Tom Rees - The transcendant temporal lobe

Tom Rees is the blogger behind the very cool [epiphenom] site - (the science of religion and non-belief). This post looks at the "self-transcendence" element of Cloninger personality model - it's an interesting bit of research that pinpoints (sort of) how self-transcendence manifests in denser tissue in specific parts of the brain.

The transcendant temporal lobe

By Tom Rees on Saturday, December 11, 2010

The temporal lobe of the brain - the bit just above where your ear is - keeps cropping up in studies of spirituality.

In this latest one, Peter Van Schuerbeek and colleagues from the University of Brussels have looked at the volume of grey matter in different parts of the brain in young women.

They were interested to see how the volumes of different parts of the brain correlate with personality, and in particular testing a particular model of personality called the Cloninger personality model.

This model has four temperament dimensions (harm avoidance, novelty seeking, reward dependence and persistence) and three character dimensions (self-directedness, cooperativeness and self-transcendence).

The "self-transcendence" component is related to the feeling that you are part of a broader universe in some deep way, and includes tendencies towards spiritualism.

They found that women with a high sense of self-transcendence had more grey matter in the right-hand side of the brain in the region of the middle temporal gyrus and the inferior parietal gyrus (the images on the left of the picture).

They had less grey matter in the left-hand side of the brain in the region of the inferior temporal gyrus and the sub gyral (in the parietal lobe). They also had less grey matter in the superior frontal gyrus.

All this is intriguing because other research has shown that damage to the right-hand temporal and parietal lobes can lead to increased spirituality. That may be because these regions are involved in spatial awareness.

Now, that doesn't match precisely with these findings in Belgian women (who have more grey matter in this region. But perhaps there is some similar mechanism at work!

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Van Schuerbeek P, Baeken C, De Raedt R, De Mey J, & Luypaert R (2010). Individual differences in local gray and white matter volumes reflect differences in temperament and character: A voxel-based morphometry study in healthy young females. Brain research PMID: 21126511

This article by Tom Rees was first published on Epiphenom. It is licensed under Creative Commons.

Tags: Cloninger personality model, Tom Rees, Epiphenom, religion, non-belief, brain, Psychology, Spirituality, Self-transcendence, Peter Van Schuerbeek, temperament dimensions, harm avoidance, novelty seeking, reward dependence, persistence, character dimensions, self-directedness, cooperativeness, self-transcendence, middle temporal gyrus, inferior parietal gyrus