Wired for spirituality - Vital signs: news and trends for your well-being - spirituality connected to low number of neurotransmitter receptors - Brief Article

Natural Health, Feb, 2004

How your brain is wired to use the neurotransmitter serotonin may help explain why you are more or less vulnerable to spiritual experience, according to a study in the American Journal of Psychiatry. Researchers at the Karolinska Institute and Hospital in Stockholm, Sweden, found that men who scored high on measures of spiritual acceptance had fewer receptors for a certain type of serotonin.

It's the type associated with anxiety and fear, says Mona Lisa Schulz, M.D., a Yarmouth, Maine-based neuropsychiatrist. According to Schulz, who is also a medical intuitive, people with low levels of this neurotransmitter (or fewer receptors for it) may be more susceptible to subtle sensory perceptions.