Neuroscience: Religion shrinks your brain. Sure. - O’Leary

;)  In "Does religion shrink your brain?" (MercatorNet, August 1, 2011), we learn:

Over the past couple of weeks we have looked at studies suggesting that religion rots your intelligence and that religion rots teens’ intelligence, and, not surprisingly, both theses fell apart. Now here is a different, more solid proposition:

In "Religious factors and hippocampal atrophy in late life," Amy Owen and colleagues at Duke University found that in late life there was greater atrophy in the hippocampus (associated with memory) among individuals who have been "born again," as well as those with no religious affiliation.

Which attracted the attention of a Scientific American neuroscientist columnist. More.

Denyse O'Leary is co-author of The Spiritual Brain. Follow me at Twitter!