditation, concentration, or mindfulness.

We see nothing even vaguely reminiscent of such a practice in Landmark, either done within the seminar or taught to participants to do on their own later. The only part of the Forum that has meditational tinges to it is a single exercise involving closing your eyes and experiencing fear. Adopting the religiobiological stance in looking at Landmark, then, we find no ongoing exercises of the type that could be expected to reliably result in structural changes in the brain.

We will continue this discussion in the next post.

The religiobiological stance is a framework for peering into phenomena that lie at the boundary of religion and biology, or are suspected to. This stance is at the heart of Numenware. The religiobiological stance is an approach which starts with the assumption that there are biological underpinnings to religious experience, and analyzes issues based on that assumption.

The analogy with Dennett’s “intentional stance” is, well, intentional. Like the intentional stance, the religiobiological stance is a mechanism designed to break through layers of relationships to see what a particular perspective yields.

Take issues as diverse as glossolalia (speaking in tongues), or the Landmark Forum, both arguably religious in nature. There is no direct evidence tying either to biological processes. So we address them from the religiobiological stance to see what light this casts on them.

Why not call this the “neurotheological stance”? For the same reason that “neurotheology” is a defective coinage. First, we know that the brain is an integral part of the body as a whole, and existing knowledge tells us that more than just the brain is involved in religious experience. So we need to widen the “neuro” to “bio”. Taken alone, this would yield the existing, alternative term “biotheology”.

But this term is also misleading. “Theology” is widely understood to refer to the study of a particular type of God. It is not a term that would generally be used in the context of native religions, for example, or even Buddhism. The more general term is “religion”. At least one etymology of “religion” is return to the divine, an arguably more general concept than “theology”. “Religion” does have overtones of organized religion and dogma and ceremony, but we will stipulate that we interpret this to explicitly include pesonal development and transcendant experience (until someone suggests a better word).

But why “religiobiology” instead of “bioreligion”? The latter, like “neurotheology”, would imply that religion or theology is at the heart of our field of study, that we are looking at a specialized subfield of religion. In other words, we start with theology or religion, then examine its biological aspects. In my view, however, that is backwards: we need to start with biology, and see what religoius phenomena it generates. If the terms were untangled, “bioreligion” would be “religion of biology”, whereas “religiobiology” would be “biology of religion”—which is clearly what we are interested in.

Of course, “neurotheology” is widely entrenched as the name for this field, and that terminology will not disappear. Over time, however, I hope we can shift towards “religiobiology”.

In future posts, I will apply the religiobiological stance to the two particular topics I mentioned, glossolalia and the Landmark Forum.

Carl Zimmer’s article on musical hallucinations in the July 12 New York Times, with the catchy title Neuron Network goes Awry, and Brain Becomes an iPod, was widely blogged.

Less widely noted was the fact that in this study of 30 cases the music heard was religious in a surprising two-thirds of the cases; that figure includes both hymns and Christmas songs. An astonishing 20% of the subjects (six people) reporting hearing the hymn Abide With Me.

Remember, these were old people; the average age was 78. In a lecture, Dr. Nick Warner, one of the authors of the original study, conjectured that death was on the mind of these oldsters and “Abide With Me” gave them comfort and hope.

I love that tune myself. I recall fondly singing it as a child on a sunny Sunday afternoon in the church my family attended, at the end of the service. No doubt that’s the song I too will be hallucinating when I get to that point.

The lyrics of this song have a nearly Buddhist sensibility, talking about emptiness and oneness, light and darkness, presenting a compelling analogy of the passing of one day to the passing of one life:

Swift to its close ebbs out life’s little day;
Earth’s joys grow dim; its glories pass away;
Change and decay in all around I see;
O Thou who changest not, abide with me.

Scientists have identified a brain-related gene which emerged in a place and time consistent with the historical Buddha, giving rise to the intriguing possibility that his enlightenment was aided by genetic factors.

