Speaking in Brainscans

[khaosworks]

Brain scans examine "speaking in tongues"
Nov., 2006
Courtesy University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine
and World Science staff

When mem­bers of cer­tain re­li­gious sects "speak in tongues," they mouth what sounds like an in­com­pren­si­ble lan­guage, which to them has great mean­ing. Now, re­search­ers have tak­en what they say are the first brain scans of peo­ple speak­ing in tongues.

The sci­en­t­ists, at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Penn­syl­va­nia School of Med­i­cine, found de­creased ac­tiv­i­ty in the fron­t­al lobes, a brain ar­ea be­hind the fore­head as­so­ci­at­ed with self-con­t­rol.

It's "fas­ci­nat­ing be­cause these sub­jects tru­ly be­lieve that the spir­it of God is mov­ing through them and con­trol­ling them to speak," said the uni­ver­si­ty's An­drew New­berg, one of the re­search­ers.

The "re­search shows us that these sub­jects are not in con­t­rol of the usu­al lan­guage cen­ters dur­ing this ac­ti­v­i­ty, which is con­sis­t­ent with their de­s­c­rip­tion of a lack of in­ten­tio­n­al con­t­rol."

The study ap­pears in the No­vem­ber is­sue of the jour­nal Psy­chi­a­try Re­search: Neu­ro­im­ag­ing.

The in­ves­ti­ga­tion com­pared the brains of those speak­ing in tongues to people sing­ing gos­pel mu­sic. "We no­ticed a num­ber of changes," New­berg said, in­clud­ing in re­gions tied to emo­tions and the sense of self.

"These find­ings could be in­ter­preted as the sub­ject's sense of self be­ing tak­en over by some­thing else. We, sci­en­tif­i­cal­ly, as­sume it's be­ing tak­en over by an­oth­er part of the brain. But we could­n’t see, in this im­ag­ing stu­dy, where this took place."

New­berg con­clud­ed that the changes in the brain dur­ing speak­ing in tongues re­flect a com­plex pat­tern of brain ac­tiv­i­ty. Fu­ture stud­ies will be needed to con­firm the find­ings and de­mys­ti­fy the phe­nom­e­non, he added.

Speak­ing in tongues, which has ex­isted for mil­len­ni­a and is men­tioned in the Bi­ble, is tech­ni­cal­ly called glos­so­la­lia. In Chris­ti­an­i­ty it is particularly as­so­ci­at­ed with Pen­te­cos­tal de­nom­i­na­tions.

The re­search­ers used Sin­gle Pho­ton Emis­sion Com­put­ed To­mog­ra­phy, a type of scan in which a bit of a ra­di­o­ac­t­ive drug is in­jected in­to a vein. The scan­ner then makes de­tailed im­ages of tis­sues where cells take up the drug. The pro­cess can give in­for­ma­tion about blood flow and me­tab­o­lism.