The God Module and the Role of Spirituality in Recovery

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The God Module and the Role of Spirituality in
Recovery

• Cardwell C. Nuckols, MA, PhD
• cnuckols_at_elitecorp.org

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The God Module

• The God Module refers to an area of the brain
  that is hard wired for spiritual experiences.
  It does not prove the existence of God.

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GOD IS DEAD--NietzcheNIETZCHE IS
DEAD--God
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John Lennon

• Christianity will go. It
• will vanish and shrink.
• I neednt argue about
• that. Im right and will
• be proven right.
• Were more popular
• than Jesus Christ right
• now!

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Jay North

• This God-is-Dead
• premise seems to
• me merely a fad
• religion will live
• through it.

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One must say truly, I think, that
personal religious experience has its roots and
center in mythical states of consciousness.Willi
am James
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Spirituality is one of our basic human
inheritances. It is, in fact, an instinct.
(Dean Hamer,2004)
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Consciousness is personal. It is yours and
yours alone. You can describe it to others but
the sights and feelings themselves are not
transferable. William James
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Overview

• Spirituality and Healing
• Brain and Spirituality
• Central Arguments for the God Gene

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Spirituality and Healing

• Beliefs of Our Clients
• Beliefs of Medical Professionals
• Spirituality and Recovery

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Beliefs Of Our Clients

• Over 90 of Americans believe in God
• 57 engage in daily prayer
• 42 attended church in the last week
• 80 believed that religious faith can aid in
  recovery from illness

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Beliefs Of Our Clients

• 63 agreed that doctors should talk to them about
  spiritual issues (McNichol, 1996)

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Beliefs of Medical Professionals

• According to Alcohol Medical Scholars Program,
  Spirituality in Substance abuse/Dependence
  Treatment, Marianne Guschwan, MD
• Most psychiatrists do not believe in God
• Nurses and medical students in one survey ranked
  spirituality as a low consideration of patients
  treated on a dual-disorder unit

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Beliefs of Medical Professionals

• Guschwan continued
• However, the patients ranked spirituality and
  belief in God as most important to their
  recovery-Interesting incongruence!

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Spirituality And Recovery

• 2 major reviews of the literature
• National Institute for Healthcare Review (1996)
• Good evidence that involvement in AA is
  associated with enhanced outcomes in both
  inpatient and outpatient care
• NIAAA and Fetzer Institute (1999)
• Strong support for the protective nature of
  spirituality and religion (110 studies) of AA
  involvement (51 studies) and spiritual/religious
  intervention (26 studies)

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Spirituality and Recovery

• Spirituality refers to the unique and intense
  experience of a reality greater than oneself or
  an experience of connection with the totality of
  things. Religion is an organized social structure
  in which spiritual experiences are shared,
  ritualized and passed on to future generations

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Spirituality and Recovery

• An individual does not have to be religious in
  order to have a spiritual experience. The
  benefits of spirituality include humility, inner
  strength, sense of meaning and purpose in life,
  acceptance of self and others, sense of harmony
  and serenity, gratitude and forgiveness.

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Humility, Harmony, Serenity

• Humility
• Not driven by foolish pride but able to admit our
  weaknesses and ask for help when needed
• Harmony
• Not being all alone but being a part of a greater
  whole
• Serenity
• Not living a life of self-imposed stress but
  living in a fair and tranquil fashion

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A Meaningful, Spiritual Life

• An Engaged Life
• Find people and things that turn you on
• A Meaningful Life
• Establish a relationship with a Higher Power
• An Exercise
• Think about someone who gave you good advice and
  helped you get through a tough time
• Write a 300 word testimonial
• Read it to the individual

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Brain and Spirituality

• Daniel Amen, MD
• Is the brain hardwired for spiritual experiences?
• Vilayanur Ramachandran, MD
• Seizure-like experiences
• Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

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Daniel Amen MD, 2002

• .. when the brain is healthy we are
  compassionate, thoughtful, loving, relaxed , and
  goal directed, and when the brain is sick or
  damaged we are unfeeling, impulsive, angry,
  tense, and unfocused, and it is very hard for our
  souls and our relationship with God to be at
  peace.

