PERHAPS Ren茅 Descartes was right when he argued in 1649 that the pineal gland is the seat of the soul. Brain scans suggest that the area surrounding the gland is activated when people meditate.
鈥淭here is no definition of 鈥榮oul鈥� in the scientific field,鈥� says Jyh-Horng Chen of the National Taiwan University in Taipei, co-leader of the study. 鈥淗owever, our results demonstrate a correlation between pineal activation and religious meditation which might have profound implications in the physiological understanding of mind, spirit and soul.鈥�
Chen and his colleagues took fMRI scans of the brains of 11 men and 9 women as they practised a meditation technique called Chinese original quiet sitting. Their pineal areas were most active in the first phase, when practitioners silently recite religious mantras and try to get themselves into the right frame of mind prior to a prolonged relaxation phase.
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The gland鈥檚 main function is to secrete melatonin, a hormone which regulates the biological clock. Chen speculates that it may also play a role in the 鈥渋ntrinsic awareness鈥� of spirituality.
Not everyone is convinced. 鈥淚 am sceptical, given the complete lack of evidence for any function of the pineal gland other than melatonin secretion,鈥� says Bruce O鈥橦ara of the University of Kentucky in Lexington, whose 2005 study showed that meditation improved alertness.
The scans were , a site run by the journal Nature which invites unpublished but intriguing studies.
The Human Brain 鈥� With one hundred billion nerve cells, the complexity is mind-boggling. Learn more in our cutting edge special report.
