WEBVTT 00:00:10.160 --> 00:00:12.959 This is your brain on God. 00:00:12.959 --> 00:00:14.359 (Laughter) 00:00:15.519 --> 00:00:18.720 As a graduate student here at the University of Utah, 00:00:18.720 --> 00:00:22.870 my team and I had the opportunity to look inside the brains 00:00:23.282 --> 00:00:26.860 of believing Latter-day Saints, also known as Mormons, 00:00:26.860 --> 00:00:29.790 when they were praying, reading scriptures 00:00:30.413 --> 00:00:33.930 and watching videos of the religious leaders' teaching. 00:00:34.948 --> 00:00:39.420 Being based in Salt Lake City, Utah, Mormons are not in short supply. 00:00:39.420 --> 00:00:40.940 (Laughter) 00:00:40.940 --> 00:00:45.320 We recruited through the Deseret News, the LDS Church-owned newspaper, 00:00:45.739 --> 00:00:48.448 and invited devout members of the religious community 00:00:48.448 --> 00:00:51.584 to participate in psychometric testing 00:00:51.584 --> 00:00:54.596 and functional magnetic resonance imaging, 00:00:54.600 --> 00:00:56.214 or fMRI. 00:00:57.949 --> 00:01:01.168 fMRI is a wonderful scientific tool. 00:01:01.668 --> 00:01:06.290 It allows us to measure tiny fluctuations in oxygenated blood flow 00:01:06.603 --> 00:01:09.610 that correspond to neural changes in activity. 00:01:11.040 --> 00:01:13.646 While our participants were inside of the scanner, 00:01:13.982 --> 00:01:16.370 they had a button box attached to their chest 00:01:16.751 --> 00:01:20.930 so that they could press a button and indicate to us in real-time 00:01:20.950 --> 00:01:23.571 when they were feeling the Spirit. 00:01:24.170 --> 00:01:25.987 It's a cultural phenomenon 00:01:25.994 --> 00:01:28.920 that's a central, epistemological event 00:01:28.920 --> 00:01:32.590 significant to the truth claims of the Mormon religion. 00:01:34.679 --> 00:01:38.970 What we observed was that across all task conditions, 00:01:39.280 --> 00:01:41.214 the three areas of the brain 00:01:41.214 --> 00:01:44.599 that consistently demonstrated elevated activity 00:01:45.779 --> 00:01:48.193 were the frontal attention regions, 00:01:49.380 --> 00:01:51.684 the medial prefrontal cortex 00:01:53.031 --> 00:01:54.689 and the nucleus accumbens - 00:01:54.983 --> 00:01:56.444 an area of the brain 00:01:56.444 --> 00:02:00.570 with an enriched supply of the reward molecule, dopamine. 00:02:02.390 --> 00:02:06.147 Far from just being a high tech blobology, 00:02:06.636 --> 00:02:11.559 this Trinity of neural regions sketches what we can reasonably label 00:02:11.559 --> 00:02:15.230 as the neuro spiritual system of Mormonism. 00:02:16.120 --> 00:02:21.450 The implications are profound, both for culture and for the brain. 00:02:22.870 --> 00:02:25.950 One of the first questions that comes to mind for me is, 00:02:25.950 --> 00:02:29.080 "Does this neuro spiritual system from Mormonism 00:02:29.386 --> 00:02:33.340 map into the brains of religious individuals from other faith traditions 00:02:33.420 --> 00:02:37.706 when they are having peak, ecstatic religious experiences?" 00:02:38.917 --> 00:02:41.885 So many of the world's spiritual traditions 00:02:41.885 --> 00:02:46.950 report profound feelings of oneness with a transcendent source, 00:02:47.420 --> 00:02:51.260 often accompanied by an increased charitable disposition. 00:02:52.647 --> 00:02:56.100 Could it be that these cultural variations 00:02:56.100 --> 00:02:59.729 are all being supported by a common core of brain networks? 00:03:01.160 --> 00:03:05.045 For the first time in the history of contemplative philosophy 00:03:05.045 --> 00:03:06.920 and the sciences of the mind, 00:03:07.248 --> 00:03:12.920 we can answer these questions empirically by skillfully measuring brain activity 00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:18.230 with more temporal and spatial precision than we've ever been able to do 00:03:18.250 --> 00:03:21.402 even in the recent past of neuroscience. 00:03:21.900 --> 00:03:24.680 This is an exciting time to be a brain researcher. 00:03:25.430 --> 00:03:28.084 Let's talk about the word "God" for a moment. 