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Is the Brain Hard-Wired For Spiritual Experiences?

• God Module (Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran, 1997)
• Innate instinct to believe in God or Higher
  Power.
• Circuit of nerves in the temporal lobe became
  active when patients with history of temporal
  lobe epilepsy and profound spiritual experiences
  thought about God

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Is the Brain Hard-Wired For Spiritual Experiences?

• When testing deeply religious persons without a
  history of temporal lobe epilepsy, the same area
  of the brain became activated.

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Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

• Persons with a history of temporal lobe epilepsy
  often report spiritual experiences
• Dostoevsky
• Muhammad
• Apostle Paul
• Joan of Arc

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Muhammad

• Seizure-like experiences
• Flashing lights
• Heard voices of the angels Gabriel and Allah
• Fits of trembling, profuse sweating and bodily
  pain
• Lifelong pattern of out-ofthe body experiences

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Apostle Paul

• Luke reported Paul had
• bodily weaknesses
• Saw flashes of light, fell
• down, saw Christ and was
• blind for several days
• Paul reported a pattern of visions and
  revelations

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Joan of Arc

• I heard this Voice to my right rarely do I hear
  it without its being accompanied by a light.

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Temporal Lobe Epilepsy

• Auditory hallucinations
• Visual hallucinations
• Loss of balance
• Strong emotional content
• Occasional blindness

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Central Arguments Regarding A God Gene

• Sense of Self
• Self-transcendence
• Consciousness
• Sense of self and the world around us
• Monoamines and VMAT2
• Polymorphism of gene VMAT2
• Spiritual allele

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Sense of Self

• Abraham Maslow
• Self-actualizers
• Roger Cloninger
• Self-transcendence scale
• Andrew Newberg
• SPECT scans
• Todd Murphy
• Visitor Experience

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Abraham Maslow

• Avowed atheist
• One of first modern psychologists to tackle the
  problem of separating spirituality from religion
• Self-actualizers shared a common feature of
  periodic spiritual experiences

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Roger Cloninger

• Tried to quantify spirituality
• Self-transcendence Scale
• Self-Forgetfulness
• Transpersonal Identification
• Mysticism

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Self-Forgetfulness

• Do you ever get so involved in your work that you
  forget where you are or what time it is?
• Do you sometimes feel like you are in the zone?
  ..a flow state?
• Spiritual people tend to have these experiences
  more frequently

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Transpersonal Identification

• Do you feel a sense of unity with things around
  you?
• Would you risk your life to make the world a
  better place?
• Spiritual people become deeply and emotionally
  attached

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Mysticism

• Are you fascinated with things that cannot be
  explained by science?
• Are you intuitive?
• Do you feel connections with people for no
  apparent reason?

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Andrew Newberg-SPECT

• Using a SPECT camera during meditation there is a
  decrease in activity in parts of the brain
  involved in generating a 3-D orientation in space
  (spatial orientation). (Andrew Newberg,
  University of Pennsylvania)
• Meditation is a spiritual state.
• Meditation and a spiritual sense involve feelings
  of release into a place beyond space and time.

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Andrew Newberg-SPECT

• Meditation caused
• Increased blood flow to frontal cortex and
  thalamus
• Frontal cortex
• Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex
• Inferior frontal cortex
• Orbital frontal cortex
• Responsible for thinking and planning
• Thalamus and cingulate gyrus
• Part of limbic system
• Emotion
• Aggregate-neurological seat of the will
• Goal-oriented
• Concentration and planning

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Andrew Newberg-SPECT

• Meditation caused.
• Decreased blood flow
• Posterior superior parietal lobes
• Orientation association area
• 3-D picture of body
• Distinguishes between self and non-self

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Todd Murphy

• The 40 Hertz Component
• Component of EEG readout
• Appears from temporal lobes (also involves
  amygdala and hippocampus)
• 2 sides of the brain, 2 sets of structures, 2
  sense of self
• Left side is usually dominant
• Where language happens including inner monologues
• Right side
• Non-linguistic sense of self

