Professor of epidemiology and psychiatry at Columbia University Dr. Myrna Weissman told Reuters Health "Our beliefs and our moods are reflected in our brain and with new imaging techniques we can begin to see this.. The brain is an extraordinary organ. It not only controls, but is controlled by our moods."
While scientists can make the link between being religious and having a thicker brain they say the link is not valid in the opposite direction, meaning that people that do have a ticker brain are not necessarily all religious and/or spiritual.
More than one hundred people with ages between 18 and 54 participated in the study. Among the questions from their questionnaires researchers asked them how often did they attend church services over the last five years and how important was spirituality or religion to them. Scientists have also took an image of their brains in order to see how thick their brain outer layer was. Since some of the participants for this study had a family record of depression, they were considered to be at a higher risk for the disorder. As a conclusion the study revealed that spirituality or religion (not necessarily church attendance) is directly linked to having a thicker cortex.
