Thanks to my editor, Holly, for finding this fascinating study about serotonin and spirituality. I’ve argued in many places that I swear we depressives are more religious. It turns out that high image brain scans are documenting a biological underpinning for religiosity, related to the neurotransmitter serotonin. The only thing I’m confused about if those born with more serotonin receptors can transcend more easily than those of us who need a little help via Zoloft.

According to Psychology Today, which you can get to by clicking here:

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.

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