In 2008 Brick Johnstone, a psychologist at the University of
Missouri, found that patients with damage to their right
parietal lobe (the bit on the side of your head above your ear)
tend to report being more spiritual than patients with damage in
other areas. In a new study, he’s looked at another series of 20
patients with traumatic brain injury in different parts of their
brain.Johnstone and colleagues found that, as before, patients
with damage to their right parietal lobe (as measured by their
ability to judge the orientation of lines and ability to
identify the fingers on their left hand) were more spiritual. In
particular, they tended to score higher on measures of
forgiveness (so they were less ‘self-oriented’) as well on
measures of spiritual transcendence (tending to agree with
statements like “I feel the presence of a higher power”). In
contrast, patients with damage to their frontal lobe (measured
using a kind of ‘connect the letters and numbers’ puzzle) tended
to be less likely to engage in privat