A Hermeneutic Phenomenological Study of the Lived Experience of Spiritual Conversion in a Neo-Charismatic Evangelical Context

Electrodermal Activity Implicating a Sympathetic Nervous System Response under the Perception of Sensing a Divine Presence—A Psychophysiological Analysis

Previous studies have suggested that religious worship experiences may recruit the autonomic nervous system (ANS) in an activating fashion. For this reason, we hypothesized that measurements of the electrodermal activity (EDA) would concur with the notion that the subjective experience of sensing the presence of God recruits a sympathetic nervous system response. We analyzed the EDA of 37 evangelical participants and calculated classic galvanic skin response (GSR) measures. Our experimental design included six conditions with and without music consisting of religious and non-religious songs plus a resting-state condition, which were used to induce a variance in the religious experience suitable for statistical analyses. Results showed that both tonic and phasic signals as well as the overall electrical skin conductance (SC) were positively associated with the religious experience, defined as sensing the presence of God. This implicates that we can accept the hypothesis that such a religious experience under the influence of worship seems to recruit the sympathetic nervous system.

Neural network involvement for religious experiences in worship measured by EEG microstate analysis

To date, not much is known about large-scale brain activation patterns in religious states of mind and previous studies have not set an emphasis on experience. The present study investigated the phenomenon of religious experiences through microstate analysis, and it was the first neurocognitive research to tackle the dimension of experience directly. Hence, a total of 60 evangelical Christians participated in an experiment where they were asked to engage in worship and try to connect with God. With a bar slider, people were able to continuously rate how strongly they sensed God's presence at any given moment. A selection of songs was used to help in the induction of the desired experience. With 64 electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, the brain activity was assessed and analyzed with five clusters of microstate classes. First, we hypothesized that the neural network for multisensory integration was involved in the religious experience. Second, we hypothesized that the same was true for the Default Mode Network (DMN). Our results suggested an association between the auditory network and the religious experience, and an association with the salience network as well as with the DMN. No associations with the network thought to be involved with multisensory integration was detected.