Neural correlates of mystical experience

Phenomenological characteristics of auto-induced cognitive trance and Mahorikatan® trance

Trance states include various practices characterized by a modulation of consciousness, but with their own specific characteristics and induction techniques. They have been very seldom scientifically studied, and their phenomenological similarities and differences are poorly documented. This paper will focus on two types of Western trances developed after the leaders were trained in traditional shamanic communities: the auto-induced cognitive trance (AICT) and the Mahorikatan® trance (MT). Twenty-five AICT and 26 MT participants who were able to self-induce the trance state completed questionnaires about their trance practice (e.g. context of the first trance episode, frequency of practice, and consequences on personal life) and the phenomenological characteristics (i.e. emotional, physical, and cognitive) of the trance episodes they experienced. These characteristics were compared to explore similarities and differences between the two trance states. AICT and MT are characterized by the expression of different emotions, modification of various perceptions, a feeling of unicity (i.e. being completely oneself), and an expansion of consciousness. AICT participants commonly reported body movements, vocalizations, as well as increased creativity, visions of entities and/or places, and feeling of interaction with the environment. MT participants commonly reported a feeling of body dissolution. Most participants in both groups reported positive effects of their trance practice on their personal life. These results helped characterize AICT and MT, as well as their similarities and differences. Further studies should continue to explore the characteristics of such trance states, as well as their potential clinical applications.

Studying the social mind: An updated summary of findings from the Vietnam Head Injury Study

Lesion mapping studies allow us to evaluate the potential causal contribution of specific brain areas to human cognition and complement other cognitive neuroscience methods, as several authors have recently pointed out. Here, we present an updated summary of the findings from the Vietnam Head Injury Study (VHIS) focusing on the studies conducted over the last decade, that examined the social mind and its intricate neural and cognitive underpinnings. The VHIS is a prospective, long-term follow-up study of Vietnam veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) and healthy controls (HC). The scope of the work is to present the studies from the latest phases (3 and 4) of the VHIS, 70 studies since 2011, when the Raymont et al. paper was published (Raymont et al., 2011). These studies have contributed to our understanding of human social cognition, including political and religious beliefs, theory of mind, but also executive functions, intelligence, and personality. This work finally discusses the usefulness of lesion mapping as an approach to understanding the functions of the human brain from basic science and clinical perspectives.

Religion and the brain: Jordan Grafman's contributions to religion and brain research and the special case of religious language

Grafman and colleagues' papers in religion and brain research have documented the extent to which religious beliefs and behaviors are mediated by standard social cognitive networks in brain. Grafman's work however also points beyond treatments of religious cognition as merely a species of more general social cognitive processes. Data emerging from experiments targeting mystical states as well as reports of encounters with supernatural agents during controlled experiments with psychedelics, suggest that brain mediation of mystical encounters with supernatural agents involves both disruption/downregulation of social cognitive networks and activation of an additional as yet only partially identified neural process suggesting that a full neuroscience account of religious beliefs, behaviors and experiences must extend beyond treatment of religion as an ordinary social process.

Monitoring the neural activity associated with praying in Sahaja Yoga meditation

BACKGROUND

Sahaja Yoga Meditation draws on many religious traditions and uses a variety of techniques including Christian prayer to reach a state known as thoughtless awareness, or mental silence. While there are many studies on the neural correlates of meditation, few studies have focused on the neural correlates of praying. Thus, the aim of our research was to study the neural activity associated with the prayer practices in Sahaja Yoga Mediation, which have not been studied before, to explore effects beyond repetitive speech or "mantra effects". Sixteen experienced Sahaja Yoga Meditation practitioners were scanned using task based functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging while performing formalised and improvised forms of praying and their equivalent secular tasks.

RESULTS

Our results showed the deactivation of bilateral thalamus during both prayers compared to secular conditions and the activation in the medial prefrontal cortex that was reduced by religious and formalised secular speech conditions but increased during improvised secular speech; similarly, frontal regions were deactivated when comparing prayers to their secular equivalents.

