Neural correlates of religious experience
Authors: Azari, Nina P.; Nickel, Janpeter1; Wunderlich, Gilbert; Niedeggen, Michael2; Hefter, Harald1; Tellmann, Lutz3; Herzog, Hans3; Stoerig, Petra2; Birnbacher, Dieter4; Seitz, Rüdiger J.1
Source: European Journal of Neuroscience, Volume 13, Number 8, April 2001 , pp. 1649-1652(4)
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
Abstract:
The commonsense view of religious experience is that it is a preconceptual, immediate affective event. Work in philosophy and psychology, however, suggest that religious experience is an attributional cognitive phenomenon. Here the neural correlates of a religious experience are investigated using functional neuroimaging. During religious recitation, self-identified religious subjects activated a frontal-parietal circuit, composed of the dorsolateral prefrontal, dorsomedial frontal and medial parietal cortex. Prior studies indicate that these areas play a profound role in sustaining reflexive evaluation of thought. Thus, religious experience may be a cognitive process which, nonetheless, feels immediate.Keywords: brain; human; neuroimaging; PET; religion
Document Type: Short communication
DOI: 10.1046/j.0953-816x.2001.01527.x
Affiliations: 1: Department of Neurology, University Hospital Düsseldorf, Germany 2: Department of Physiological Psychology, Heinrich-Heine-University, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany 3: Institute of Medicine, Research Center, D-52407 Jülich, Germany 4: Philosophical Institute, Heinrich-Heine-University, D-40225 Düsseldorf, Germany

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