A new investigation adds more substance to the theory that certain areas of the brain play an important role in promoting spirituality, whereas others are actively involved in suppressing it. The conclusion was drawn after Italian scientists investigated a number of brain-surgery patients, who had had parts of their cortices removed for medical reasons. Researchers at the University of Udine, led by cognitive neuroscientist Cosimo Urgesi, were interested in investigating the neural basis of spirituality, Nature News reports.

Working together with a team of researchers from UU, Urgesi investigated a number of brain-tumor patients, before and after they underwent surgery. The post-operation interviews were conducted three to seven days after the procedure had taken place. The team immediately noticed a difference in the people's feeling of self-transcendence, and the root cause for this depended entirely on which portion of the brain had been extracted during the surgery. In cases where the tumor was located in the parietal part of the cortex, people reported feeling a heightened sense of spirituality.

Conversely, when the doctors removed portions of frontal cortices, the patients that underwent the procedure exhibited less religious or spiritual feelings than they had done before. “Self-transcendence used to be considered just by philosophers and crank new age people. This is the first really close-up study on spirituality. We're dealing with a complex phenomenon that's close to the essence of being human,” Sapienza University in Rome cognitive neuroscientist Salvatore Aglioti, also a co-author of the new study, explains. Details of the investigation appear in the latest issue of the respected scientific journal Neuron.

“The most surprising part was the rapidity of the change. This discovery shows that some complex personality traits are more malleable than previously thought,” Urgesi says. The left inferior parietal lobe and the right angular gyrus were determined to be regions of the brain that, when damaged, led to an increased level of spirituality. According to the experts, this new investigation lends further credence to the connection between mystic experiences and feeling detached from the body. These two areas play an important role in our perception of the spatial relation our bodies are in with the external world.