The professor decided to pursue the link between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious experience, so he set up an experiment to compare the brains of people with and without temporal lobe epilelpsy… In a remote region of northern Canada, a scientist put this controverial new science of neurotheology theto the test. Doctor Michael Persinger claims that by stimulating the temporal lubes, he can artificially induce religious experience in almost anyone.

Technorati Tags: brain, mysticism, neurotheology, religion, theology

I know too much about unusual, prolonged itching sensations that don’t respond to seemingly exhaustive medical treatment. I’ve had itching take control of my life to the point of hopelessness, despair, and suicidal thoughts. That’s why upon discovering this article my eyes practically bulged out of my skull and my eyes traced the lines on the page as fast as lightning.

I’ve experienced a few pain sensations in my life that I wouldn’t wish on my worst enemy (acute pancreatitis probably the worst), but itching is not pain. Itching can be worse than pain, far worse, and far less susceptible to treatment. The experience of being “itch free” — which happened for me as recently as nine or ten months ago — is the greatest feeling in the world. Here’s another person’s experience with itching (and hers makes my problem seem like a walk in the park) …

It was still shocking to M. how much a few wrong turns could change your life. She had graduated from Boston College with a degree in psychology, married at twenty-five, and had two children, a son and a daughter. She and her family settled in a town on Massachusetts’ southern shore. She worked for thirteen years in health care, becoming the director of a residence program for men who’d suffered severe head injuries. But she and her husband began fighting. There were betrayals. By the time she was thirty-two, her marriage had disintegrated. In the divorce, she lost possession of their home, and, amid her financial and psychological struggles, she saw that she was losing her children, too. Within a few years, she was drinking. She began dating someone, and they drank together. After a while, he brought some drugs home, and she tried them. The drugs got harder. Eventually, they were doing heroin, which turned out to be readily available from a street dealer a block away from her apartment.

One day, she went to see a doctor because she wasn’t feeling well, and learned that she had contracted H.I.V. from a contaminated needle. She had to leave her job. She lost visiting rights with her children. And she developed complications from the H.I.V., including shingles, which caused painful, blistering sores across her scalp and forehead. With treatment, though, her H.I.V. was brought under control. At thirty-six, she entered rehab, dropped the boyfriend, and kicked the drugs. She had two good, quiet years in which she began rebuilding her life. Then she got the itch.

It was right after a shingles episode. The blisters and the pain responded, as they usually did, to acyclovir, an antiviral medication. But this time the area of the scalp that was involved became numb, and the pain was replaced by a constant, relentless itch. She felt it mainly on the right side of her head. It crawled along her scalp, and no matter how much she scratched it would not go away. “I felt like my inner self, like my brain itself, was itching,” she says. And it took over her life just as she was starting to get it back.

There’s much more to say about this article, but I’ll have to return to the topic another time. Meanwhile, read the whole thing here. And blessings to Andrew Sullivan for the link.

Technorati Tags: brain, consciousness, itching, pain, perception

It seems that coffee is a simple, natural, and legal inhalant that can alter a person’s state of consciousness. Scientists have determined that you can stimulate your brain without caffeine or calories by just smelling coffee.

Technorati Tags: books, brain, coffee