The research was done by scientists at the Howard Hughes Medican Institute and is reported here. Or, you may prefer the New York Times version.

The gene in question, known as ASPM, is associated with brain size (this gene was identified due to its role in causing microcephaly—shrunken brains). Such a gene is of obvious interest, since increase in brain size is a hallmark of human evolution. The researchers had already done phylogenetic studies showing that these genes were more evolved in humans than in apes.

In the latest research, in a sample of humans from around the world, the scientists found unusually common groups of “haplotypes” (genetic variants), but also slight variants from those common haplotypes, indicating that their evolution was ongoing. This gave rise to the headlines in your local newspaper screaming “Evolution of Brain Continues!” Well, why would anyone have thought it had ever stopped?

The most intriguing part of the research was how it walks back in time, using the statistical characteristics of the genetic variations, to estimate when—and where (based on the geographically diverse group of subjects)—the current dominant form of the gene evolved. For ASPM, the conclusion was that that a new allele emerged 5,800 years ago. and occurs more frequently in in a band running east-to-west from the Mediterranean to India.

The scientists muse that 5,800 years ago was when writing emerged in those regions, and agriculture, and settlements, and wonder if a connection could exist there. I’m more interested in the uncanny match with the time and place of the historical Buddha.

If we believe that genetic changes and resulting changes in brain size or structure could predispose people to reaching transcendant states or making progress on religious paths, some interesting neurotheological conclusions could follow. We could in theory develop genetic tests to identify good candidates for spiritual training. We would want to reverse the trend for advanced practitioners to remove themselves from the gene pool by becoming celibate—perhaps a monks’ sperm bank could be set up. Most interestingly, we may have grounds for optimism that as humans and their brains continue to evolve, as long as we don’t kill ourselves first, evolution will eventually bring the race to a perfected neural state where everyone can enjoy divine grace.

In The Meditative Mind, a worthwhile tour of major meditative traditions, Daniel Goleman (picture, Wikipedia entry) quotes Joseph Goldstein, a teacher of insight meditation:

It’s simple mathematics: all meditation systems either aim for One or Zero—union with God or emptiness. The path to the One is through concentration on Him, to the Zero is insight into the voidness of one’s mind.

I’d like to do some brain scans to illuminate this simple division of styles. One would expect that One-based meditation would involve parts of the brain associated with identity and boundaries, the Zero-based style pattern-matching and categorization.

If any readers know of similar kinds of research, I’d love to know about it.

Stigmatics are people in whom the stigmata, the wounds inflicted on Jesus when he was crucified, are reproduced. Since the phenomenon first appeared in the Middle Ages, about 500 stigmatics have been reported.

What explains stigmatism? Is it Jesus reminding us through His messengers of the pain He suffered as He redeemed mankind? Is it a biological process tied to religious mentational activity—the biotheological phenomenon par excellence? Or is it simply fraud?

We know that emotions can cause skin eruptions. The medical term for this is psychogenic purpuras, bruising and bleeding from the skin from emotional stress. However, these look like bruises, or spots—not wounds. And the bleeding is subdural—under the skin.

There are substantial grounds for doubting supernatural explanations, besides the fact that some stigmatics themselves admitted they were frauds (such as Magdalena de la Cruz, 1487-1560). There is no video or other objective, scientific account of a stigmatic episode. It seems unusual that stigmatism would have emerged in the 1200s, right when there was an emphasis on the crucifixion, and then largely died out over the last few hundred years. Furthermore, stigmata appear in people’s palms, whereas it now seems likely that the actual wound was in Jesus’ wrist. Virtually all stigmatics are Roman Catholic.

Of course, there are reported aspects to stigmata that do not and probably could not have a scientific explanation, including the fact that they heal instantly, have no odor (or sometimes smell like perfume), bleed only on holy days, and even have a blood type different from the sufferer. If we want to adopt a non-supernatural explanation, we simply have to reject these reports as being pious falsehoods, as we would also reject reports of crying statues of the Virgin Mary.

