Religion and Spirituality may Help Youngsters Cope With Depression
Religion and spirituality can play a vital role in the life of young adults with mental disorders, say, researchers.
Religion and spirituality can play a vital role in the life of young adults with mental disorders, say, researchers.
‘Spirituality and religiosity could now be mapped to specific brain circuits around a brainstem area called the periaqueductal gray (PAG) through the use of novel technology and the human connectome (a map of neural connections).
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The PAG is an evolutionarily old brain structure known to play major role in fear response behaviors and autonomic functions such as regulating heart rate. It is also commonly involved in release of endogenous opioids to ease the pain. “Patients routinely report that spiritual and religious experiences are among their most meaningful life events. Yet medical science historically has been shy about empirically studying the impacts of spirituality or its physiological mechanisms. Now, we’re at a moment of sufficient cultural openness in science coupled with threshold technological proficiency in brain mapping that we don’t need to be so shy anymore about examining spirituality using our best scientific methods,” says lead author of the study, Michael Ferguson, Ph.D., an investigator in the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, MA, USA.
Spirituality and Brain Circuits
Spirituality Increases Quality of Life Among Stroke Survivors
Higher spirituality among stroke survivors was strongly linked to a better quality of life for them and their caregivers who may also feel depressed, say researchers.
Higher spirituality among stroke survivors was strongly linked to a better quality of life for them and their caregivers who may also feel depressed, say researchers.
Hence to map these circuits the study team examined previously collected data about self-reported spirituality from 88 patients before and after undergoing surgery for a brain tumor. The lesion network mapping technique was used to analyze how the site of each patient’s lesion, or tumor, interacts with the rest of the brain using a connectome dataset.
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Spirituality Tied to a Higher Quality of Life for Stroke Survivors, Caregivers
Higher spirituality among stroke survivors is strongly linked to a better quality of life for them and their caregivers who may also feel depressed, reveals a new study.
Higher spirituality among stroke survivors is strongly linked to a better quality of life for them and their caregivers who may also feel depressed, reveals a new study.
“The fact that our results in this study point to such an evolutionarily ancient brainstem structure to define a circuit for spirituality is potentially significant for a litany of reasons. Among the more immediately material reasons is that the [PAG] is well-known to mediate pain inhibition. This leads to curiosity about ways that spirituality might be clinically relevant for helping manage physical and emotional pain. The fact that the [PAG] is also involved in attachment and bonding may also hint at mechanistic explanations for the emerging observation that spirituality can be effectively integrated into psychotherapy. These are of course early speculations about possible clinical relevance for the neuroscience of spirituality; the fact, though, that there is so much more work to do in this area is exhilarating and motivating!” says Dr. Ferguson.
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Brain Circuit for Spirituality Identified!
Using datasets from neurosurgical patients and those with brain lesions, researchers mapped lesion locations associated with spiritual and religious belief to a specific human brain circuit.
Using datasets from neurosurgical patients and those with brain lesions, researchers mapped lesion locations associated with spiritual and religious belief to a specific human brain circuit.
