Issue link: http://cp.revolio.com/i/2624
46 Fall 2009 quiet alertness — is also hugely beneficial. One of our ideas, that's a little outside the norm, is that yawning — doing it consciously — can wake the brain up. This may happen because air taken in during a yawn cools the brain, but yawning seems also to be some kind of social signal so it wakes up the part of the brain that handles our social networks and this too can have a positive benefit. h+: You're the only neuroscientist to study speaking in tongues. What did you discover? AN: The most interesting thing we discovered is that unlike almost every other spiritual practice we studied so far, glossolalia is associated with decreased activity in the frontal lobes. This is the exact opposite of meditation. The frontal lobes help focus the mind, but people who experience speaking-in-tongues talk about giving themselves up to the experience, surrendering to it, and that's what we're seeing in the brain as well. h+: In your earlier book, Why You Believe What You Believe, you look at the underpinnings of, well, belief. So how do you explain it? AN: The brain is trapped within itself. So we never really know what is really going on out there. But to live we need to make all sorts of assumptions about the nature of reality just to govern behavior. The assumptions themselves arise from our perceptions, our cognitive processes, our emotions and our social interactions. They all mingle within the brain to become the beliefs we'll use to navigate through our lives and our world. We desperately need these beliefs to survive, but they are actually very tenuous and often built out of inaccurate or incomplete information. We really need to take a deeper look at this, at all of the beliefs we hold — beliefs about religion, morality, politics, social interactions — and determine where they come from and how limited they actually are. h+: You've looked deeply into the relationship between health and religion. What have you learned? AN: That there's a strong association on many levels. Not that this should be too surprising. There's now a whole body of work that shows that some forms of spiritual practice can have powerful health effects. There are studies that show religious people have less depression, lower levels of anxiety, better health outcomes, lower disease risk — the list goes on. The real problem is teasing apart the data. We know that social interaction — which you get from going to temple or church — can impact one's health. We also know that if you go to a church that tells you not to drink or smoke or have multiple sexual partners, obviously, if you follow those dictates, that's going to also impact one's health. Others have found the same thing is true for prayer and meditation. And then there's the power of the beliefs themselves. So the real question is which of these things is having the biggest impact. But even before we get to that answer — which may be a ways off — we already know that religion has huge health consequences and those should really be taken into account when we think about things like national health care. After all, many people turn to religion to help cope with a variety of health and life problems. h+: You've also worked on the neuroscience of forgiveness. How does that work and how does that — in lieu of the turn-the-other cheek-isms in so many religions — effect our spirituality? The brain is trapped within itself. So we never really know what is really going on out there.