Support for the talking cure

Reasearch seems to be confirming what we kind of know from reflection on our own and others' experience: that talking about our feelings that can help us to bring them into a better relationship with the rest of our life. It's written about briefly here: Cross Words: Talking About Bad Feelings Helps Control Them | Wired Science from Wired.com and the headline summary: "Naming feelings takes some of the emotional impact out of them by engaging a brain region that aids self-control, according to new research.". The downside is that it also downsizes happy feelings too. I wonder whether that could relate to using tongues as a praise language; It would seem that perhaps glossolalia doesn't engage the relevant bit of the brain identified in this research and so the heightened feelings associated are not down-played (and this bit of research seems to indicate it doesn't engage those parts of the brain). On the other hand what about expressing praise corporately? I would say, from observation (and I have in mind both religious and secular gatherings) that the corporate dimension actually increases the sense of euphoria.

Brains on tongues: glossolalic imaging

You'll know if you're a regular here that I am interested in glossolalia as a practioner, a theologian and a linguist. So no surprise that this caught my eye.

Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine have discovered decreased activity in the frontal lobes, an area of the brain associated with being in control of one's self. This pioneering study, involving functional imaging of the brain while subjects were speaking in tongues, ... 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 while speaking in tongues. also showed a number of other changes in the brain, including those areas involved in emotions and establishing our sense of self ...

I'm interested to know what the hypotheses might be about how the emotions and sense of self are involved. In the former case we need to be wary of reading "emotions" and perceiving that in a derogatory way. It is important to understand in what way emotional responses or underlays are present. After all, if I understand aright, rational thinking relies on emotions [didn't you ever notice how Spock and Data in Star Trek could never actually function as characters without emotional things going on? Even if only at the level of finding things interesting or curious which they went on to rationalise about]. So what kind of emotional collocation is involved and does it vary significantly with different kinds of subjects?

Then I'm curious about [another (complex of) emotion or feeling; involving attraction, puzzlement and a desire to understand?] how the sense of self is involved and how far it is impacted by the religious environment and how far by the practice itself...


Technorati Tags: glossolalia, tongues_speaking, brain, science, mental, religion,