Are we wired to believe?

A nice guy commented on an Instagram pic I posted about Dulce.

(BTW I'm @esotericsynapticevents if you want to follow me in Instagram. See all my inane pics and such.)

"Is that the actual base?" he asked about the pic of Mt. Archuletta in Dulce. "What are the coordinates?" 

I replied that the pic was from Google Earth and that in truth, there probably isn't much of a "base" there.

"Yeah," he said. "I hear most if it is underground."

Not what I meant but he raises an interesting point. Even if I presented all of the evidence to the contrary, is there a subset of the population who would still cling to stories of alien firefights and "Nightmare Hall?" I came across an article that suggests the answer might be "yes" and the reason being has its roots in neurology.

The article dealt with people in Hawaii who claimed to have been alien abductees. This has long been part of the UFO mythos, including experiencers who maintain that their brains have been "chipped" to send and receive messages and direction from the alleged ETs. The study found that these patients did indeed share physical commonalities.

Each of their brains showed abnormalities in the parietal lobe. This is the part of the brain that takes what we see and hear and synthesizes it into higher order thinking. In fact, the brainwave activity of these patients bore similarities to other patients who had suffered traumatic injuries to this lobe of their brains. The leader of the study was quick to point out that he could not definitively say this is what happened to the self-confessed abductees, only that the brain patterns were similar.

Now I am aware that I am somewhat comparing apples and oranges here by applying this particular study to popular UFO stories in general, but I can't help but do it anyway. What could there be in our brains that continues to hold on to stories like Dulce even after being presented with all the evidence to the contrary? Why? What propels someone like me on such quixotic endeavors? Because it's fun? Because it grants us a participatory role in modern folklore? That last point certainly intrigues me but I'm drawn right now to how the actual construction of the brain plays into this phenomenon and how we may (or may not) perceive it.

Since I've been reading and listening to the work of Terence McKenna, I find myself now delving into accounts of encounters with "discarnate entities" while experiencers have taken hallucinogens such as LSD. Are these cases of an awakened brain brought to a higher state of consciousness or a brain entirely scrambled and distorting every perception due to drugs?

As always, more to come on this story.

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