Spirituality found in brain area for dreaming

Dreams are our souls' way of broadcasting wisdom to us each night -- Christiane Northrup M.D.

A new study mapping spirituality and religiosity finds that ‘spiritual acceptance’ can be localized to a specific brain circuit that is centered in the brainstem region called the periaqueductal gray (PAG).

Illustration showing the the periaqueductal gray (PAG) ACC, anterior cingulate cortex; Amyg, amygdala; PFC, prefrontal cortex; LC, locus coeruleus; NRM, nucleus raphe magnus; NTS, nucleus tractus solitarius. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/315954565_Deep_Brain_Stimulation_Improves_the_Symptoms_and_Sensory_Signs_of_Persistent_Central_Neuropathic_Pain_from_Spinal_Cord_Injury_A_Case_Report

"Our results suggest that spirituality and religiosity are rooted in fundamental, neurobiological dynamics and deeply woven into our neuro-fabric," …"We were astonished to find that this brain circuit for spirituality is centered in one of the most evolutionarily preserved structures in the brain." - Michael Ferguson, Ph.D.

Lesion network mapping allowed these investigators to map complex human behaviors to specific brain circuits based on the locations of brain lesions in 88 brain tumor patients then validated to a control set with brain trauma injuries. The circuit included positive nodes — lesions thus disrupted — and negative nodes — lesions caused increase in — spiritual beliefs. Results on religiosity from the second dataset were consistent with these findings.

The PAG contains the brain area involved in REM dream states. [And, interestingly, central pain modulation originates there.] REM sleep regulation is modeled as a flip-flop switch arrangement, where GABAergic REM-on neurons (located in the sublaterodorsal tegmental nucleus) inhibit GABAergic REM-off neurons (located in the ventrolateral periaqueductal gray matter and lateral pontine tegmentum) and vice versa.

So the dream states and our connections to spirit world inhabit the same brain real estate.

Alien Abduction

Many people report encounters with ExtraTerrestrials, where they are paralyzed and taken away into Unidentified Flying Objects. Some have vivid descriptions of the experiences. Some have ‘missing time’ that they cannot account for. The elements are consistent with REM state and hypnogogic hallucinations, and often are believed to be dream related. A well known researcher who investigated these events and reported them in scientific circles, was Dr. John Mack.

McLean Hospital Head Psychiatrist, Pulitzer Prize winner

I was at McLean Hospital performing clinical research on abuse of opiates, cocaine and alcohol, during Harvard’s Inquisition of John Mack for his paying serious attention to alien abduction stories. He was our department head and a fellow researcher in addictions. This tenured, full professor of the medical school, was ultimately ‘cleared’ of ‘suspicions’ by his ‘peers’ but this process supressing his academic freedom was brutal and expensive. Certainly it was a chilling example to see, for us junior faculty. And I guess it was prescient of Harvard’s future behavior during the so-called ‘covid pandemic’ of 2020-2021, for anyone advocating hydroxychloroquine as treatment.

After a decade of researching, Mack ultimately settled on the ‘transformative and spiritual’ impact of these events on the lives of the individual ‘experiencers.’ Later, he moved on to investigate life after death phenomena.

Lucid Dreaming

It is possible for humans to develop abilities to dream in a twilight awake state that allows them to retain memory of the occasion, termed ‘lucid dreaming’. Some can even ‘direct’ the content, as if a director of a movie.

Russian investigators tested 152 volunteers with this function. They asked them to dream about alien encounters so that after they ‘awoke’, they could be quizzed about their dreams.

… researchers found that 114 of the volunteers were successful in dreaming about an alien encounter. They also noted that 61% of the volunteers reported that the alien in their dreams resembled aliens they had seen in movies or on television—and 19% of them encountered aliens that looked just like human beings. They also found that 12% of the volunteers had a conversation with an alien in their dreams. Also, UFOs appeared in 28% of the dreams, with 10% of dreamers visiting the alien spacecraft.

Perhaps more importantly, the researchers found that 24% of those describing their dream as realistic also experienced paralysis and great fear—very similar to the language used by many people reporting alien encounters. The researchers suggest that such feelings may be so vivid that the person experiencing them believes they truly happened. - Michael Raduga et al

Indeed, what is real and what is fantasy?

What is wake state and what is sleep?

These days … it is difficult to distinguish.

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REFERENCES

Researchers identify brain circuit for spirituality https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-brain-circuit-spirituality.html

Michael A. Ferguson et al, A neural circuit for spirituality and religiosity derived from patients with brain lesions, Biological Psychiatry (2021). DOI: 10.1016/j.biopsych.2021.06.016

Visual Hallucinations and Pontine Demyelination in a Child: Possible REM Dissociation? https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2603538/

The stuff dreams are made of: anatomical substrates
of REM sleep https://www.semel.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/sleep/publications/06_rem_saper_siegel.pdf

Harvard psychiatrist brought credibility to alien abduction research https://www.wjbf.com/news/harvard-psychiatrist-brought-credibility-to-alien-abduction-research/amp/

John E. Mack https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_E._Mack

Alien abduction claims may be based on lucid dreams https://medicalxpress.com/news/2021-07-alien-abduction-based-lucid.html

Michael Raduga et al, Emulating alien and UFO encounters in REM sleep, International Journal of Dream Research, (2021). https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/IJoDR/Onlinefirst (PDF)

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