Mental Conditioning and Health: A Cultural and Neurophysiological Study

心理条件反射，比如一些宗教活动所培养的心理条件反射，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，冥想可以改变人的注意力，改变身体的免疫反应、血压和其他生理指标。另一项研究发现，经常去教堂可以改善一个人的健康。一些研究发现，每周去教堂做礼拜能使会众的寿命平均增加两年。然而，批评者指出，报告的健康改善可能仅仅是放松（在冥想的情况下）和社会支持（在去教堂的情况下）的结果，与这些活动发生的宗教背景无关。为了解决这个争论，人类学家Tanya Marie Luhrmann将使用科学的方法来检验宗教训练对认知能力的影响。鲁尔曼和她的团队将重点关注一组接受密集祈祷训练的宗教从业者。研究人员将通过结合密集和重复的访谈，以及使用经过测试的脑电图神经生理学协议的神经科学评估，从这些人群中收集数据。他们将从经验丰富的从业者和新手那里收集数据，看看经验更丰富的从业者的表现是否不同。这项研究的发现将帮助健康研究人员更好地理解，是否有神经生理学基础来报告心理培养的经历，以及训练是否会影响这些经历。研究结果也将有助于社会科学理论的人类文化和生物的相互作用的影响。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识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.