here's another news article from last year

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PAIN OR PEACEA new study demonstrates religiously inspired pain relief in Catholic individuals, accompanied by changes in a pain-regulating brain region. Participants viewed images taken from paintings either of a woman depicted by Leonardo da Vinci, left, or of the Virgin Mary, right, before and during applications of painful electrical pulses. Full StoryWiech, et al.

Brain researchers have begun to explore what might be called faith-based analgesia.

Stimulating a religious state of mind in devout Catholics triggers brain processes associated with substantial relief from physical pain, report neuroscientist Katja Wiech of the University of Oxford, England, and her colleagues in an upcoming issue of Pain.

“Our data suggest that religious belief alters the brain in a way that changes how a person responds to pain,” says Oxford neuroscientist and study coauthor Irene Tracey.

Practicing Catholics perceived electrical pulses delivered to one hand while viewing an image of the Virgin Mary as less painful than pulses delivered while looking at a non-religious picture. Functional MRI showed a change in these volunteers’ brain activity only while viewing the religious icon.

In contrast, professed atheists and agnostics derived no pain relief from viewing the same religious image while getting uncomfortably zapped on the hand.

“What’s exciting is that this new study shows a neural mechanism by which religious belief affects pain perception,” remarks psychiatrist Harold Koenig, codirector of the Center for Spirituality, Theology and Health at Duke University in Durham, N.C.

Wiech and her coworkers studied 12 professed Catholics and 12 professed atheists or agnostics, ranging in age from 19 to 34 years.

Religious volunteers attended Mass at least weekly, prayed everyday and regularly performed other religious activities, such as going to confession.

During testing, each participant lay in a functional MRI, a brain-imaging machine that measures the rise and fall in blood flow throughout the brain. Blood-flow changes in particular areas reflect increases and decreases in neural activity.

In alternating trials, volunteers first spent 30 seconds observing an image either of a painting of the Virgin Mary or Lady with an Ermine, a painting of a similar-looking woman by Leonardo da Vinci.

Images remained visible on a computer screen as participants then received 20 brief electrical pulses delivered to the back of the left hand. Pre-testing on each person had determined the pulse intensity needed to produce moderate pain.

Catholics reported feeling peaceful and secure, as well as thinking about compassion and other religious concepts, while viewing the Virgin Mary. They rated that image as especially helpful in coping with pain. Non-religious participants reported no advantage from either image in dealing with pain.

Pain relief for Catholics viewing the Virgin Mary was accompanied by vigorous activity in the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Other researchers have linked this brain area to pain relief associated with emotional detachment and perceived control over pain. This brain response was not observed in the non-religious volunteers.

Any religious or non-religious belief system can provoke pain relief, Tracey proposes. Different religions may foster more or less pain in response to images of religious suffering, but peaceful images of worship probably evoke pain relief across religions, she says. A serene belief-related image causes a religious person to reinterpret the meaning of immediate pain, leading to a brain state that ratchets down pain intensity, Tracey posits.

Religious belief represents one of many ways to reappraise the meaning of pain, says psychologist Tor Wager of Columbia University. Emerging evidence suggests that successful placebo treatments activate the same brain region linked by Wiech’s team to pain relief in religious volunteers, he notes. “Anyone can create new, positive meanings for aversive events, but they have to find thoughts or interpretations that they truly believe in,” Wager holds.

Further work needs to determine whether religious volunteers derive brain-mediated pain relief because religious images simply engage or distract their attention or because the images spark religious thoughts and feelings, comments neuroscientist Matthew Lieberman of the University of California, Los Angeles.

“Car enthusiasts shown car pictures would report less pain under the first explanation, but not under the second,” Lieberman says.

Here we go again.....Lula and her RCC dogma. 

very astute Lucas. 

You may not know this, maybe you do, but you just nailed it.  We are NOT to pray to people.  Only God.  Jesus taught us how to pray...."Our Father who art in heaven..........never ever ever are we to pray to anyone but God.  This is what I keep saying about man-made traditions and doctrines that get swept into churches along with the truth.  I call it truth mixed with error. 

That's exactly what I say about almost everything in this subject.

well then, you have to sort it all out.  It's like a treasure hunt.  Throw away the bad untruths and keep the truths. 

I'm not trying to demonize lula, but it just perplex's me that a church that is designed to worship God...it's people would knowingly pray to a dead person. *shrugs* Maybe it's just me though.

Be well, ~Alderic

My IQ is 327.  I'm one of those people so bright they swing back around and become retarded.

Besides, we're all atheists.  Some of us just go one god further.

