To: K-list
Recieved: 2004/01/08 19:53
Subject: [K-list] Article on serotonin and spirituality
From: Druout

Sorry! I can't find the URL

>From the WSJ December 26:

If you decide instead to seek comfort in the spirituality of the season, but
can't gin up the requisite ardor, Swedish scientists have a likely explanation.

Using positron emission tomography (PET), researchers led by Lars Farde of
the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm took brain scans of 15 volunteers, all
healthy men, and gave them a standard personality test. PET measured the density
of receptors for the brain chemical serotonin, which can vary twofold from one
person to another. Serotonin is what LSD and other hallucinogens act on to
produce the visions and religious ecstasy that many users report. The
238-question personality test assessed the men's "spiritual acceptance versus material
rationalism."

The correlation was striking, if counterintuitive. Men with fewer serotonin
receptors were highly spiritual; those with more inclined toward "I'll believe
it when I see it." It may be that when a brain has fewer serotonin receptors,
they are extra sensitive to even hints of the spiritual.

The serotonin system "may serve as a biological basis for spiritual
experiences," the scientists concluded last month in the American Journal of
Psychiatry. Variability in serotonin-receptor density, they speculate, "may explain why
people vary greatly in spiritual zeal."

But do spiritual and other experiences reduce serotonin receptors, or does
being born with a natural paucity of receptors open you to spiritual
experiences? The puzzle is left to the reader.

End article

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