DISCUSSION

These results seem to depict two important factors related with praying in Sahaja Yoga Meditation merging inner concentration and social cognition. First, the perception of the surroundings mediated by the thalamus may be decreased during these prayers probably due to the establishment of inner concentration and, second, frontal deactivation effects could be related to reduced social judgement and 'mentalizing', particularly in the medial prefrontal cortex. Our findings suggest that praying by Sahaja Yoga Meditation practitioners is neurophenomenologically different from the social cognitive attempt of praying within Christian praying practices.

Cortical structural differences following repeated ayahuasca use hold molecular signatures

Introduction

Serotonergic psychedelics such as ayahuasca are reported to promote both structural and functional neural plasticity via partial 5-HT2A agonism. However, little is known about how these molecular mechanisms may extend to repeated psychedelic administration in humans, let alone neuroanatomy. While early evidence suggests localised changes to cortical thickness in long-term ayahuasca users, it is unknown how such findings may be reflected by large-scale anatomical brain networks comprising cytoarchitecturally complex regions.

Methods

Here, we examined the relationship between cortical gene expression markers of psychedelic action and brain morphometric change following repeated ayahuasca usage, using high-field 7 Tesla neuroimaging data derived from 24 members of an ayahuasca-using church (Santo Daime) and case-matched controls.

Results

Using a morphometric similarity network (MSN) analysis, repeated ayahuasca use was associated with a spatially distributed cortical patterning of both structural differentiation in sensorimotor areas and de-differentiation in transmodal areas. Cortical MSN remodelling was found to be spatially correlated with dysregulation of 5-HT2A gene expression as well as a broader set of genes encoding target receptors pertinent to ayahuasca's effects. Furthermore, these associations were similarly interrelated with altered gene expression of specific transcriptional factors and immediate early genes previously identified in preclinical assays as relevant to psychedelic-induced neuroplasticity.

Conclusion

Taken together, these findings provide preliminary evidence that the molecular mechanisms of psychedelic action may scale up to a macroscale level of brain organisation in vivo. Closer attention to the role of cortical transcriptomics in structural-functional coupling may help account for the behavioural differences observed in experienced psychedelic users.

Conspiracy beliefs are associated with a reduction in frontal beta power and biases in categorizing ambiguous stimuli

Prior beliefs, such as conspiracy beliefs, significantly influence our perception of the natural world. However, the brain activity associated with perceptual decision-making in conspiracy beliefs is not well understood. To shed light on this topic, we conducted a study examining the EEG activity of believers, and skeptics during resting state with perceptual decision-making task. Our study shows that conspiracy beliefs are related to the reduced power of beta frequency band. Furthermore, skeptics tended to misclassify ambiguous face stimuli as houses more frequently than believers. These results help to explain the differences in brain activity between believers and skeptics, especially in how conspiracy beliefs impact the categorization of ambiguous stimuli.

This is your brain on death: a comparative analysis of a near-death experience and subsequent 5-Methoxy-DMT experience

Introduction

Much research has focused on the modeling of the near-death experience (NDE) by classical and atypical psychedelics; however, to date, no study has reported on the relationship between the NDE and the experience induced by the highly potent, endogenous psychedelic drug 5-Methoxy-DMT (5MeO-DMT). This article presents a case study of an individual who is popularly documented to have had a profound near-death experience while in a coma caused by bacterial meningoencephalitis. Additionally, the individual also subsequently underwent an experience with 5MeO-DMT.

Methods

A semi-structured interview was conducted with the subject concerning his experiences with both the NDE and 5MeO-DMT. A basic thematic analysis was performed on both the original text describing the NDE as well as the interview itself, which mainly focused on the subject's experience with 5MeO-DMT. This analysis was organized to identify both the similar and different emergent themes between the two states, with a particular emphasis on the subject's perceptions of the similarities and differences between the experiences.

