Repost from earlier thread on dopamine (interconnectivity network):

"Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on
your brain chemistry. People with high levels of dopamine are more
likely to find significance in coincidences, and pick out meaning and
patterns where there are none.

Peter Brugger, a neurologist from the University Hospital in Zurich,
Switzerland, has suggested before that people who believe in the
paranormal often seem to be more willing to see patterns or
relationships between events where sceptics perceive nothing.

To find out what could be triggering these thoughts, Brugger persuaded
20 self-confessed believers and 20 sceptics to take part in an
experiment.

Brugger and his colleagues asked the two groups to distinguish real
faces from scrambled faces as the images were flashed up briefly on a
screen. The volunteers then did a similar task, this time identifying
real words from made-up ones.

Seeing and believing

Believers were much more likely than sceptics to see a word or face when
there was not one, Brugger revealed last week at a meeting of the
Federation of European Neuroscience Societies in Paris. However,
sceptics were more likely to miss real faces and words when they
appeared on the screen.

The researchers then gave the volunteers a drug called L-dopa, which is
usually used to relieve the symptoms of Parkinson's disease by
increasing levels of dopamine in the brain.

Both groups made more mistakes under the influence of the drug, but the
sceptics became more likely to interpret scrambled words or faces as the
real thing.

That suggests that paranormal thoughts are associated with high levels
of dopamine in the brain, and the L-dopa makes sceptics less sceptical.
"Dopamine seems to help people see patterns," says Brugger.
**
Plateau effect

However, the single dose of the drug did not seem to increase the
tendency of believers to see coincidences or relationships between the
words and images.

That could mean that there is a plateau effect for them, with more
dopamine having relatively little effect above a certain threshold, says
Peter Krummenacher, one of Brugger's colleagues.

Dopamine is an important chemical involved in the brain's reward and
motivation system, and in addiction. Its role in the reward system may
be to help us decide whether information is relevant or irrelevant, says
Françoise Schenk from the University of Lausanne in Switzerland."

http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99992589

> "Whether or not you believe in the paranormal may depend entirely on
> your brain chemistry. People with high levels of dopamine are more
> likely to find significance in coincidences, and pick out meaning and
> patterns where there are none.

So would this theory explain, it it were true, why two siblings out of
three (all to the same biological parent pairing) don't believe in
jack sh*t and are alcoholics, and the one who's prepared to believe in
angels, universal coincidences and is dabbling with re-entering the
church after almost thirty years can take a drink or leave it for as
long as it needs to be left?

If so, sure would correlate with my immediate family.

C.

On - Mon, Aug 2, 2004, 8:57pm (EDT-3) cheggers2004@hotmail.com
(Cheggers) wrote:

> So would this theory explain, it it were true, why
> two siblings out of three (all to the same biological
> parent pairing) don't believe in jack sh*t and are
> alcoholics, and the one who's prepared to believe
> in angels, universal coincidences and is dabbling
> with re-entering the church after almost thirty
> years can take a drink or leave it for as long as it
> needs to be left?

Yes. That network is like an interconnectivity of positive brain
chemistry, (which some call spirituality). It helps a person see
intricate patterns of relationship, look at things from different
perspectives, be creative, and feel joy in simple things. It's not
black or white thinking, it's like thinking through a prism.

Alcohol shreds that network.