HOPE II: Friends And God
This is the second of a series of blogs on Hope (hope for energy to do what must
be done – together – to foster a creative renewal of our disappearing
church).
As we consider Scotty Shaull’s photograph of “Your Life”, it will be helpful if we are on the same page in
understanding what we mean by Body
and Spirit.
It
is important to note that there is increasing scientific evidence that:
(1) a belief that God (our spiritual self + God) will help
us if we are having difficulties --
can have a beneficial impact on our health and well-being,
(2) a belief that our friends (our bodily self + others)
will be understanding resources for us if we are having difficulties -- can
have a beneficial impact on our health and well-being,
(3) both sources of our feelings of well-being (our belief in God’s help and our expectations of our
friends) have surprisingly similar neuronal pathways in our brain, and
(4) those neural pathways that map from (a) difficulties
in life to (b) positive expectations to (c) well-being, can generate feelings
of hope.
The scientific debate about a mind–body dualism is about
over. Neuroscience research
has largely identified that what goes on in our body and what goes on in our
mind are intimately related. Our
body includes our mind (housed in our brain), and our mind (and its brain-house) is part of our body.
When we are not feeling well, our perception that we are
hearing good news from our physician and thus feel calmed, typically leads to
mind-body changes (albeit sometimes very small changes) that can contribute to
our health and well-being over time.
Substitute the word “God” for the word “physician” in the sentence above
and the neuronal dynamics of our mind and the positive outcome remain the same.
Ordinarily I don’t include an annotated bibliography in my
blogs, but because this particular blog deals with such important,
life-sustaining, understandings about the belief systems of our mind, you may
find it helpful to know more about a few of the research reports that underlie
my comments.
An important development in recent cognitive neuroscience
research is the grouping of brain regions in the human cortex (brain) that
selectively and specifically underlie the mechanisms of what I choose to call positive
expectations (that can lead to
well-being). For a broad-based
understanding of current scientific perspectives on the ways that our brains
are wired and our minds work, I recommend a 2013 book by Dr. Matthew D.
Lieberman, Social: Why Our Brains Are Wired to Connect, published by Crown Publishers of New York.
Amazon writes this publisher’s review of the Lieberman book:
--------
"It seems natural that when a person is rewarded with
a cash prize there is intense activity in the pleasure centers of his or her
brain. But [Lieberman identifies that we] experience neurally identical
pleasure when giving away money.
Why is the emotional pain of being left out of a game of catch identical
to that of physical injury? Using the latest research in neuroscience,
Lieberman, an award-winning social psychologist [at UCLA], shows readers how
their brains may be wired, first and foremost, to harmonize and connect with
others, rather than simply to act in their own interests. With the help of new
functional MRI technology, Lieberman explores the surprising new science of
social interaction, investigating how our perceptions of others affect our
cognition and, even more elementally, how social interaction and its absence
can produce the same mental responses as physical pain and pleasure."
[Lieberman calls this process mentalizing. Mentalization is a psychological concept that describes the
ability of people to understand, or think they understand, the mental state of
another person that underlies that person’s thoughts, behaviors or
feelings. That process is also
called “Theory of the Mind”].
--------
The relationship between Lieberman’s research and the
potential influences from our belief in God is detailed in the social-cognitive
neuroscience research studies by Dr Kapogiannis and his colleagues*. They found that that as believers think
about God’s involvement in their life, activated are brain circuits in regions
of the brain already known to be important in the social cognition evolution of
the human brain. These are the
same general brain circuits activated in the mentalizing tasks identified by Lieberman (above).
*Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A., Su,
M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009) Cognitive and neural
foundations of religious belief. published in the Proceedings of the
National Academy of Sciences, 106 (12),
4876-4881.
The evolving research on what has historically been called
the placebo effect (that I find much more helpful to think of as positive
expectations) is
promising to revolutionize our understanding of how our interpretations of
comments made by others (i.e. physicians) can affect our health and
well-being. One of the clearest
examples of this trend, has been written by Dr. Fabrizio
Benedetti. It is titled
“Placebo and the New Physiology of the Doctor-Patient Relationship” and has
been published in Physiological Review
(2013) vol. 93(3) 1207-1246.
Here is Dr. Benedetti’s research abstract statement:
---------
"Modern medicine has progressed in
parallel with the advancement of biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology. By
using the tools of modern medicine, the physician today can treat and prevent a
number of diseases through pharmacology, genetics, and physical interventions.
Besides this materia medica, the patient's mind, cognitions, and
emotions play a central part as well in any therapeutic outcome, as
investigated by disciplines such as psychoneuroendocrinoimmunology. This review
describes recent findings that give scientific evidence to the old tenet that
patients must be both cured and cared for. In fact, we are today in a good
position to investigate complex psychological factors, like placebo effects and
the doctor-patient relationship, by using a physiological and neuroscientific
approach. These intricate psychological factors can be approached through
biochemistry, anatomy, and physiology, thus eliminating the old dichotomy
between biology and psychology. This is both a biomedical and a philosophical
enterprise that is changing the way we approach and interpret medicine and
human biology. In the first case, curing the disease only is not sufficient,
and care of the patient is of tantamount importance. In the second case, the
philosophical debate about the mind-body interaction can find some important
answers in the study of placebo effects. Therefore, maybe paradoxically, the
placebo effect and the doctor-patient relationship can be approached by using
the same biochemical, cellular and physiological tools of the materia medica,
which represents an epochal transition from general concepts such as
suggestibility and power of mind to a true physiology of the doctor-patient
interaction."
------------
It is a small step from Dr. Benedetti’s focus on
doctor-patient relationships to understanding more about the variety of ways
that our positive relationships at church (including our relationships with
God) can affect our health, our well-being and our hope-filled energy to do what must be done -- together. This is good news. More on this in my next blog.
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