00:03:28.760 --> 00:03:31.956 It's a simple three-letter word in English, 00:03:32.340 --> 00:03:37.609 yet this one word is so powerful, linguistically and psychologically, 00:03:37.950 --> 00:03:41.010 that it is used to invoke military courage, 00:03:41.380 --> 00:03:44.070 to promote feelings of nationalism, 00:03:44.610 --> 00:03:48.890 and even to justify war and atrocity. 00:03:50.250 --> 00:03:55.240 The hypothetical omission of this one word by a president of the United States, 00:03:55.360 --> 00:03:59.753 the failure to simply say "God bless America," 00:04:00.137 --> 00:04:03.980 would likely cause their public approval ratings to plummet. 00:04:05.180 --> 00:04:07.369 Whatever your metaphysical beliefs are, 00:04:07.369 --> 00:04:13.360 the literal fact is that the trajectories of lives and nations 00:04:13.360 --> 00:04:16.102 swing on the hinge of this one word: 00:04:17.070 --> 00:04:18.400 "God." 00:04:20.220 --> 00:04:24.359 To think about God, either through construction or negation, 00:04:25.350 --> 00:04:27.790 you have to deploy abstract reasoning. 00:04:28.450 --> 00:04:31.410 The very principles that are intrinsically bound up 00:04:31.410 --> 00:04:34.847 in any conceivable definition of the word "God" 00:04:35.151 --> 00:04:38.800 include elements of mystery and unknowing. 00:04:39.580 --> 00:04:42.581 These very types of abstract principles 00:04:42.587 --> 00:04:47.330 are precisely what land us in the prefrontal cortex of the brain. 00:04:48.040 --> 00:04:51.013 I have to step back and think about this sometimes, 00:04:51.016 --> 00:04:54.260 that we have inside the bones of our head 00:04:54.613 --> 00:04:56.863 an electrical piece of meat 00:04:57.210 --> 00:04:58.903 (Laughter) 00:04:59.256 --> 00:05:03.520 that's generating abstract ideas about divine nature. 00:05:06.792 --> 00:05:10.882 The nucleus accumbens is located a little bit lower in the brain, 00:05:10.883 --> 00:05:12.965 in a region called the subcortex. 00:05:13.785 --> 00:05:17.400 The subcortex is more ancient than the prefrontal cortex 00:05:17.450 --> 00:05:21.510 in terms of the evolutionary time spans for its development. 00:05:22.060 --> 00:05:25.480 The nucleus accumbens is the brains' pleasure center. 00:05:26.060 --> 00:05:30.425 It helps positively reinforce environments and behaviors 00:05:30.642 --> 00:05:32.010 that are rewarding to you 00:05:32.030 --> 00:05:34.150 and that are beneficial to you. 00:05:35.000 --> 00:05:38.150 I have to smile when I think about how in the New Testament, 00:05:38.610 --> 00:05:41.020 when Jesus describes heavenly rewards, 00:05:41.783 --> 00:05:47.450 we are illuminating the biological embodiment of these ancient metaphors. 00:05:49.290 --> 00:05:53.690 When our study participants were instructed to think about a savior, 00:05:54.387 --> 00:05:57.370 about being with their families for eternity, 00:05:58.000 --> 00:06:02.175 in short, when they were thinking about their heavenly rewards 00:06:02.175 --> 00:06:03.816 as they imagined them, 00:06:03.825 --> 00:06:07.795 the brains and their bodies physically respond. 00:06:09.805 --> 00:06:13.380 A classic hymn in the religious movement of Joseph Smith 00:06:13.400 --> 00:06:16.935 describes the Spirit of God like a fire burning. 00:06:17.419 --> 00:06:19.362 If you haven't ever felt it before, 00:06:19.365 --> 00:06:21.918 it's actually a wonderful warm glow. 00:06:21.918 --> 00:06:24.960 It makes you want to do good and be good. 00:06:25.846 --> 00:06:27.071 It may be the emotion 00:06:27.075 --> 00:06:31.925 that moral psychologist Jonathan Hite refers to as elevation. 00:06:34.785 --> 00:06:36.451 The frontal attention regions 00:06:36.451 --> 00:06:39.870 are probably acting in concert with the nucleus accumbens 00:06:39.870 --> 00:06:44.979 in order to amplify the phenomenal content of this religious experience. 00:06:45.029 --> 00:06:48.309 This so is an area where we will continue to do extended research 00:06:48.747 --> 00:06:52.379 in order to better understand the dynamics of this neural system 00:06:52.798 --> 00:06:55.559 as it interacts with religious psychology. 