Results

There is a very high level of comparability between the original NDE and psychedelic experiences in general, including shared characteristics such as entering other worlds, meeting menacing or benevolent entities, experiencing synesthesia, perinatal regression, and lucid dreamlike properties. Much comparability was also identified with the 5MeO-DMT experience, in particular the major mystical experiential domains, such as ego dissolution, but especially transcendence of time and space. However, there were also a few unique themes (life review, the deceased, and the threshold) that emerged in the NDE that were not present in the 5MeO-DMT experience or other psychedelic experience studies, suggesting that these themes may be more unique to the NDE.

Discussion

Despite such similarities, the participant asserted that his NDE and psychedelic experiences were not similar enough to be attributed to endogenous psychedelics. In this study, we discussed several mechanisms that could potentially account for the NDE, including lucid dreams and perinatal regression. However, the study also explored the possibility that the unique etiology of the participant's NDE, bacterial meningoencephalitis affecting the neocortex, may have triggered similar downstream neural activity as that initiated by psychedelic agents through pyramidal neuronal activation. This hypothesis is presented with appropriate caveats and acknowledged as speculative.

Spiritual Pain: A Symptom in Search of a Clinical Definition

We conducted a literature search to identify and compare definitions of the experiential dimension of spiritual pain. Key databases were searched, up to the year 2021 inclusive, for papers with a definition of "spiritual" or "existential" pain/distress in a clinical setting. Of 144 hits, seven papers provided theoretical definitions/descriptions; none incorporated clinical observations or underlying pathophysiological constructs. Based on these findings, we propose a new definition for "spiritual pain" as a "self-identified experience of personal discomfort, or actual or potential harm, triggered by a threat to a person's relationship with God or a higher power." Our updated definition can inform future studies in pain assessment and management.

Paranormal believers show reduced resting EEG beta band oscillations and inhibitory control than skeptics

Paranormal believers' thinking is frequently biased by intuitive beliefs. Lack of inhibition of these tempting beliefs is considered a key element in paranormal believers' thinking. However, the brain activity related to inhibitory control in paranormal believers is poorly understood. We examined EEG activities at resting state in alpha, beta, and gamma bands with inhibitory control in paranormal believers and skeptics. The present study shows that paranormal belief is related to the reduced power of the alpha, beta, and gamma frequency bands, and reduced inhibitory control. This study may contribute to understanding the differences between believers and skeptics in brain activity related to inhibitory control in paranormal believers.

Neuro-functional modeling of near-death experiences in contexts of altered states of consciousness

Near-death experiences (NDEs) including out-of-body experiences (OBEs) have been fascinating phenomena of perception both for affected persons and for communities in science and medicine. Modern progress in the recording of changing brain functions during the time between clinical death and brain death opened the perspective to address and understand the generation of NDEs in brain states of altered consciousness. Changes of consciousness can experimentally be induced in well-controlled clinical or laboratory settings. Reports of the persons having experienced the changes can inform about the similarity of the experiences with those from original NDEs. Thus, we collected neuro-functional models of NDEs including OBEs with experimental backgrounds of drug consumption, epilepsy, brain stimulation, and ischemic stress, and included so far largely unappreciated data from fighter pilot tests under gravitational stress generating cephalic nervous system ischemia. Since we found a large overlap of NDE themes or topics from original NDE reports with those from neuro-functional NDE models, we can state that, collectively, the models offer scientifically appropriate causal explanations for the occurrence of NDEs. The generation of OBEs, one of the NDE themes, can be localized in the temporo-parietal junction (TPJ) of the brain, a multimodal association area. The evaluated literature suggests that NDEs may emerge as hallucination-like phenomena from a brain in altered states of consciousness (ASCs).

