Of Serotonin and Spirituality

Serotonin, the brain chemical crucial to mood and motivation, also
shapes personality to make you susceptible to spiritual experiences. A
team of Swedish researchers has found that the presence of a receptor
that regulates general serotonin activity in the brain correlates with
people's capacity for transcendence, the ability to apprehend
phenomena that cannot be explained objectively. Scientists have long
suspected that serotonin influences spirituality because drugs known to
alter serotonin such as LSD also induce mystical experiences. But now
they have proof from brain scans linking the capacity for spirituality
with a major biological element.

The concentration of serotonin receptors normally varies markedly
among individuals. Those whose brain scans showed the most receptor
activity proved on personality tests to have the strongest proclivity to
spiritual acceptance.

Reporting in the
American Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers see
the evidence as contradicting the common belief that religious behavior
is determined strictly by environmental and cultural factors. They see a
biological underpinning for religiosity, and it is related to the
neurotransmitter serotonin.