A
spiritual experience can do wonders
for your soul, but does it help your brain?
To find out, researchers from the Spirituality
Mind Body Institute at the Teachers College of
Columbia University and the Yale University School
of Medicine hooked 27 young, healthy subjects up
to a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)
machine to scan their brains while they recalled
a “personal spiritual experience.” What’s that? It
depends. One participant thought about having
“a two-way relationship with a higher power” while
another focused on “being in a zone of
intense physical activity.”
The subjects’ experiences
may have been different, but
their brains responded the
same way. The regions associ-
ated with emotions, sensory
processing, and awareness of
themselves as distinct from
others were all less active.
In other words, being in a
spiritual state calmed and en-
livened them while increasing
their sense of connectedness.
Another telling finding: Past
studies on spirituality and the
brain enlisted overtly religious
subjects, such as Carmelite nuns.
But participants in this study
defined their own spiritual situa-
tions. It seems that anyone, even
nonreligious folks, can experience
some transcendence—and the
brain benefits that come with it.Overhead Light
Kills the FluA new study has found
that continuous low
doses of a spectrum
of UV light called
far-UVC can kill
airborne flu viruses
without harming hu-
man tissue. Though it’s
not a spectrum found
in standard fluorescent
or incandescent bulbs,
far-UVC light in hospi-
tals, schools, and other
public spaces could
one day provide a
powerful check on
seasonal flu epidemics.Antibiotics May
Foster Kidney
StonesA study that examined
more than 280,000 U.K.
patients’ records sug-
gests that people who
took five common
types of oral antibiotics
(sulfas, broad-spectrum
penicillins, fluoroquin-
olones, cephalosporins,
or nitrofurantoin/
methenamine) had
a greater chance of
developing kidney
stones within a year.HOW SPIRITUALITY MAY
DE-STRESS YOUR BRAIN
Reader’s Digest News from the World of Medicine
34 dec 2018 )jan 2019 | rd.com
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