00:06:59.169 --> 00:07:03.221 In addition to the biology that supports ecstatic religious experience, 00:07:03.234 --> 00:07:04.471 we were also curious 00:07:04.474 --> 00:07:08.839 about how social behavior is influenced by the brain on God. 00:07:10.209 --> 00:07:14.571 One possibility that we considered is that perhaps our study participants 00:07:14.577 --> 00:07:18.364 would demonstrate an in-group authority bias 00:07:18.364 --> 00:07:19.770 if they were asked to compare 00:07:19.770 --> 00:07:22.599 the teachings of their own religious leaders 00:07:22.599 --> 00:07:25.449 with the teachings from other faith traditions. 00:07:26.289 --> 00:07:28.701 We designed a spiritual quotation's task 00:07:29.239 --> 00:07:32.749 in which participants were presented with a spiritual teaching, 00:07:33.019 --> 00:07:34.371 and next to it, 00:07:34.371 --> 00:07:36.904 with a picture of the person who made the statement. 00:07:37.509 --> 00:07:40.929 They were then asked to rate how meaningful the teaching was 00:07:41.499 --> 00:07:46.669 and also how strongly they felt the Spirit in response to that teaching. 00:07:48.722 --> 00:07:50.634 Sources for these teachings 00:07:50.634 --> 00:07:53.635 were either from an in-group religious authority figure, 00:07:53.932 --> 00:07:57.299 in the case of our study, those included two Mormon apostles, 00:07:57.756 --> 00:08:00.279 Diederich Dorf and Jeffrey Holland, 00:08:00.507 --> 00:08:03.359 and the president of the LDS Church at the time of the study, 00:08:03.359 --> 00:08:04.877 Thomas Monson. 00:08:06.334 --> 00:08:07.873 The out-group religious figures 00:08:07.874 --> 00:08:13.119 included Pope Francis, Desmond Tutu and Billy Graham, 00:08:13.489 --> 00:08:16.474 three non-Mormon Christian leaders. 00:08:17.294 --> 00:08:19.329 Because this was an experiment though, 00:08:19.839 --> 00:08:22.109 we threw in a little bit of a twist. 00:08:22.439 --> 00:08:26.819 It turns out that none of the teachings were from their attributed sources. 00:08:26.819 --> 00:08:27.969 (Laughter) 00:08:30.049 --> 00:08:33.854 We collected quotations from the writings of C.S. Lewis. 00:08:33.854 --> 00:08:36.610 (Laughter) (Cheers) 00:08:41.060 --> 00:08:45.210 He's sometimes referred to in Mormonism as a 13th apostle. 00:08:46.530 --> 00:08:50.342 We randomized these teachings across all of the trials. 00:08:50.640 --> 00:08:53.820 And we asked the participants to rank how meaningful they were, 00:08:53.820 --> 00:08:55.875 how strongly they felt the Spirit, 00:08:55.875 --> 00:08:58.767 and what we saw was so beautiful 00:08:58.767 --> 00:09:01.559 from the point of view of cognitive science. 00:09:02.569 --> 00:09:07.241 Believing Mormons consistently ranked the teachings of their own leaders 00:09:07.600 --> 00:09:11.070 as more meaningful and as more spiritually evocative 00:09:11.448 --> 00:09:13.971 than the teachings of out-group authority figures 00:09:14.189 --> 00:09:17.700 even though in reality, they were all from the same source. 00:09:20.021 --> 00:09:21.375 To further explore the way 00:09:21.375 --> 00:09:24.950 that social behavior is influenced by the brain on God, 00:09:24.950 --> 00:09:28.450 we had our participants complete this task twice: 00:09:28.450 --> 00:09:30.920 once at the beginning of their study session, 00:09:30.940 --> 00:09:34.640 and a second time, following a 30-minute period of prayer, 00:09:34.909 --> 00:09:37.650 of scripture study and of religious devotion. 00:09:39.050 --> 00:09:41.866 This now is the audience-participation moment. 00:09:41.866 --> 00:09:43.325 It's always fun to see 00:09:43.325 --> 00:09:48.610 what people guess the effects of feeling the Spirit are on social judgments. 00:09:49.377 --> 00:09:50.805 So, option number one 00:09:50.805 --> 00:09:54.110 is that after a 30-minute period of prayer and scripture study 00:09:54.120 --> 00:09:58.610 that our participants became more biased against out-group authority figures. 00:09:58.690 --> 00:10:02.860 Option two is that they became less biased and more generous. 00:10:03.350 --> 00:10:08.710 And option three is that we saw no changes in the behavior that we were observing. 00:10:09.480 --> 00:10:11.400 Now I want everybody to be really brave. 00:10:11.400 --> 00:10:12.850 (Laughter) 00:10:13.548 --> 00:10:15.925 Who thinks that option number one 00:10:15.925 --> 00:10:17.590 was what we saw? 00:10:18.470 --> 00:10:19.859 Okay. 00:10:20.510 --> 00:10:25.590 Who thinks that option number two, a decrease in the bias, is what we saw? 00:10:26.820 --> 00:10:28.590 Who thinks that option number three, 00:10:28.590 --> 00:10:32.450 held case that there was no change in the behavior we observed? 