Emory University has recently published research (The price of your soul) demonstrating that

1. the parts of the brain dealing with integrity and self-definition ("sacred values") can be distinguished from the parts of the brain dealing with exploratory or evaluative ("costs-versus-benefits") analysis, and
2. culture (exemplified by the media) and the brain transform each other.

The latter implies that culture, namely, the media, can cause physical, evolutionary, changes in the brains of its audience – i.e., your brain is being programmed, biologically changed, without your knowledge! Excerpts:

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"Our experiment found that the realm of the sacred – whether it's a strong religious belief, a national identity or a code of ethics – is a distinct cognitive process," says Gregory Berns, director of the Center for Neuropolicy at Emory University and lead author of the study. The results were published in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.

Sacred values prompt greater activation of an area of the brain associated with rules-based, right-or-wrong thought processes, the study showed, as opposed to the regions linked to processing of costs-versus-benefits. Berns headed a team that included economists and information scientists from Emory University, a psychologist from the New School for Social Research and anthropologists from the Institute Jean Nicod in Paris, France. The research was funded by the U.S. Office of Naval Research, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research and the National Science Foundation.

"We've come up with a method to start answering scientific questions about how people make decisions involving sacred values, and that has major implications if you want to better understand what influences human behavior across countries and cultures," Berns says. "We are seeing how fundamental cultural values are represented in the brain." …

The brain imaging data showed a strong correlation between sacred values and activation of the neural systems associated with evaluating rights and wrongs (the left temporoparietal junction) and semantic rule retrieval (the left ventrolateral prefrontal cortex), but not with systems associated with reward.

"Most public policy is based on offering people incentives and disincentives," Berns says. "Our findings indicate that it's unreasonable to think that a policy based on costs-and-benefits analysis will influence people's behavior when it comes to their sacred personal values, because they are processed in an entirely different brain system than incentives."

Research participants who reported more active affiliations with organizations, such as churches, sports teams, musical groups and environmental clubs, had stronger brain activity in the same brain regions that correlated to sacred values. "Organized groups may instill values more strongly through the use of rules and social norms," Berns says.

The experiment also found activation in the amygdala region, a brain region associated with emotional reactions, but only in cases where participants refused to take cash to state the opposite of what they believe. "Those statements represent the most repugnant items to the individual," Berns says, "and would be expected to provoke the most arousal, which is consistent with the idea that when sacred values are violated, that induces moral outrage." …

"As culture changes, it affects our brains, and as our brains change, that affects our culture. You can't separate the two," Berns says. "We now have the means to start understanding this relationship, and that's putting the relatively new field of cultural neuroscience onto the global stage."

Future conflicts over politics and religion will likely play out biologically, Berns says. Some cultures will choose to change their biology, and in the process, change their culture, he notes. He cites the battles over women's reproductive rights and gay marriage as ongoing examples.

Since the research finds that it is unreasonable to assume that public policy based on incentives and disincentives will change sacred values, this – yet again – confirms our contention that the only way toward peace in the Middle East (not to mention many other conflicts) is by addressing the underpinnings of the relevant core sacred values – Torah vs pseudo-"Abrahamic" displacement theologies.

Israel's conflict is, exclusively, irreversibly and inescapably, a religious (sacred at its core) conflict; and, therefore, can only be fought effectively – i.e. won – by means of tolerant, non-violent, superior-informed, determined and firm debate. True, defense requires violence. But, when we're not being physically attacked, superior apologetics and polemics constitute the only path to peace.

Ghettoizing with "Don't ask!" and extorting Jews not to discuss the subject, the approach for the last two millennia and today's misguided "counter-missionaries," is not the path to intelligent apologetics or polemics – i.e., Light. It's the path to ignorance and darkness. And sons of darkness…

Denying this inescapable truth, and refusing to address its core fundamentals, ensures that the conflict will continue to burn, perpetually refueled and reignited. How many time do you have to see it over a couple of millennia to finally learn that simple lesson?