View from the Cheap Seats
by JoyThe University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine released a preliminary study yesterday (October 31), tracking cerebral blood flow and activity in the brains of five individuals experiencing glossolalia, a.k.a. "Speaking in Tongues." The report can be accessed through ScienceDaily at:
Language Center Not Under Control (shortened title).
Newberg went on to explain, "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. We believe this is the first scientific imaging study evaluating changes in cerebral activity — looking at what actually happens to the brain — when someone is speaking in tongues. This study also showed a number of other changes in the brain, including those areas involved in emotions and establishing our sense of self."
Decreased blood flow and neurological activity in the frontal lobes and language processing centers, as well as a subjective feeling of not being in control, complicated by a mysterious lack of increased activity in other parts of the brain to indicate what, precisely, *is* in control. Hmmm… where have I heard of anomalous brain activity before, in the context of strange phenomena?
Oh, yeah. Synesthesia. Neurologist Richard Cytowic documented years ago several distinct anomalies of brain activity involved when a subject experiences synesthetic percepts. Blood flow and neuroelectrical activity was so drastically altered in one subject that by all 'rights' he should have been rendered unconscious! Yet he was not rendered unconscious at all - he just smelled a sound, saw the color of a feel, heard a taste… synesthesia is the 'blending' of supposedly distinct sensory perceptions.
Because I am myself a synesthete, I have paid attention (and participated in) research on the phenomenon. I, like Cytowic, believe that all humans are basically born synesthetic and learn to discriminate between classes of sensory information in the first couple of years of life. Which tends to narrow the range of percepts in those discriminatory sensors - individuals learn to ignore the 'crossover frequencies' that, like all perceptual data, contain information about the world.
Worse, the specific 'acceptable' ranges of percept for compartmentalized sensory input are primarily culturally derived. IOW, a person living in an environment like hunter-gatherer tribes in regions with predators who like to eat humans, is likely to retain more of the crossover frequencies of perception (for survival purposes) than someone living in say, upstate New York.
Because this intriguing study by UPenn documents some of the very same anomalies I'm familiar with from synesthesia research, I'd guess that the "special" (and valued) status in some religious congregations granted to members who are prone to display the 'gift' of speaking in tongues lets those with synesthetic propensities exercise their 'gift' without fear of sanction from a culture that insists on strict segregation of sensory data.
It also looks - from here in the cheap seats - like neuroscientists need to rethink their beliefs about brain activity as indicative of actual, subjective mental activity. IOW, if the synesthete doesn't lose consciousness while hearing a color, then blood flow to the frontal lobes and aural/visual processing regions doesn't actually determine whether the subject is conscious or if they are perceptually aware.
…and they're going to have to pay a bit more attention to the subjective reports of the subjects themselves about what is being experienced, because their brains simply cannot be objectively read by measuring blood flow or electrical activity.
Quite an interesting situation. My question for skeptics from all this is: If blood flow and neuroelectrical activity in the brain do not necessarily indicate anything concrete about what an individual is thinking, feeling or perceiving (i.e. is aware of), is it sound scientific practice - or ethical medical policy - to make pronouncements about the actual state of consciousness in someone with anomalous patterns in order to justify ending their life?
November 2nd, 2006 at 3:30 am
I am not a synesthete but I have practiced glossolalia for years. I am not sure what one would expect to find from a brain scan. Trying to describe it in a nonreligious way, I can pray in tongues while at the same time doing math figures in my head, reading, or even typing, it doesn't require conscious effort. As I pray in tongues I feel a spiritual presence and it lifts my emotions and has positive effects on my mind.
Comment by Jehu — November 2, 2006 @ 3:30 am
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:47 am
Hello, Jehu. I have seen glossolalia in action, in religious and non-religious settings. In the early 1990s my 21-year old son suffered a severe head injury. In a dramatic encounter the night he was released from ICU he spoke a language none of us recognized, but which was very clearly a language and not gibberish. Among those present more than a dozen languages were known to a recognizable extent at least, including Punjabi, Japanese, Tagalog and Tsagali as well as the Latin-based set (and Latin, of course), Estonian and Russian. But the weirdest part was that we all understood what was being said.
I have suspected ever since that there is a built-in (where?) mother-language underlying all human speech. Not just syntax atop which humans stack their tribal 'namings'.
