Does Church Make Us Happy?

Going to church could stimulate the same part of the brain that is also stimulated when listening to music, having sex and taking certain drugs.

17:18 30 November 2016

Religion is almost never associated with drugs, sex and rock and roll. However, a recent research has found that religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuit in the same way as more hedonistic pursuits such as taking drugs, gambling and listening to music. 

 

Researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine have carried out the “Religious Brain Project” in which they performed fMRI scan on 19 devout Mormons while they performed tasks designed to evoke spiritual feelings. These tasks included resting, watching religious videos, and reading familiar passages from The Book of Mormon. The volunteers were asked if they were feeling the spirit and to gauge their response from ‘not feeling’ to ‘very strongly feeling’. 

 

Lead author Michael Ferguson, a bioengineering graduate student at the University of Utah, said: ‘When our study participants were instructed to think about a saviour, about being with their families for eternity, about their heavenly rewards, their brains and bodies physically responded,’

 

Researchers then studied that results of fMRI scans and found that powerful spiritual feelings were associated with activity in the area of the brain associated with processing reward, which is also known to play a role in addiction and is activated by taking certain drugs.