What we do know is that self-mutilation and flagellation are associated with a variety of psychological disorders which in turn may involve religious manifestations. Cutting has been reported to be the most popular type of self-mutilation. Such disorders have been associated with eating disorders—which also appear in religious contexts, where they are sometimes hailed as miracles allowing saints to survive with no food intake. Both psychopathologies are much more common in females than males, which foots with the fact that 90% of known stigmatics have been female.

There are also reports of unusual mental activity during stigmatic episodes. Some stigmatics reportedly speak to visions of Christ and angels during their trials, and smell strange scents. Many female stigmatics were reported to be “ecstatics”—which apparently means they were in dissociative or schizoid episodes some or all of the time. Today, most of these girls would be on high doses of antipsychotics drugs.

The work of Ross and McKay on adolescent female self-mutilators, who carved themselves with words, letters, and symbols, is reminiscent of variant stigmata involving the names of Jesus and Mary appearing on the body. (St. Francis, an early stigmatic, also had unusual wounds: the skin formation on his palms is said to have actually replicated the shape of the head of the nail on the palm side and, on the reverse side, that of the shaft.)

Stepping back, the relationship between the corporeal and the divine is one of the most complex and profound in our psychosocial spaces. The physical body is our vehicle for experiencing the ultimate, and its gift to us. It is not surprising, that we would find intriguing phenomena at this boundary, or that world religions mark and celebrate it with ceremonies and rituals involving the body, including flagellation—not to mention circumcision.

Fakir Musafar is an artist who is exploring this realm in a non-religious context, the founder of the so-called Modern Primitive Movement, attempting to show that “deviant” self-mutilation is actually on the same spectrum as something as mundane as, say, nose-piercing. According to Musafar, “body play [as he calls it] offers a method for achieving spiritual grace, an enhanced state of awareness, and a communion with some form of higher power,” and “rituals involving self-mutilation practiced by other societies have many beneficial effects to offer those who approach the practice of body play with awareness and respect.”

Musafar says:

…we are doing more than just pushing steel needles through flesh. Something is happening in the emotional and psychic world of both the piercer and the piercee. It’s more than hanging rings there just for looks. In many cases, some of the people we pierce actually experience some kind of transformation. A self initiation. And these changes mean magic…as the people who have done this for thousands of years have discovered, it can be transmuted into ecstasy, bliss and other states of grace.

But most people would still distinguish esthetic body modifications from pathological self-mutilation, especially the type where significant damage is done to the body. The majority of such patients suffer from a psychotic disorder, and have their own “reasons” for engaging in the behavior, according to A. R. Favazza, who also notes that “the most common reasons provided by patients have historically been associated with religion, demonic influences, guilt over sexual thoughts and activities, or heavenly commands.”

Ian Wilson is the author of The bleeding mind: An investigation into the mysterious phenomenon of stigmata. He believes that stigmata are a manifestation of undiscovered abilities of the mind to influence the very shape and functioning of the human body, related to the ability to heal warts with your mind (or increase your breast size). According to a review on amazon.com, Wilson thinks the “phenomenon is a psychological one, with a pathology related closely to multiple personality disorder. Stress and poverty in early life are a common thread running through the lives of many stigmatists. Nearly all suffered some sort of personal catastrophe before the onset of the stigmata, and nearly all had a predisposition to trance states and other altered modes of consciousness. Aparently stigmatists identify so closely with the life of Christ and visualize Him so clearly that some undiscovered physiological mechanism imposes Christ’s marks of suffering on the body of the stigmatist.”

But undiscovered physiological mechanisms don’t have much explanatory power, do they. Although Numenware tries to maintain a studiously objective stance on such issues, my hypothesis is that stigmata are cases of self-multilation as part of psychotic states with religious fixations, and that the reports of unique bleeding or healing patterns are simply pious falsehoods. Unfortunately, with the last known stigmatic, Padre Pio (the newly sainted Italian priest) having died in 1968, any experimental design to validate this hypothesis will be limited to studying historical accounts.