I find it very interesting that you still have control while experiencing - or is the better word 'practicing'? - glossolalia. The five subjects of the UPenn study apparently did not. The synesthetes who end up seeking out neurologists and cog-scis usually are having problems separating out their blended perceptions so they don't scare others, leading to emotional problems I never had.
I learned to control it when it became obvious others didn't perceive the way I did, and at this late stage of my life it very seldom intrudes unless I deliberately open my mind to it for a reason. I have had success teaching synesthetic perception to others, including people I'm not related to. Thus I'd figured out years before Cytowic did that it comes naturally to humans.
Whenever the percepts are apprehended by a student, they tell me it's "like remembering."
Do you understand what you are praying when this happens? Does anyone else understand you?
Comment by Joy — November 2, 2006 @ 10:47 am
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:51 am
Jehu,
Do those who practice glossolalia know what they are saying? Is it generally some sort of worship or praise? Is it understandable, but not in normal words? At the times you are not conscious of it, does it have any informational content, and if so, are you only aware of what was said later when you focus on it consciously?
Just wondering.
Comment by Ekstasis — November 2, 2006 @ 10:51 am
November 2nd, 2006 at 10:54 am
Joy,
Sorry for repeating your questions, I did not see your post when I was writing.
Comment by Ekstasis — November 2, 2006 @ 10:54 am
November 2nd, 2006 at 11:00 am
We were posting at the same time, Ekstasis! This is so very interesting to me, for obvious reasons. I've never experienced glossolalia myself, but as a synesthete I do know a little about human abilities that modern society isn't very comfortable with.
The brain anomalies are even more fascinating for what they seem to indicate about consciousness, awareness, language and perception. I'll post some tidbits to that as I've time.
Comment by Joy — November 2, 2006 @ 11:00 am
November 2nd, 2006 at 12:20 pm
It is a form of prayer. When I first started doing it, it was because I couldn't resist it. I would be praying and the next thing I know I am experiencing glossolalia. I thought it was bizarre. That kept happening and I kept resisting until I figured out what was going on. The first time I allowed myself to pray in tongues concerning something deliberately, I saw immediate results, so I was convinced of the supernatural power of it
I don't understand what I am saying when I pray in tongues, although I believe when I am praying concerning a certain matter and I pray in tongues, the tongues address the topic I am praying about. When I pray in tongues concerning a specific matter, all the same emotions accompany the tongues as if I was speaking my native tongue although I don't understand specific words.
Joy, that is amazing about you son, that everybody could understand what he said. The only instance I am familiar of that particular phenomena is recorded in Acts chapter 2, other places in the Bible tongues is generally understood not to be understandable to the prayer or hearer. See, 1 Corinthians 14.
Comment by Jehu — November 2, 2006 @ 12:20 pm
November 2nd, 2006 at 1:01 pm
Jehu:
I too have known prayer to be extremely effective, in any or no language. After that accident prayers were immediately launched from all over the world in as many languages, from groups and individuals as diverse as Southern Baptists, Quakers, Buddhists and Taoists (and even some atheists) - there was even a Medicine Wheel built and walked day and night in Arizona by members of one of the Bear tribes (healers).
A priest/physician was involved (Catholic-heavy 'burb of New Orleans and a Catholic medical center), and we even got a whole investigatory contingent from the Vatican. It ended up as the first legally adjudged Miracle on record in the US (or anywhere else, far as I know). Anyway, the prayers were coming in so hot and heavy - aimed to the ICU - that several Miracles of healing occurred there during the 10 days, and the prayer circle in the waiting room grew every day. Made believers out of some pretty jaded doctors, nurses and EMTs. We even had increasing police participation once they got wind of a Miracle in the works.
Because we do not know of any material/physical means of this effectiveness, the term "supernatural" certainly applies. Yet at the same time, I have come to the opinion that if one accepts that there are entire realms of existence/experience that are NOT material/physical (as-we-know-it), it might be natural after all.
The priest (a physician who became a priest late in life) who had originally saved our son's life was present when this occurred. I suppose he's the one who had originally called in the Vatican, since his brother was some sort of official there. It took a couple of repeats of a command before we actually realized we knew what he was saying, and that was… completely amazing to all of us. The speaker (at the time, I didn't think it was really my son and neither did the rest of us family members) most assuredly knew what he was saying.
As well as what indicated to me the existence of that 'mother-language'. Something we couldn't possibly know we understood unless we'd heard it and understood, a language none of us had ever heard before or since.
Comment by Joy — November 2, 2006 @ 1:01 pm