Prevalence of visual snow and relation to attentional absorption

Visual snow is a condition of unclear prevalence characterized by tiny flickering dots throughout the entire visual field. It appears to result from visual cortex hyperactivity and possibly correlates with propensity to be engrossed in sensory and imaginary experiences (absorption). The prevalence and correlates of visual snow, and emotional reactions to it, were explored in the general Portuguese population with three studies with online surveys. In Study 1, 564 participants were shown an animated graphic simulation of visual snow and asked to rate how frequently they have similar percepts on a scale anchored by 0% and 100% of their waking time. They also reported their degree of distress and fascination resulting from visual snow. Absorption was measured with the Modified Tellegen Absorption Scale. 44% of respondents reported they see visual snow at least 10% of the time, and 20% reported seeing it between 80% and 100% of the time. Similar to findings in clinical samples, the frequency of visual snow correlated with tinnitus frequency and entoptic phenomena, but not with ophthalmologic problems. It was confirmed that visual snow is related to absorption. Although distress caused by visual snow was generally absent or minimal in our samples, a substantial minority (28%) reported moderate to high levels of distress. High fascination with visual snow was reported by 9%. In Studies 2 and 3, visual snow was measured by means of verbal descriptions without graphic simulation (“visual field full of tiny dots of light” and “world seen with many dots of light”, respectively). The results were similar to those in Study 1, but seeing visual snow 80%-100% of the time was less frequent (6.5% in Study 2 and 3.6% in Study 3). Visual snow has been insufficiently investigated. More research is needed to uncover underlying neurophysiological mechanisms and psychological and behavioral correlates.

Parental religiosity is associated with changes in youth functional network organization and cognitive performance in early adolescence

Parental religious beliefs and practices (religiosity) may have profound effects on youth, especially in neurodevelopmentally complex periods such as adolescence. In n = 5566 children (median age = 120.0 months; 52.1% females; 71.2% with religious affiliation) from the Adolescent Brain Cognitive Development study, relationships between parental religiosity and non-religious beliefs on family values (data on youth beliefs were not available), topological properties of youth resting-state brain networks, and executive function, inhibitory control, and cognitive flexibility were investigated. Lower caregiver education and family income were associated with stronger parental beliefs (p < 0.01). Strength of both belief types was correlated with lower efficiency, community structure, and robustness of frontoparietal control, temporoparietal, and dorsal attention networks (p < 0.05), and lower Matrix Reasoning scores. Stronger religious beliefs were negatively associated (directly and indirectly) with multiscale properties of salience and default-mode networks, and lower Flanker and Dimensional Card Sort scores, but positively associated with properties of the precuneus. Overall, these effects were small (Cohen's d ~ 0.2 to ~ 0.4). Overlapping neuromodulatory and cognitive effects of parental beliefs suggest that early adolescents may perceive religious beliefs partly as context-independent rules on expected behavior. However, religious beliefs may also differentially affect cognitive flexibility, attention, and inhibitory control and their neural substrates.

Mystical Experience

This paper proposes to study mystical experience by contrasting it with “ordinary” experience, i.e., with standard consciousness. It emphasises the construed nature of standard consciousness and the role that the mutual connectedness of mental contents plays in its construction. It then shows that removal of the factors that are responsible for the “making” of standard consciousness accounts for the principal features of mystical experience; these features are, therefore, mainly negative. Understanding mystical experience as the suppression of factors that contribute to the construction of standard consciousness, along with a discussion of the mechanism that makes this possible, permits answers to some frequently asked questions, such as: Why is mystical experience ineffable? What is its epistemic status? Does it have implications for our understanding of mind, consciousness, and self?

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.

A neurocognitive model of ideological thinking

Ideological behavior has traditionally been viewed as a product of social forces. Nonetheless, an emerging science suggests that ideological worldviews can also be understood in terms of neural and cognitive principles. The article proposes a neurocognitive model of ideological thinking, arguing that ideological worldviews may be manifestations of individuals' perceptual and cognitive systems. This model makes two claims. First, there are neurocognitive antecedents to ideological thinking: the brain's low-level neurocognitive dispositions influence its receptivity to ideological doctrines. Second, there are neurocognitive consequences to ideological engagement: strong exposure and adherence to ideological doctrines can shape perceptual and cognitive systems. This article details the neurocognitive model of ideological thinking and synthesizes the empirical evidence in support of its claims. The model postulates that there are bidirectional processes between the brain and the ideological environment, and so it can address the roles of situational and motivational factors in ideologically motivated action. This endeavor highlights that an interdisciplinary neurocognitive approach to ideologies can facilitate biologically informed accounts of the ideological brain and thus reveal who is most susceptible to extreme and authoritarian ideologies. By investigating the relationships between low-level perceptual processes and high-level ideological attitudes, we can develop a better grasp of our collective history as well as the mechanisms that may structure our political futures.

