Neural Correlates of Personalized Spiritual Experiences.
Cereb Cortex
; 29(6): 2331-2338, 2019 06 01.
Article
em En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-29846531
ABSTRACT
Across cultures and throughout history, human beings have reported a variety of spiritual experiences and the concomitant perceived sense of union that transcends one's ordinary sense of self. Nevertheless, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of spiritual experiences, particularly when examined across different traditions and practices. By adapting an individualized guided-imagery task, we investigated neural correlates of personally meaningful spiritual experiences as compared with stressful and neutral-relaxing experiences. We observed in the spiritual condition, as compared with the neutral-relaxing condition, reduced activity in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), a result that suggests the IPL may contribute importantly to perceptual processing and self-other representations during spiritual experiences. Compared with stress cues, responses to spiritual cues showed reduced activity in the medial thalamus and caudate, regions associated with sensory and emotional processing. Overall, the study introduces a novel method for investigating brain correlates of personally meaningful spiritual experiences and suggests neural mechanisms associated with broadly defined and personally experienced spirituality.
Palavras-chave
Texto completo:
1
Coleções:
01-internacional
Base de dados:
MEDLINE
Assunto principal:
Encéfalo
/
Espiritualidade
Limite:
Adolescent
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Adult
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Female
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Humans
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Male
Idioma:
En
Revista:
Cereb Cortex
Assunto da revista:
CEREBRO
Ano de publicação:
2019
Tipo de documento:
Article
País de afiliação:
Estados Unidos