Behind a window in an adjacent room, a splayed-out cauliflower pattern appears on a computer screen in black-and-white. Its Petersons brain. And its probably the last thing about this exercise that will be so simply shaded.

From Petersons perspective, the next hour will be spent in service, like the day she packed donated eyeglasses to send to Zimbabwe. But the ardent Mormon also knows she could be adding to a centuries-old debate about God and science.

So she says a silent prayer: I hope they get what they need.

Other animals have hierarchies, organized behaviors, even a semblance of norms. Only humans have religion and science. And the two have seldom been on civil terms.

Jeff Anderson and Julie Korenberg, neuroscientists at the University of Utah, want to change that. Theyre among a growing number of scientists aiming their fields most sophisticated machinery at religious cognition.

It amazes me how one of the most profound influences on human behavior is virtually completely unstudied, Anderson said. We think about how much this drives peoples behavior, and yet we dont know the first thing about where in the brain thats even registered.

The researchers want to see more than religions registry on the brain. They want to know whether it differs across sects, or by intensity of belief. They want to see what genes it activates, what hormones it releases, and how it relates to social behaviors. Can the same basic circuitry produce Mother Teresa and the 9/11 hijacker Mohamed Atta? If so, how?

To approach even speculative answers to such questions, the researchers have to capture what goes on in the brain of a believer during a religious moment.

Right now, that depends on whether a maw of helium-cooled superconducting magnets can become Auriel Petersons personal church.

The 26-year-old community college student lies still, clears her mind. The machine whirs and clicks, taking rapid-fire snapshots of the flux of blood through billions of neurons.

Continued here:
Scientists seek your brain on religion