Dr. Mario Beauregard, PhD., is currently associate researcher at
University of Montreal (Departments of Psychology and Radiology,
Neuroscience Research Center). He is the author of more than 100
publications in neuroscience, psychology and psychiatry. Because of his
research into the neuroscience of consciousness, he was selected by the
World Media Net to be among the 'One Hundred Pioneers of the 21st
Century'. Dr. Beauregard’s groundbreaking work on the neurobiology of
emotion and mystical experience at the University of Montreal has
received international media coverage. In 2006, he received the Joel F.
Lubar award for his contribution to the field of neurotherapy. The
National Film Board of Canada has recently produced a documentary film
about his work titled The Mystical Brain. In September 2007, Dr.
Beauregard published a new book titled The Spiritual Brain (Publisher:
Harper Collins), in collaboration with science writer Denyse O’Leary.
“Never shrinking from controversy,
and sometimes deliberately provoking it, this book serves as a lively
introduction to a field where neuroscience, philosophy, and
secular/spiritual cultural wars are unavoidably intermingled.”—Publishers Weekly
Do You Have a Soul? Neuroscientist Mario Beauregard Says Yes!
The
belief that the mind does not exist apart from the brain dominated the
twentieth century. But can we really dismiss our thoughts and feelings,
or furthermore, our religious and spiritual experiences, as simply
outcomes of the firing synapses of our brain? In THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN, authors Dr. Mario Beauregard
and Denyse O’Leary present the groundbreaking evidence that the mind
and our belief in the human soul cannot be simply reduced to
physiological reactions in the brain.
Most neuroscientists are
committed to the view that mystical experiences are simply the result
of random neurons firing, or ‘delusions created by the brain’. THE SPIRITUAL BRAIN
takes another approach, powerfully arguing for what many in science are
unwilling to consider—that people actually contact a reality outside
themselves during intense spiritual experiences. Beauregard uses the
most sophisticated technology to peer inside the brains of Carmelite
nuns during a profound spiritual state. His results and a variety of
other lines of evidence lead him to the surprising conclusion that
spiritual experiences are not a figment of the mind or a delusion produced by a dysfunctional brain.