00:10:33.410 --> 00:10:34.777 And how about option four, 00:10:34.777 --> 00:10:38.495 which is that you're too nervous to make a guess about religion publicly? 00:10:38.495 --> 00:10:40.040 (Laughter) 00:10:42.267 --> 00:10:48.110 What we saw is that after a 30-minute period of personal spiritual practice, 00:10:48.410 --> 00:10:53.420 our study participants became more generous to the out-group. 00:10:54.509 --> 00:10:56.949 They arranged their teachings as more meaningful 00:10:56.949 --> 00:11:00.379 and reported to feel the Spirit more strongly from them 00:11:00.440 --> 00:11:03.548 than they had at the beginning of the study session. 00:11:03.906 --> 00:11:06.200 There are several possible mechanisms 00:11:06.230 --> 00:11:08.871 that could be driving the behaviors that we observe. 00:11:08.914 --> 00:11:10.699 It's very likely, for example, 00:11:10.705 --> 00:11:13.960 that principals from the psychology of attachment theory 00:11:15.049 --> 00:11:17.708 are participating in this authority bias. 00:11:18.529 --> 00:11:22.769 There are also elements of classical conditioning that might be at play here. 00:11:23.500 --> 00:11:25.439 Biologically speaking, 00:11:25.439 --> 00:11:27.906 when dopamine is released through the brain, 00:11:27.911 --> 00:11:31.590 it may be driving an increase in social openness. 00:11:32.780 --> 00:11:35.449 As is most often the case in science, 00:11:35.449 --> 00:11:38.814 the full story likely requires a complex map 00:11:39.079 --> 00:11:41.609 with multiple layers of explanation. 00:11:44.910 --> 00:11:46.445 Religion, in my mind, 00:11:46.446 --> 00:11:49.924 shows a lot of similar features with sex. 00:11:51.009 --> 00:11:53.280 The majority of adults do it, 00:11:53.580 --> 00:11:57.220 they say that it brings meaning and pleasure into their lives, 00:11:57.620 --> 00:12:01.950 and in spite of strident advocates for abstinence only, 00:12:02.480 --> 00:12:04.135 people are going to do it. 00:12:04.135 --> 00:12:05.740 (Laughter) 00:12:05.740 --> 00:12:09.290 No matter how many people say, "Never be sexual," 00:12:09.290 --> 00:12:11.519 humans will be sexual. 00:12:11.839 --> 00:12:14.890 No matter how many people say, "Never be religious," 00:12:15.290 --> 00:12:17.030 humans will be religious. 00:12:17.090 --> 00:12:22.350 These are behaviors that spring from deep evolutionary needs. 00:12:23.030 --> 00:12:26.945 What I advocate is not for science to focus its editorializing 00:12:26.945 --> 00:12:30.170 on the eradication of religious behavior, 00:12:30.170 --> 00:12:32.559 but rather, like safe sex, 00:12:32.987 --> 00:12:39.969 on evidence-based best practices for how we can do religion safely and well. 00:12:39.969 --> 00:12:42.289 (Cheers) (Applause) 00:12:48.989 --> 00:12:54.360 Imagine a renewed partnership between the seminary and the academy 00:12:54.870 --> 00:12:58.230 to articulate intelligent safe theology. 00:12:58.230 --> 00:13:01.489 It could do a lot of good in a world that needs it. 00:13:02.839 --> 00:13:07.220 We live in an exciting day of rapidly accelerating discovery. 00:13:07.700 --> 00:13:13.100 What that means is the formation of radically disruptive ideas. 00:13:14.170 --> 00:13:19.010 Interdisciplinary and convergent work are exponentially driving the pace 00:13:19.059 --> 00:13:22.114 of our expanded self-understanding. 00:13:22.994 --> 00:13:25.433 The hope that I would like to convey to you 00:13:25.433 --> 00:13:28.133 is that by launching into a new era 00:13:28.133 --> 00:13:32.960 of religious studies that incorporate the best tools of our scientific methods, 00:13:33.302 --> 00:13:37.850 we may win the capacity to further enlighten our respective cultures 00:13:37.850 --> 00:13:42.834 and to refine our religious traditions in ways that make them more worthy 00:13:42.834 --> 00:13:46.406 of the divine nature that they claim to represent. 00:13:46.990 --> 00:13:49.520 This is your brain on God. 00:13:50.530 --> 00:13:52.114 Any questions? 00:13:52.465 --> 00:13:54.530 (Applause) 00:13:58.581 --> 00:14:00.021 Thank you.