Spiritual Experience and the Default Mode Network

Ecstasy, awe, peace, the experience of the insight that "all is One", a sense of being "outside of time", the feeling that you experienced something sacred and holy, a gain of insightful knowledge experienced at an intuitive level…Trippy, right? Well, these are all elements from the Revised 30-item Mystical Experience Questionnaire [1] that is based on the seven dimensions of mystical experience, described by the British philosopher Walter Stace in 1960 [2]. This questionnaire has been used in the study of mystical experiences elicited by psychotropic drugs, like psilocybin and LSD (see article on page 6).

A Sufi in Ecstasy in a Landscap, source: Wikimedia Commons

Ceremonial use of hallucinogenic drugs dates back many thousands of years and is still part of many indigenous cultures of America (see also page 7). Although the reasons for using these substances in the ceremonies are varied, the goal is usually to facilitate the occurrence of a spiritual experience. Mystical or spiritual experiences occur also in the absence of drugs and have been reported inside and outside religious contexts. Meditation practices (page 5), for example, can lead to the experience of unity or pure awareness. For that reason, psychotropic drugs and meditative states have been used as models to study the neural correlates of mystical experience.

What Is the Default Mode Network?
Changes in the activity and connectivity of the default mode network (DMN) have been identified in studies where psychotropic drugs were used to elicit mystical experiences. This same network also shows changes during different meditation practices [3]. The default network is pretty much like the screen-saver of your brain. It is the network that gets active when you are not engaging in any activity that requires external focus, but rather just resting and letting your mind wander. The main components of the DMN are the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC), the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC), the parahippocampal cortex (PHC) and the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) [4]. All these areas have a high density of serotonin 5-HT receptors, which are the targets of psychotropic drugs.

How attached are you to your ego?

What is interesting about this network is that it appears to be involved in the perception of self. Since it integrates information from different areas of the brain, it appears to be giving a constant update on self-awareness. The PHC, for example, stores episodic memory [5], while the mPFC and PCC overlap with social cognition and self-referential areas of the brain [6]. These areas are active when you are entertained in your own internal dialog, thinking about yourself or other people’s thoughts and intentions. The IPL, on the other hand, has been implicated in the processing of time perception [7]. Brain imaging studies using psilocybin, LSD or mescaline, as well as studies that looked at the brain of experienced meditators, found both a decreased activity and decreased connectivity of the DMN. Therefore, it is hypothesized that a decrease in the connectivity of the IPL with the rest of the DMN mediate the feeling of timelessness and spacelessness, while the decreased connectivity in the PCC and mPFC mediate the feelings of unity and ego dissolution [3].

On Cloud Nine?
It is always exciting when common neural correlates can be found for such a broad and subjective human phenomenon like the spiritual experience. However, the mystery of mystical experiences still remains. It is interesting, for example, that these transient experiences of ego dissolution come with long- (often life-long) lasting feelings of insight and positive behavioral changes. How can a momentary detachment from our persistent self-awareness give us the feeling of an encounter with an ultimate truth?

Spiritual Yoga, source: pixabay

Interestingly, the salvation or liberation from the self is a recurrent idea in many religions. To become part of the Absolute, reach Nirvana or be in God’s glory is the ultimate goal of the major religions of the world. Religious/spiritual practices aim to achieve this state through self-transformation and self-renunciation. Certain attitudes like the distancing from practical life and detachment from one’s and others’ needs and affections can facilitate the emergence of spiritual experiences [8]. What about you? Have you been close to a mystical experience?

[1] Barrett et al, J Psychopharmacol, 2015
[2] Stace, McMillan Press NY, 1960
[3] Barrett and Griffiths, Curr Topics Behav Neurosci, 2017
[4] Fox et al, PNAS, 2005
[5] Ranganath and Ritchey, Nat Rev Neurosci, 2012
[6] Shilbach et al, Conscious Cogn, 2008
[7] Battelli et al, Trends Cogn Sci, 2007
[8] Steinbock, Indiana University Press, 2007


by Silvina Romero Suárez,  PhD Student AG Infante

This article originally appeared September 2017 in CNS Volume 10, Issue 3, Spirituality in Science

Looking for God in the Brain: Neural Correlates of Religiosity

What makes humans religious? There must be something about our brain that makes religion a common denominator of humanity. Is there some area in our brain dedicated to the perception of the divine? Or maybe it is all just in our minds. Studying the neural correlates of religious behavior is no easy task, but some scientists have dared to address these questions.

