Mental Conditioning and Health: A Cultural and Neurophysiological Study

心理调理，比如通过一些宗教活动培养出来的心理调理，会影响参与者的心理习惯和身体健康吗？这个问题的答案还不清楚。例如，一些研究表明，冥想改变了人类的注意力，改变了人体的免疫反应、血压和其他生理标志。其他研究发现，积极做礼拜可能会改善一个人的健康。一些研究发现，每周去教堂做礼拜平均可以延长会众两年的寿命。然而，批评人士指出，据报道，健康状况的改善可能只是放松(冥想的情况下)和社会支持(去教堂的情况下)的结果，与这些做法发生的宗教背景无关。为了帮助解决这一争论，人类学家Tanya Marie Luhrmann将使用科学方法来研究基于宗教的训练对认知表现的影响。鲁尔曼和她的团队将专注于一组宗教从业者，他们为密集的祈祷练习进行培训。研究人员将通过密集和重复的采访与神经科学评估相结合的方式从这一人群中收集数据，评估使用的是经过测试的脑电神经生理学方案。他们将从经验丰富的从业者和新手那里收集数据，看看那些经验更丰富的人是否表现不同。这项研究的发现将有助于健康研究人员更好地理解所报告的精神修养经历是否有神经生理学基础，以及训练是否会影响这些经历。这一奖项反映了NSF的法定使命，通过使用基金会的智力价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Does mental conditioning, such as that fostered by some religious practices, affect the mental habits and physical health of those who participate? The answer to this question is unclear. For example, some research has suggested that meditation changes human attention and alters the body's immune response, blood pressure, and other physiological markers. Other research has found that active church going may improve one's health. Weekly church attendance has been found in some studies to add two years on average to the length of the congregant's life. However, critics point out that the reported improved health could result simply from relaxation (in the case of meditation) and social support (in the case of church going), and have nothing to do with the religious contexts in which these practices take place. To help resolve this debate, anthropologist Tanya Marie Luhrmann will use scientific measures to examine the effects of religion-based training on cognitive performance.Dr. Luhrmann and her team will focus on one group of religious practitioners who train for intensive prayer practice. The researchers will collect data from this population by combining intensive and repeated interviewing with a neuroscience evaluation using a tested EEG neurophysiological protocol. They will collect data from both highly experienced practitioners and novices to see whether those who are more experienced perform differently. Findings from the research will help health researchers better understand if there is a neurophysiological basis to reported experiences of mental cultivation and whether training affects these experiences. Findings also will contribute to social science theory about the interactive effects of human culture and biology.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.