During the last few years there has a been a spate of articles about the “God Spot.” Like the G-spot we discussed last time, it is also controversial. It is so controversial that scientists, journalists, believers and skeptics are keeping the printing industry afloat with their arguments and counter-arguments about it. The God Spot refers to a singular location within the human brain that is responsible for a belief in and contact with “God.”
Scientists have been using functional MRIs (fMRI) to pinpoint any location that is active during mystical experiences and quiet otherwise. Atheists believe locating one would settle once and for all that belief in a supreme being “is all in your head,” while religious leaders of all sorts already have ready their arguments to the contrary: God made that head, so of course he would put a place in it for Himself.
In addition to passively monitoring what's happening inside subjects' heads while they think of certain things, some researchers have flipped it around. They actively stimulate selective regions of the brain and get reports of what happens in the subjects' minds at that moment. Michael Persinger, a professor at Laurentian University in Ontario, has made it easy on himself by producing the God Helmet, which has all the appropriate technology already installed and ready to go once a person puts it on.
Persinger, the scientist doing some of the best known research of this type, claims that 80% of the time he can create certain types of “mystical” experiences in subjects with electrical stimulation using his helmet. (Based on my calculations after reading reports from five different journalists—an admittedly teeny-tiny sample size—either journalists are an extremely hard-headed bunch or Persinger's math skills are worse than mine.)
In any case, it turns out the fMRIs show that no single spot lights up during those special moments with God. Lights flash in several places in the brain, with a few spots giving particularly brilliant light shows. And those extra shiny spots differ based more on the method the person is using to contact God than which god they are friends with.
For instance, praying lights up (primarily) the frontal lobes, as does meditation, regardless of the religious tradition of the person praying or meditating. But when meditating, the brain's parietal lobes also go dark. The frontal lobes are associated with concentration, while the parietal lobes are associated with one's sense of self and personal boundaries. So while both the meditators and the prayers were concentrating, the meditators were also losing themselves in the Oneness of the Universe.
There's a long-acknowledged connection between mystical states and epilepsy. Some of the most famous mystics would have ecstatic visions during epileptic seizures. The MRIs have found activity in the same brain structures for both. Some of them are the same mystics (remember St. Teresa of Avila from a previous column?) that refer to God in very erotic ways.
And this is where it gets particularly interesting. One of the light patterns reported during a mystic state looks a lot like the MRI of a woman having an orgasm. Yep, some mystic states create the same brain activity configuration that orgasm does. “Oh, God!” indeed.
The men were not left out of this description accidentally or through malice. It's just that it's much easier to track the brain activity of women having orgasms than of men, because it takes about two minutes to get a reading. They are probably already trying to figure out how to prolong the male orgasm so they can include men - for the purposes of scientific rigor, of course. (Note to Obama: Four out of five fighter pilots will be delighted for you to use a minuscule part of the Pentagon's budget to fund this research.) But I digress.
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