---
title: "Neuroscience of religion"
chunk: 3/3
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuroscience_of_religion"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:32:02.107948+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

=== Neuropsychology and Neuroimaging ===
The first researcher to note and catalog the abnormal experiences associated with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) was neurologist Norman Geschwind, who noted a set of religious behavioral traits associated with TLE seizures. These include hypergraphia, hyperreligiosity, reduced sexual interest, fainting spells, and pedantism, often collectively ascribed to a condition known as Geschwind syndrome.
Vilayanur S. Ramachandran explored the neural basis of the hyperreligiosity seen in TLE using the galvanic skin response (GSR), which correlates with emotional arousal, to determine whether the hyperreligiosity seen in TLE was due to an overall heightened emotional state or was specific to religious stimuli. Ramachandran presented two subjects with neutral, sexually arousing and religious words while measuring GSR. Ramachandran was able to show that patients with TLE showed enhanced emotional responses to the religious words, diminished responses to the sexually charged words, and normal responses to the neutral words. This study was presented as an abstract at a neuroscience conference and referenced in Ramachandran's book, Phantoms in the Brain, which was not published as a peer-reviewed scientific article.
Research by Mario Beauregard at the University of Montreal, using fMRI on Carmelite nuns, has purported to show that religious and spiritual experiences include several brain regions and not a single 'God spot'. As Beauregard has said, "There is no God spot in the brain. Spiritual experiences are complex, like intense experiences with other human beings." The neuroimaging was conducted when the nuns were asked to recall past mystical states, not while actually undergoing them; "subjects were asked to remember and relive (eyes closed) the most intense mystical experience ever felt in their lives as a member of the Carmelite Order."
A 2011 study by researchers at the Duke University Medical Center found hippocampal atrophy is associated with older adults who report life-changing religious experiences, as well as those who are "born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation".
A 2016 study using fMRI found "a recognizable feeling central to ... (Mormon)... devotional practice was reproducibly associated with activation in nucleus accumbens, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and frontal attentional regions. Nucleus accumbens activation preceded peak spiritual feelings by 1–3 s and was replicated in four separate tasks. ... The association of abstract ideas and brain reward circuitry may interact with frontal attentional and emotive salience processing, suggesting a mechanism whereby doctrinal concepts may come to be intrinsically rewarding and motivate behavior in religious individuals."

=== Psychopharmacology ===
Some scientists working in the field hypothesize that the basis of spiritual experience arises in neurological physiology.  Speculative suggestions have been made that an increase of dimethyltryptamine (DMT) levels in the pineal gland contribute to spiritual experiences. It has also been suggested that stimulation of the temporal lobe by psychoactive ingredients of magic mushrooms mimics religious experiences. This hypothesis has found laboratory validation with respect to psilocybin.

== See also ==
Bicameral mentality
Cognitive science of religion
Psychedelic crisis
Religion and schizophrenia
Scholarly approaches to mysticism
Transpersonal psychology

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Begley, Sharon (7 May 2001). "Your Brain on Religion: Mystic visions or brain circuits at work?". Newsweek. Archived from the original on 2 December 2005 – via Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics.
Hitt, Jack (1 November 1999). "This Is Your Brain on God". Wired.
Neher, Andrew (1990). The Psychology of Transcendence (2nd ed.). Dover. ISBN 0-486-26167-0.
Newberg, Andrew B. (1999). The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Minneapolis: Fortress Press. ISBN 0-8006-3163-3.
McNamara, Patrick (2009). The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 978-0-521-88958-2.
Powell, Victoria (2007). "Neurotheology: With God in Mind". Clinically Psyched. Archived from the original on 14 June 2013.
Roberts, Thomas B. (2006). "Chemical Input — Religious Output: Entheogens". In McNamara, Robert (ed.). Where God and Science Meet: The Psychology of Religious Experience. Vol. 3. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers. ISBN 978-0-275-98791-6.
Runehov, Anne L. C. (2007). Sacred or Neural? The Potential of Neuroscience to Explain Religious Experience. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck and Ruprecht. ISBN 978-3-525-56980-1.
Vliegenthart, Dave. "Can Neurotheology Explain Religion?" Archiv Für Religionspsychologie / Archive for the Psychology of Religion 33, no. 2 (2011): 137–71. http://www.jstor.org/stable/23919331.
‌Geertz, Armin W. "Brain, Body and Culture: A Biocultural Theory of Religion." Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, vol. 22, no. 4, 2010, pp. 304–21. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/23555751.
Taylor, Jill Bolte. "My Stroke of Insight." TED Talks, 2019.
Carvour HM, Radke AK and French NS (2025): A review of the neuroscience of religion: an overview of the field, its limitations, and future interventions. Front. Neurosci. 19:1587794. doi: 10.3389/fnins.2025.1587794.

== External links ==
God on the Brain - programme summary at BBC
Mystical Brain at National Film Board of Canada