That's hilarious!

Exactly.

That explains a lot.

~Alderic

lula posts:

KFC POSTS:

kfc,

Of course, we should pray directly to Jesus Who is God and that's something the CC strongly teaches. But that doesn't mean  it's not also a good thing to ask other Christians in the Mystical Body of Christ, whether on earth or in Heaven, to pray to God for us.

Catholics believe in the fullness of Faith. Praying for each other is simple part of what Christians do. 1Tim 2:1-4 has St.Paul strongly encouraging Christians to intercede for many things and that's only one of his passages in which he teaches this. St.Paul directly asks others to pray for him.

Since the practice of asking others to pray for us is so highly recommended in Scripture if there were not benefits coming from it.

And as far as the Saints in Heaven, Jesus regularly supplied for one person based on another person's faith. It goes without saying that those in Heaven being "perfect souls" have greater devotion to God than anyone on earth.

Catholics believe we are on the same team as all those souls in Heaven as they too are part of the Mystical Body of Christ. ...we here on earth are the Chruch militant, and those souls in Heaven are the Chruch Triumphant...

That's just it....those souls in Heaven are not dead, but very much alive; experiencing eternal life...and I, through my Baptism, am united to them by the same God who loves us all. St.Paul wrote, "What will separate us from the love of Christ? Will anguish, distress,,,,,for I am convinced that neither death, nor life, ....will be able to separate us...." Rom. 8:35; 37-39.

KFC,

The Bible directs us to invoke those in heaven and ask them to pray with us. Psalm 103:20-21 for example, and 148 1-2 we praise the Lord God with all His angels. And Apoc. 8:3-4 and 5:8, we learn that the Saints pray for us.

The bottom line is that the Saints in Heaven offer to God the prayers of the those of us on earth. It's only common sense that we should ask our fellow Christians in Heaven to do what we already know them to be anxious and capable of doing.

But that's the thing Lula....they're praying to people...not God. It's my understanding that God is the sole/only person that is...worthy...or whatever, of praise. Isn't that a basis of any Jesus/God based faith?

all I can think of here Lucas is "out of the mouth of babes."   

You're not doing too badly for an agnostic.  I do think God has something in mind for you still.....  

Clearly, according to your dogma, God has something in mind for us all.  I might be supposed to say and do what I do so that other people react to it and do something different, i.e. something more in keeping with what you think people should think and act like.

Now, is my position in this equation not valuable?  Will I be punished for playing this greater part?

More stuff to think about.

In a way, I am giving up my eternal life so that others will gain theirs.  There's a story about some dude who did that.  Can't remember it though.

*chuckles and walks away*

lula posts:

With love in my heart for you all, on this one, you are missing the forest for the trees. The problem here is you have a small view of or an innaccurate view of the afterlife in heaven and how that is connected through prayer. The Saints in Heaven are those who have fully entered into God's glory. God hears the prayers we address to the Saints and their prayers also on our behalf. Those prayers added to our own give us additional claims to be heard by God in a favorable way.

The world is filled with the reality that God has answered prayers that were through the intercession of His Saints in Heaven.

Catholics believe that the Saints in Heaven pray for us on earth and it's a wonderful love that connects us even in and after death. Prayers to the Saints is right and useful and doesn't take away from praise to God.  

The Jews asked Moses to speak to God on their behalf. God said to Eliphaz, the Themanite, "My wrath is kindled against thee....but my servant Job shall pray for you. His face I will accept that folly be not imputed to you." Job 17:8. Earlier we read, "Call now if there will be any that will answer thee, and turn to some of the Saints."

Long after the death of Jeremias, Onais said of him, "this is the lover of his brethren, and of the people of Israel. this is he that prayeth much for the people, and for all the holy city, Jeremias the prophet of God."

St.James says that "the prayer of a just man availeth much". If his prayers are valuable, it's worthwhile to ask his prayers. If that's all right for a man on earth, then it's certainly all right when he is in Heaven with God.

Anyway, in the Apostles' Creed, it says "I believe in the Communion of Saints"... and to us Catholics that's not a meaningless doctrine.  

Absolutely true...God created every one of us for Himself and indeed, has something in mind for us...He told us He was in Heaven preparing our mansion....so to speak. We were made for God and God is our end.

He's tugging away at us all the time to take notice of Him and of each other.  No man is an island...we need each other.

Your life is not over till it's over..as long as you're alive you still have a ticket to ride...a race to run so to speak....your journey is your journey and God is always there putting others in your path...to help, love and encourage you.  Why be so fatalistic? so Hell bent?