Neural underpinning of a personal relationship with God and sense of control: A lesion-mapping study

A strong personal relationship with God is theoretically and empirically associated with an enhanced sense of control. While a growing body of research is focused on understanding the neural mechanisms underlying religious belief, little is known about the brain basis of the link between a personal relationship with God and sense of control. Here, we used a sample of patients with focal brain lesions (N = 84) and matched healthy controls (N = 22) to determine whether damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC)-a region associated with emotionally meaningful religious experiences and with sense of control-will modulate self-reports of a personal relationship with God and sense of control. We also examined potential mediators for these associations. Voxel-based lesion symptom mapping revealed that damage to the right vmPFC resulted in a stronger personal relationship with God, and patients with damage to this region demonstrated an increased sense of control relative to patients with damage to posterior cortex and healthy controls. Moreover, the association between vmPFC damage and greater perceived sense of control was mediated by a stronger personal relationship with God. Collectively, these results suggest that a strong personal relationship with God can serve an important psychological function by affecting sense of control, with both enhanced following damage to the right vmPFC.

Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs: A registered report of construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability

While religious beliefs are typically studied using questionnaires, there are no standardized tools available for cognitive psychology and neuroscience studies of religious cognition. Here we present the first such tool-the Cambridge Psycholinguistic Inventory of Christian Beliefs (CPICB)-which consists of audio-recorded items of religious beliefs as well as items of three control conditions: moral beliefs, abstract scientific knowledge and empirical everyday life knowledge. The CPICB is designed in such a way that the ultimate meaning of each sentence is revealed only by its final critical word, which enables the precise measurement of reaction times and/or latencies of neurophysiological responses. Each statement comes in a pair of Agree/Disagree versions of critical words, which allows for experimental contrasting between belief and disbelief conditions. Psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic matching between Agree/Disagree versions of sentences, as well as across different categories of the CPICB items (Religious, Moral, Scientific, Everyday), enables rigorous control of low-level psycholinguistic and psychoacoustic features while testing higher-level beliefs. In the exploratory Study 1 (N = 20), we developed and tested a preliminary version of the CPICB that had 480 items. After selecting 400 items that yielded the most consistent responses, we carried out a confirmatory test-retest Study 2 (N = 40). Preregistered data analyses confirmed excellent construct validity, internal consistency and test-retest reliability of the CPICB religious belief statements. We conclude that the CPICB is suitable for studying Christian beliefs in an experimental setting involving behavioural and neuroimaging paradigms, and provide Open Access to the inventory items, fostering further development of the experimental research of religiosity.

Awe liberates the feeling that "my body is mine"

Awe is an emotional response to perceptually vast stimuli that transcend one's current frames of reference. Previous research indicated that awe promotes a smaller self, which led to the creation of a small-self hypothesis. Thus, we shed new light on this hypothesis in terms of sense of body ownership using a rubber hand illusion experiment; through it, we showed that awe evokes an increased sense of body ownership over the rubber hand and this effect was prominent among participants who experienced small self. Our findings suggest that awe might provoke a "liberation of the self" in terms of a sense of body ownership as awe has been thought to liberate existing schemas, hence informing the demonstrable implications of the psychological mechanisms of awe.

