I found this article on the fox news website.

I don't know if it is a REAL study... It may be fabricated... BUT...

it IS being reported on NATIONAL news websites as fact.

Interesting article, now we just need to figure out how we can grow the thing back again. Personally I blame the atrophy on all those potluck dinners after church; I notice a direct loss of intellectual capacity after one of those.

On the positive side, I won't remember any of this in the morning.

In Christ,

Ron

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Ron Halverson

Articles like this, and Paul's college testimony, show that Nazi science is still alive and well in the 21st century. While all of this bigoted rubbish may be merely the prelude in the grand theater of eschatology, and our stage cue as sheep to form our long peaceful slaughter line, we still owe to our brains to recognize the writing as an insult to the intelligence of everyone sitting in the audience watching this farce.

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Mike Compton

What happened to the IQ tests?

Diane

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Diane

As brain imaging technology matures and diversifies, I'm sure technicians running these tests are tempted to elevate themselves to the status of pioneering scientists who can "see" much more then they really can. (Of course this "seeing" is predicated on the idea that everything we are can be explained biologically. )

Now scientists don't actually claim to "see" a person's mind; because afterall, there is no mind; there is only the brain organ. Once again approved science must dismiss what it cannot measure with it's current tool set. What the fMRI, CT, PET, EEG, MEG, NIRS, and others scans cannot see, is simply declared an illusion created by the mechanisms that can be seen. Therefore consciousness, with all of it's inherent individual value and moral instinct, is an illusion! (edit: so we supposed to believe)

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Mike Compton

There is another theory though :) The hippocampus is a key structure in episodic or autobiographical memory as well as declarative memory-especially the formation of these memories.

Our pasts are covered by the blood and thrown into the sea of GOD's forgetfulness. We're led by the Spirit, thus unlike the poor folks that must depend on themselves to remember what to do next - we're on Holy Spirit Over-drive.

Imagine going through this life without the indwelling of His Spirit to lead, guide, heal memories, etc..

Pity the poor humans that repeatedly live according to their past learned behavior. They're the ones that must remember what lie they told yesterday, in order to not mistakenly contradict that or any other lies that they've lived under since GOD knows when. Amazing what truth in the inward parts frees a person from. Benjamin Franklin said, "If you always tell the truth, you'll have nothing to remember."

We also told to take no thought for tomorrow. It takes memory to make plans for tomorrow and further out, future tense.

Hey, and this is just part of what we don't need to depend on our memories for. :)


We're Blessed!!!

if this is true ,then that was the theroy a came up with the morning

the carnal mind is emity toward god

if we have been set free from indulging in carnal thoughts ,, this must have an effect on parts of our brain

there for the parts of the brain that is actavaited by the carnal mind must begin to shrink and become inoprative

and if this news report is a lie ,,then blessed are the that are persacuted and spoken of as evil ,and called brain damaged ,,for they shal be called the children of god

either way , we are blessed

amen jesus is god

As evident from this excerpt in Scientific American, the study is far from conclusive in the scientific community:


"They evaluated the MRIs of 268 men and women aged 58 and over, who were originally recruited for the NeuroCognitive Outcomes of Depression in the Elderly study, but who also answered several questions regarding their religious beliefs and affiliation

(...)

.... the causal relationship between brain findings and religion is difficult to clearly establish. Is it possible, for example, that those people with smaller hippocampal volumes are more likely to have specific religious attributes, drawing the causal arrow in the other direction? Further, it might be that the factors leading up to the life-changing events are important and not just the experience itself. Since brain atrophy reflects everything that happens to a person up to that point, one cannot definitively conclude that the most intense experience was in fact the thing that resulted in brain atrophy. So there are many potential factors that could lead to the reported results. (It is also somewhat problematic that stress itself did not correlate with hippocampal volumes since this was one of the potential hypotheses proposed by the authors and thus, appears to undercut the conclusions.) One might ask whether it is possible that people who are more religious suffer greater inherent stress, but that their religion actually helps to protect them somewhat. Religion is frequently cited as an important coping mechanism for dealing with stress.

This new study is intriguing and important. It makes us think more about the complexity of the relationship between religion and the brain. This field of scholarship, referred to as neurotheology, can greatly advance our understanding of religion, spirituality, and the brain. Continued studies of both the acute and chronic effects of religion on the brain will be highly valuable. For now, we can be certain that religion affects the brain--we just are not certain how.

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=religious-experiences-shrink-part-of-brain

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Diane