Glossolalia and the Brain

The New York Times published this interesting summary article today on a study published in the journal Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging. In the study, researchers at the University of Pennsylvania took brain scans of several women while they participated in religious activities like singing hymns and speaking in tongues. According to the article, the researchers found “that their frontal lobes — the thinking, willful part of the brain through which people control what they do — were relatively quiet," while they spoke in tongues, "as were the language centers. The regions involved in maintaining self-consciousness were active. The women were not in blind trances, and it was unclear which region was driving the behavior.” In other words, the glossolalia does not come from the area of the brain that typically controls linguistic activity—it comes from somewhere else. Interesting.