Psychology Meets Archaeology: Psychoarchaeoacoustics for Understanding Ancient Minds and Their Relationship to the Sacred

How important is the influence of spatial acoustics on our mental processes related to sound perception and cognition? There is a large body of research in fields encompassing architecture, musicology, and psychology that analyzes human response, both subjective and objective, to different soundscapes. But what if we want to understand how acoustic environments influenced the human experience of sound in sacred ritual practices in premodern societies? Archaeoacoustics is the research field that investigates sound in the past. One of its branches delves into how sound was used in specific landscapes and at sites with rock art, and why past societies endowed a special significance to places with specific acoustical properties. Taking advantage of the advances made in sound recording and reproduction technologies, researchers are now exploring how ancient social and sacred ceremonies and practices related to the acoustic properties of their sound environment. Here, we advocate for the emergence of a new and innovative discipline, experimental psychoarchaeoacoustics. We also review underlying methodological approaches and discuss the limitations, challenges, and future directions for this new field.

Understanding the Nature of Oneness Experience in Meditators Using Collective Intelligence Methods

Research on meditation and mindfulness practice has flourished in recent years. While much of this research has focused on well-being outcomes associated with mindfulness practice, less research has focused on how perception of self may change as a result of mindfulness practice, or whether these changes in self-perception may be mechanisms of mindfulness in action. This is somewhat surprising given that mindfulness derives from traditions often described as guiding people to realize and experience the non-separation of self from the world or its "oneness" with the whole of reality. The current study used a collective intelligence methodology, Interactive Management (IM), to explore the nature of oneness experiences. Five IM sessions were conducted with five separate groups of experienced meditators. Participants generated, clarified, and selected oneness self-perceptions they believed most characterized their experience both during meditation and in their everyday experience in the world. Each group also developed structural models describing how highly ranked aspects of oneness self-perceptions are interrelated in a system. Consistent themes and categories of oneness experience appeared across the five IM sessions, with changes in the sense of space (unboundedness), time, identity, wholeness, and flow highlighted as most influential. Results are discussed in light of emerging theory and research on oneness self-perception and non-dual awareness.

An Integrated Review of Recent Research on the Relationships Between Religious Belief, Political Ideology, Authoritarianism, and Prejudice

Religious ideology and extremism have had an increasing influence on political agendas in the United States and much of the developed world in the past 60 years, with right-wing ideology becoming more prevalent this decade. This article serves as a review of studies investigating the correlations between political ideology, religiosity, right-wing authoritarianism, ingroups/outgroups, and prejudice in an attempt to describe and understand the well-established links between these dimensions. We discuss several group-level theories including Terror Management Theory, Social Identity Theory, Realistic Group Conflict Theory among others to frame the intercorrelations of these constructs in an effort to better understand the underlying mechanisms that drive individuals to embody religious and political beliefs. We then discuss individual-level cognitive and psychological differences such as intelligence, cognitive flexibility, and specific biological and neurological limitations of brain function that may influence people to adopt certain religious and political beliefs. Through a more comprehensive understanding of the underlying mechanisms of religious and political extremism, we may be better equipped to assuage the fear and denigration that is associated with many of these beliefs.

The Neural Basis of Religious Cognition

Religion’s neural underpinnings have long been a topic of speculation and debate, but an emerging neuroscience of religion is beginning to clarify which regions of the brain integrate moral, ritual, and supernatural religious beliefs with functionally adaptive responses. Here, we review evidence indicating that religious cognition involves a complex interplay among the brain regions underpinning cognitive control, social reasoning, social motivations, and ideological beliefs.

The relationship between individual differences in gray matter volume and religiosity and mystical experiences: A preregistered voxel-based morphometry study

The neural substrates of religious belief and experience are an intriguing though contentious topic. Here, we had the unique opportunity to establish the relation between validated measures of religiosity and gray matter volume in a large sample of participants (N = 211). In this registered report, we conducted a confirmatory voxel-based morphometry analysis to test three central hypotheses regarding the relationship between religiosity and mystical experiences and gray matter volume. The preregisterered hypotheses, analysis plan, preprocessing and analysis code and statistical brain maps are all available from online repositories. By using a region-of-interest analysis, we found no evidence that religiosity is associated with a reduced volume of the orbito-frontal cortex and changes in the structure of the bilateral inferior parietal lobes. Neither did we find support for the notion that mystical experiences are associated with a reduced volume of the hippocampus, the right middle temporal gyrus or with the inferior parietal lobes. A whole-brain analysis furthermore indicated that no structural brain differences were found in association with religiosity and mystical experiences. We believe that the search for the neural correlates of religious beliefs and experiences should therefore shift focus from studying structural brain differences to a functional and multivariate approach.

