Born agian experience shrink the brain?

[science4ever]

How does one know if this is real science or not?

http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0017006

Religious Factors and Hippocampal Atrophy in Late Life

• Amy D. Owen, R. David Hayward Harold G. Koenig, David C. Steffens, Martha E. Payne

 

Religious factors assessed included life-changing religious experiences, spiritual practices, and religious group membership.

...

Significantly greater hippocampal atrophy was also observed from baseline to final assessment among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again.

 

Will be interesting to see if it can be replicated.

Edited July 29, 2013 by science4ever

[imatfaal]

Interesting and not a little controversial.

 

PLOS One is a reputable journal that has expert peer review and an internationally recognized editorial board - they don't tend to publish out and out rubbish; although like a paper in any journal, one experiment does not prove a theory.

 

I have not read the paper yet - but issues of causation seem at the fore. Firstly that old hackneyed phrase that correlation does not prove causation.

 

And secondly in this case you could even have a reversal of cause and effect - you titled the post in a way that suggests that being born again leads to a certain physical outcome. i would think it is equally plausible that a certain physiological condition leads to a proclivity to embracing reformational religion.

 

Initially the hippocampus was thought to be involved with inhibition - and this would make a nice tie-in with becoming born-again; however, the current thinking is more to do with spatial awareness and proprioception

Sci - Am have an article on it http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=religious-experiences-shrink-part-of-brain

 

having read the paper on plos one (hooray for open access) - seems to a layman to be well constructed, honest, and without doubt "real science"; could still be completely wrong though! Curious that no religion was the second highest level of hippocampal atrophy. The authors seem very well aware of the connexions between stress levels and hippocampal atrophy - but I am unsure quite how well they have controlled for it

[science4ever]

will be interesting if some other group get funding to confirm it

or to challenge it. I can think of that big churches would want to

show that it is the other way around. the more zealous the better brain

 

Yes sorry about the title being confusing. as you say correlation ...

 

So could it be that those that fall for letting them be born again have

some vulnerability to be easily persuaded and that that correlate then?

 

Would be cool if they look at mindfulness meditation. Would not such

have a heavy impact too. Jus tme wildly speculating obviously.

 

I find the tpoic of religious faith very interesting so what I hope

is that science one day can explain exactly what is going on.

 

Religious faith reminds me of a typical human tendency to see oneself

in a brighter color than what others do. Many do think they are good at

things that if tested would show them are average or low on such things.

 

That kind if blindness or at least bias could be one way that religious faith works.

 

My God is real whíle your god is a false non-existing made up god. As an atheist

I even see such tendencies in that many atheists dismiss agnostics very easily.