Links:

Skeptic’s Dictionary
Catholic Encyclopedia
Wikipedia

You’ve got neurons all up and down your alimentary canal. They monitor digestion and track enzyme levels. They control peristalsis. They give you that tight feeling in your stomach when you’re scared. And they’re responsible for bringing back up that bad burrito you had.

This is the “enteric nervous system” (ENS), dubbed the second brain by Dr. Michael D. Gerson, author of the book by the same name. It’s the neural equivalent of the second steering wheel at the back of a fire truck. Consisting of hundreds of millions of neurons, it’s a miniature version of the brain in your head, embedded along your entire digestive tract from esophagus to anus.

One hundred years ago, Dr. Byron Robinson, an early ENS researcher, waxed poetic in his book “The Abdominal and Pelvic Brain”:

…in the abdomen there exists a brain of wonderful power maintaining eternal, restless vigilance over its viscera. It presides over organic life. It dominates the rhythmical function of viscera…it has the power of a brain…it is the center of life itself.

The study of this abdominal brain has important real-world applications. The ENS has been tied to migraine headaches, autism, Alzheimer’s, and even depression—although you’d probably be depressed too if you had irritable bowel syndrome. Understanding the intelligence in the gastrointestinal tract could be key to solving these stubborn medical riddles. For instance, in one study a thorough bowel cleansing resulted in notable improvement in children suffering from autism.

Then there are the rarer diseases such as the horrifying Chagas disease found in Mexico and South America, where a parasite crawls under your skin, triggering an autoimmune response which attacks the ENS, eventually leading the intestines to self-destruct.

What are the implications for those of us interested in biology and God? Will enemas help propel us to enlightenment? I hereby christen this field neurogastroenterotheology, after “neurogastroenterology”, the term for study of the abdominal brain itself.

Religion is intimately connected with the digestive system. For instance, the three major monotheistic religions all have a tradition of fasting. This is commonly interpreted as an pseudo-ascetic practice, but could the real point be to give your abdominal brain a rest? Catholicism also calls its holy days “feasts”, and of course has communion, although that probably wouldn’t be enough food to kick the ENS into gear.

Zen aficionados don’t meditate on a full stomach—the common wisdom being that that ensures your stomach isn’t stealing blood flow from your real brain. But perhaps there is a more direct connection to the state of absorption. After all, many biological theories of meditation hold that the samadhi-like state derives from understimulation (or overstimulation, depending on who you ask) or the parasympathetic nervous system, or balance between it and the sympathetic nervous system. Well, the ENS is often regarded as the third non-cerebral nervous system, after the sympathetic and parasympathetic, so maybe it is involved in the pattern of lowered stimulus in meditation. In addition, the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems are connected to the enteral nervous system; they are the pipeline over which it talks to the brain in our head, much like two networked computers, in one analogy.

Perhaps those Buddha statues with big fat stomachs are trying to tell us they had achieved intestinal satori. And the focus on the hara (stomach) in Zen is certainly no coincidence—except instead of focusing on it you can focus with it, now that you know it’s got a mind of its own.

Intriguingly, the digestive system is associated with temporal lobe epilepsy, which is in turn associated with religious-like behaviors such as thinking that you’re Jesus.

According to researchers:

Temporal lobe seizure activity usually arises in or involves the amygdala. It is not surprising, therefore, that patients who have seizures involving the temporal lobe have GI symptoms, since discharges arising in the amygdala can be transmitted to the gut via dense direct projections to the dorsal motor nucleus of the vagus. In addition, sympathetic pathways from the amygdala to the GI tract can be activated via the hypothalamus…there are direct sensory pathways from the bowel via the vagus nerve to the solitary nucleus of the medulla which is heavily connected to the amygdala. These can be activated during intestinal contractions.

