A team at Oxford University has based its findings on an experiment in which 12 Roman Catholics and 12 atheists were "tortured" with electric shocks as they studied two paintings - Virgin Mary and Leonardo da Vinci's Lady With An Ermine.
The subjects spent half-an-hour inside an MRI scanner, receiving a series of 20 electric shocks in four sessions and each time they had to rate how much it hurt on a scale of 0 to 100 as they looked at the paintings.
The researchers hoped that the face of the Virgin Mary would induce a religious state of mind in the believers, while da Vinci's painting was chosen because it did not look dissimilar and would be calming.
The scientists found that the Catholics seemed to be able to block out much of the pain. ...more
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