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Todd Murphy

• When right side takes over
• Visitor Experience
• Experience determined by what other parts of
  brain are involved
• Visual area
• Vision of an entity of some kind
• Olfactory area
• Experience a unique smell
• Language area
• Hear voices, music or noise
• Experience of God may be an extreme example of
  the Visitor Experience
• Views God as a part of self

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The Visitor Experience
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Consciousness

• Sense of self and world around us
• Gerald Edelman
• 2 different types of nervous system organization
• Michael Persinger
• Biological basis of spiritual and mystical
  experiences is due to firing of the
  temporoparietal region
• We do not know God, we feel him

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Gerald Edelman

• 2 different types of nervous system organization
• Thalamocortical System (Core or Primary
  Consciousness)
• Thalamus
• Cerebral Cortex
• Thalamus serves as a relay station from outside
  to thinking part of brain

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Gerald Edelman

• 2 different types of nervous system organization
• Limbic-Brain Stem System
• Brain stem-Area between the spinal cord and
  thalamus
• Connects body and the brain
• Life processes
• Limbic system
• Amygdala, hypothalamus and hippocampus
• Emotional response and memory

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Gerald Edelman

• Consciousness arise through the process of
  communication between these 2 systems
• Consciousness links the physical senses to the
  emotions via brain networks
• Emotions (feeling good, bad, happy, sad) are
  produced by the monoamines and influenced by the
  VMAT2 gene

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Michael Persinger

• Non-believer
• Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation to his temporal
  and parietal lobes
• Experienced God
• The God Spot
• Biological basis of all spiritual and mystical
  experiences
• Spontaneous firing of the temporoparietal region

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Michael Persinger

• Main effect of the firing is to increase
  communication between the right and left
  temporoparietal areas causing confusion between
  the sense of self and the sense of others
• Creates Sense of a Presence
• Interpreted as God, spirits or other mystical
  being

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Monoamines (Norepinephrine, Serotonin and
Dopamine)

• Biochemical mediators of emotions and values
• Not freely available
• Must be wrapped and protected from degradation

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Serotonin5HT and NorepinephrineNE in the brain
Limbic System
Prefrontal Cortex
Locus Ceruleus (NE Source)
Raphe Nuclei (5-HT source)
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Serotonin

• Increased sociability and intimacy
• Increased mood elevation
• Effects consciousness in ways connected to
  self-transcendence and spirituality
• Alters perception an aspect of mystical
  experience
• Ecstasy and Prozac
• Prozac more subtle and less neurotoxic

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Dopamine

• James Olds (1954)
• Medial forebrain bundle (MFB)
• Pleasure
• What makes spirituality attractive most likely
  involves dopamine

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Vesicular Monoamine Transporter (VMAT2)

• Genetic
• Houses monoamines
• Protects from degradation

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Importance of VMAT2

• Knock-out mice
• Without VMAT2 Gene
• Runts
• Died young
• 100 fold decrease in monoamines
• Produced monoamines but did not protect them from
  degradation

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Something Happens!

• Vesicle reaches membrane at terminal button
• Tiny channels open letting in Calcium
• Monoamines leak out into synapse
• Attach to receptor
• Receptor diversity
• Diverse effects

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Monoamine Attached To Receptor

• Activates G Protein
• G Protein activates cyclic AMP (Second Messenger)
• Signaling molecule
• Cyclic AMP carries the information that started
  with the monoamine

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Monoamines

• Determine the overall tone of the brain
• How you feel
• Emotions are the language of the brain

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Summary of Central Arguments For The God Gene

• Self is central
• The ability to lose ones sense of self, to
  become one with our surroundings
• The sense of self and the world we live in
  revolve around the brain process called
  consciousness
• Higher consciousness involves structures in the
  back part of the brain related to orientation

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Summary of Central Arguments For The God Gene

• Monoamines play critical role in consciousness
• Add value to perceptions-feelings