Another researcher notes:

Another example of the abdominal connection in epilepsy is the aura which is common in certain types of epilepsy. For example, temporal lobe epileptic seizures frequently begin with an aura. In neurological terms, an aura is actually a mild seizure which precedes the primary seizure. It can be thought of as a warning that a seizure is about to happen. Most often, auras manifest as an altered consciousness or peculiar sensation. The most common aura is of vague gastric distress, ascending up into the chest.

All this is quite circumstantial, so we’ll have to add ENS-related topics to our program for neurotheology research. A better understanding of our gastro-brain might allow us to revise the meditation instructions Dogen gave us in Fukanzazengi for the first time in 750 years.

Are high altitudes conducive to revelations and other spiritual experiences, and if so, why? That’s the topic of a recent article in Medical Hypotheses by Swiss and Israeli neuroscientists.

According to the authors, mountaineers have described the experience of feeling or hearing presences, autoscopic phenomenon (seeing an image of yourself externally), hallucinations, and other manifestations, especially when alone on the mountain.

Why? The authors note that “brain areas such as the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex have been suggested to be altered in altitude. Moreover, acute and chronic hypoxia significantly affect the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex and both areas have also been linked to altered own body perceptions and mystical experiences”.

It may not just be the thin air up there; it could also be the climb. The authors point to research that “stressful events, physically and emotionally, while climbing mountains, cause release
of endorphins, which are known to lower the threshold for temporal lobe epilepsy, which, in turn, may evoke revelation-like experiences”.

There is no new research here, just ideas. But these ideas lead to some fairly straightforward experimental designs—researching the results of meditating in a hyperbaric chamber immediately comes to mind.

Alien visitations, odd as they are, have something in common with religion: people believe in them. Why do people have the belief they were abducted by aliens? How do those beliefs relate to beliefs they or other people have about anything, including God? If we understood the neurological mechanisms underlying why people believe they were abducted by aliens could we understand why they believe in other things, including God?

Today the New York Times published an article entitled Explaining Those Vivid Memories of Martian Kidnappers, talking about the forthcoming book Abducted: How People Come to Believe They Were Kidnapped by Aliens by Susan A. Clancy. According to the cover blurb, “Clancy argues that abductees are sane and intelligent people who have unwittingly created vivid false memories from a mélange of nightmares, culturally available texts, and a powerful drive for meaning that science is unable to satisfy. This book is not only a subtle exploration of the workings of memory, but a sensitive inquiry into the nature of belief.”

The Times comments: “Although it focuses on abduction memories, the book hints at a larger ambition, to explain the psychology of transformative experiences, whether supposed abductions, conversions or divine visitations.”

Unfortunately, Clancy failed to gather information about the “abductees” religious lives, but now realizes this was a mistake. As the Times notes: “The warmth, awe and emotion of abduction stories and of those who tell them betray strong spiritual currents that will be familiar to millions of people whose internal lives are animated by religious imagery.”

Coming soon to a mobile phone near you: ringtones that enhance brain functioning.

TOS (website), an ultra-cool Japanese company rolling out mobile lifestyle technology, has added Kiseki-no Chaku-uta (Wondrous Ringtones) to its well-known “Maho no Melo-land” (Magic Melody Land) library of ring-tones.

These ring-tones are specially designed by Dr. Hideto Tomabechi (picture), a Japanese with a Yale Ph.D who later studied machine translation and has now morphed into an all-round very digital guy (see his Japanese-language blog).

Unfortunately, we’re left with few details about the new brain-altering ringtones, other than the vague

Specified programs were used to create these sound tracks with several psychological experimental results of Dr. Tomabechi. It is programmed to get the expected effect by listening to those sounds over and over everyday.

If we complete our theory of neurotheology, then we will definitely publish ringtones which make you feel closer to God every time you hear them.