..by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldman. Regardless of how it may sound, this book doesn't seem to be biased one way or the other:
No matter how open-minded you are, and no matter how tolerant or compassionate you think you are, there will always remain the remnants of a neurological exclusiveness and fundamentalism in your brain—a wolf that will respond with fear and anger to all that is different and new.
The emotional circuits of our limbic brain have less plasticity than the frontal lobe. For example, we all get angry or frightened in the same way, but everyone experiences love in surprisingly different ways. Still, it’s not fair to call our reptilian brain primitive, for it too has coevolved with the frontal lobe and now has the ability to adapt and respond with increased appropriateness to new situations and stress.
To bridge this gap between our “old” and “new” brains, a special structure appears to have recently evolved—the anterior cingulate. As I mentioned earlier, it connects out emotions with our cognitive skills, playing a crucial role in emotional self-control focused problem-solving, and error recognition. Most important, it integrates the activity of different parts of the brain in a way that allows self-consciousness to emerge, especially as it applies to how we see ourselves in relation to the world.
The anterior cingulate acts as a kind of fulcrum that controls and balances the activity between the frontal lobes and limbic system.
When the amygdala becomes active, the anterior cingulate shuts down, which allows your reptilian brain to run the show. Empathy and intuition decline, and you lose your ability to accurately assess how other people feel.
On the other hand, if your frontal lobe becomes active, you stimulate the anterior cingulate, which slows down activity in the amygdala. Thus, logic and reason subdue anger and fear. A strong frontal-anterior cingulate circuit also inhibits anxiety, depression, and rage.
... meditation simultaneously reduces stress while stimulating activity in the anterior cingulate, this supports our premise that spiritual practices enhance social awareness and compassion.
Princeton University professor Susan Fiske explains, if you want to decrease your natural tendency toward prejudice and out-group bias, don’t “categorize” yourself. People, she states, can get beyond—and even prevent—“their automatic use of category-driven impression formation and decision making.” You’ll do your brain, and society, a lot of good if you don’t identify yourself as a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or atheist. Even labels like Democrat, Republican, or American can trigger an unconscious “us versus them” mentality in your brain.