To Believe Or Not Believe, Is That the Question?

How can we study the neural underpinnings of religion, this complex cultural phenomenon that affects many aspects of human behavior? Well, we can start by asking people if they believe in it. It is assumed that having faith is a prerequisite to comprehend and find relevance in religious activity. Whether or not faith and belief are the same thing is an ongoing debate in theology. Nevertheless, it is obvious that religious people believe that the specific word view provided by their religion is true. Therefore, an important area of research has focused on the neural correlates of what is happening in the brain when you judge a statement as true or false.
Interestingly, in a study in which subjects were asked to rate different kinds of statements as true, false or undecided, agreement generally activated the same brain area: the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) [1]. The vmPFC is strongly connected to the limbic system and incorporates emotional and reward associations to factual knowledge and reasoning tasks. This means that the act of agreeing with a statement, be it “2+2=4 “or “Jesus is the son of God”, activates the same area of the brain linked with positive emotions. In contrast, rejecting a statement as false differentially activated areas associated with feelings of disgust, such as the anterior insula, an area involved in the perception of pain and unpleasant odors.

A spiritual side to the brain?

In another study [2], the same group compared the brain activity of Christians and non-believers when agreeing or disagreeing with religious and non-religious statements. The answers (either true or false) to non-religious statements activated temporal areas of the brain associated with memory retrieval like the hippocampus, while the answers to religious statements activated similar areas of the brain found for disagreement in the previous study (likely from non-believers). In addition, the posterior medial cortex was activated, an area that is associated with the evaluation of self. That means that the participants were affirming their identity when agreeing or disagreeing with religious statements.

courtesy of Hector Salaza

Also interesting was the response to blasphemous statements like “the Biblical God is a myth”. The ventral striatum, a critical component of the reward system, was highly activated when believers rejected the blasphemy as false as well as when non-believers accepted the blasphemy as true. These findings make sense as we all know how Christians enjoy rejecting blasphemies while non-believers seem to take special pleasure in affirming them.

Talking To God – As a Friend
A key belief across religions is in the capacity to communicate with their God(s) through prayer. It was shown that praying, both through "official" religious texts and personal prayer, activates the reward system, specifically the dorsal striatum, which is associated with the expectation of future rewards and habit maintenance [3]. Interestingly, personal prayer activates areas of social cognition. In a study that compared personal prayer versus the Lord’s Prayer (an important part of Christian religious ceremonies) or making wishes to Santa Claus in committed Christians (who believed in God but not in Santa), it was found that personal praying differentially activates the temporoparietal junction, temporopolar region and the anterior mPFC. These three regions have been described as the “theory of mind” (ToM) areas, which are active when thinking about other people’s emotions and intentions [4]. This indicates that personal prayers imitate everyday social communication with real persons and provides God with intent and reciprocity (all the participants affirmed that God answered their prayer in some way). Indeed, it was found in another study that the activation of the ToM areas occurred before the activation of other non-ToM areas when accepting religious statements [5].
So far, no "God brain area" has been found. However, these findings tell us that religious people are no different than non-religious in the process of believing or disbelieving, which always comes with an emotional tone. In addition, it seems that religious thoughts are strongly linked to identity and social cognition. Interestingly, this supports theories from evolutionary psychology that religiousness might have emerged as a by-product of increasingly sophisticated ToM areas [6]. In other words: if there really is a God or other holy figure(s), it might just as well be that we believe in them "by (evolutionary) chance".

[1] Harris et al, Ann Neurol, 2008
[2] Harris et al, Plos One, 2009
[3] Schjoedt et al, Neurosci Lett, 2008
[4] Schjoedt et al, Soc Cogn Affect Neurosci, 2009
[5] Kapogiannis et al, Brain Connect, 2014
[6] Boyer, Trends Cogn Sci, 2003

by Silvina Romero Suárez,  PhD Student AG Infante

This article originally appeared September 2017 in CNS Volume 10, Issue 3, Spirituality in Science