The God in the head

Only two kind of people say with a definite conviction they had seen God or affirmatively experienced the presence of God. One, those who attains deep meditation states and the other those experienced the temporal lobe epilepsy.

In trancedental meditation, there happens a sensation of unification with the universe, or in other words completely dissolved self. On imaging the Buddhist monks who attains this state, the pre-frontal cortex is very much active, but the parietal lobe seems to be in a trance. The parietal lobe is essential for our construction of the outer three dimensional world and our interaction and spatial navigation in that three dimensional world. When this lobe switches off temporarily almost your boundary to the outer world seizes to exist. This experience reinforces the belief of God in the meditators.

Coming to those who having temporal lobe seizures, there are myriad ways of presentation. Some would experience an uncontrollable rage but blessed few could experience the insurmountable pleasure, to which no worldly pleasure could be equated , even if you imagine a person is experiencing thousand orgasms put together. Those person obviously becomes more spiritual after the attacks and to them what they experienced, as couldn't be described in mere words, is God.

If you have the intense desire to experience God, you could contact Dr. Michael Persinger, from Laurentian University in Ontario.He is having a God helmet, you know. All you have to do to see God , is to knock his doors; he would put his 'God helmet' on your head.

It would create a magnetic field which would stimulate your temporal lobe and your chances of seeing God directly correlates with your belief system.

If you are a great believer, He would appear in the form you like, right in front of you or if you are a person of beliefs and doubts mixed together, you would feels as someone like God is standing far behind you, but unfortunately if you are an atheist , all you would feel is mild ache in your limbs and some respiratory difficulties.

Where resides the envy?

Now the science is scratching its head hard to find out brain spots for different complex emotions. Even it talks about God- spot in the brain and seperate branch called neuro-theology is brewing up.

Now the frantic search is for spots for our negative emotions. Those well-versed with the Indian epic Mahabharatha, would have known what was the chief problem of the eldest of the 100 sons, the embodiments of 100 sins. Duruyadhana suffered from Envy and he also found pleasure whenever he heard something really bad happened to the' good' five pandavas. This emotion of getting pleasure from other's misfortune is termed as schadenfreude.

Japanese scientist Takahashi, carried out an interesting experiment to find out the prime sites of these two emotions 'envy' and 'schadenfrude'. He had done fMRI to find out the activated areas in the brains of people who were given a hypothetical situations that would evoke these emotions.

For example, you are a college student who is good in studies and a cute girl(/smart guy) in your class has started showing some interest in you. Then, this handsome guy(/beautiful girl) enters the scene, who has a posh car, competitive in studies to you and in extra, he is good in sports and also has high connections with the college authorities. your cute girl's interest slowly sways towards him. Are you imagining the scene.... (even though the scene is a cliche, it often succeeds provoking the envy). Now if i do imaging to your imaging brain , the site obviously red hot in anger would be the spot of envy and that would be .... Anterior Cingulate Cortex.

This ACC is the conflict detecting part of the brain. when something happens exactly in contrast to what you have expected then this area would produce the alert signal. It also gets activated in psychic pains, for e.g, a loner's longing pain or another loner's empathetic pain of this loner.

Now imagine as a sequence of the 'cliche' story... the cute girl and that envy-provoking guy had a real nasty fight and you are hearing from all directions, the news about their fight and that guy was heart broken because he couldn't make amends with her later. Obviously you feel happy, (i.e schadenfreude) and now the hot-spot in your brain that produces this wicked pleasure is... Ventral striatum.

No surprise that Ventral striatum has a strong association with reward circuitries, hence the humans finds nothing more rewarding than the downfall of the persons they envy.