Relationship of self-transcendence traits with in vivo dopamine D2/3 receptor availability and functional connectivity: An [18 F]fallypride PET and fMRI study

Genetic research has implicated dopamine neurotransmission in the expression of the self-transcendence trait in humans. However, molecular imaging of dopaminergic markers is undocumented in relation to this personality trait. In this multimodal imaging study, we first investigated the relationship between the self-transcendence trait and in vivo dopamine D_2/3 receptor availability using [¹⁸ F]fallypride positron emission tomography (PET). We next conducted seed-based functional connectivity analyses using resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (rs-fMRI) data with regions derived from the PET analysis as seeds to explore the functional significance of D_2/3 receptor availability foci associated with the self-transcendence trait. Twenty-one healthy subjects underwent high-resolution PET with [¹⁸ F]fallypride and a subset of 18 subjects also completed 3-Tesla rs-fMRI. The Temperament and Character Inventory was used to measure the self-transcendence trait. A voxel-based whole brain analysis revealed that the [¹⁸ F]fallypride binding potential (BP_ND ) within the cluster of the left insula was significantly positively correlated with self-transcendence trait scores. A region-of-interest analysis also showed a significant positive correlation between self-transcendence and [¹⁸ F]fallypride BP_ND in the left insula. The exploratory [¹⁸ F]fallypride BP_ND seed-based rs-fMRI analysis showed that the functional connectivity from the left insula seed to the prefrontal cortices (including the inferior frontal region) was negatively associated with self-transcendence trait scores. The results of the present study suggest that D_2/3 receptor-mediated neurotransmission in the left insula may constitute a significant neurobiological factor in the self-transcendence trait. The negative associations between BP_ND seed-based functional connectivity and self-transcendence trait scores may suggest reduced prefrontal control in this personality trait.

Religious Belief at the Level of the Brain: Neural Correlates and Influence of Culture

This article summarizes key functional magnetic resonance imaging studies that correlate the neural substrate of religious belief and the influence of culture. I searched and updated PubMed (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed) publications until March 2018 on religious belief and related topics. Belief, whether religious or nonreligious, is associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vMPFC), a brain region important for self-representation, emotional associations, reward, and goal-driven behavior. However, religious belief, compared with nonreligious belief, registers greater signal in the precuneus, anterior insula, ventral striatum, anterior cingulate cortex, and posterior medial cortex-areas associated with governance of emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict. In contrast, nonreligious belief registers more signal in the left hemisphere memory networks (Harris et al. PLoS One 2009;4:e0007272). Moreover, cultural studies revealed self-judgment tasks in nonbelievers involved more the vMPFC, whereas Christians had significantly increased activation in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (Han et al. Soc Neurosci 2008;3:1-15). Consequently, the Christian belief of "surrendering to Christ" seemed to weaken neural coding of stimulus self-relatedness but enhanced neural activity underlying evaluative processes of self-referential stimuli. The findings suggest a transformation of the semantic autobiographical self to Christ's conceptual self.

Prefrontal brain lesions reveal magical ideation arises from enhanced religious experiences

Magical ideation refers to beliefs about causality that lack empirical bases. Few studies have investigated the neural correlates of magical thinking and religious beliefs. Here, we investigate the association between magical ideation and religious experience in a sample of Vietnam veterans who sustained penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI) and matched healthy controls (HCs). Scores on the Magical Ideation Scale were positively correlated with scores on the Religious Experience Scale, but only in pTBI patients. Lesion mapping analyses in subgroups of pTBI patients indicated that prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions were associated with increased magical ideation scores and this relationship was mediated by religious experience. Our findings clarify the mechanism by which the frontal lobe processes modulate magical beliefs. Suppression of the PFC opens people to religious experiences, which in turn increases magical ideation.

Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism

Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality.