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.

Playing With Fear: A Field Study in Recreational Horror.

Haunted attractions are illustrative examples of recreational fear in which people voluntarily seek out frightening experiences in pursuit of enjoyment. We present findings from a field study at a haunted-house attraction where visitors between the ages of 12 and 57 years (N = 110) were equipped with heart rate monitors, video-recorded at peak scare points during the attraction, and asked to report on their experience. Our results show that enjoyment has an inverted-U-shaped relationship with fear across repeated self-reported measures. Moreover, results from physiological data demonstrate that the experience of being frightened is a linear function of large-scale heart rate fluctuations, whereas there is an inverted-U-shaped relationship between participant enjoyment and small-scale heart rate fluctuations. These results suggest that enjoyment is related to forms of arousal dynamics that are "just right." These findings shed light on how fear and enjoyment can coexist in recreational horror.

Did I Do That? Expectancy Effects of Brain Stimulation on Error-related Negativity and Sense of Agency.

This study examines the effects of expected transcranial stimulation on the error(-related) negativity (Ne or ERN) and the sense of agency in participants who perform a cognitive control task. Placebo transcranial direct current stimulation was used to elicit expectations of transcranially induced cognitive improvement or impairment. The improvement/impairment manipulation affected both the Ne/ERN and the sense of agency (i.e., whether participants attributed errors to oneself or the brain stimulation device): Expected improvement increased the ERN in response to errors compared with both impairment and control conditions. Expected impairment made participants falsely attribute errors to the transcranial stimulation. This decrease in sense of agency was correlated with a reduced ERN amplitude. These results show that expectations about transcranial stimulation impact users' neural response to self-generated errors and the attribution of responsibility-especially when actions lead to negative outcomes. We discuss our findings in relation to predictive processing theory according to which the effect of prior expectations on the ERN reflects the brain's attempt to generate predictive models of incoming information. By demonstrating that induced expectations about transcranial stimulation can have effects at a neural level, that is, beyond mere demand characteristics, our findings highlight the potential for placebo brain stimulation as a promising tool for research.

Images from a jointly-arousing collective ritual reveal affective polarization.

Collective rituals are biologically ancient and culturally pervasive, yet few studies have quantified their effects on participants. We assessed two plausible models from qualitative anthropology: ritual empathy predicts affective convergence among all ritual participants irrespective of ritual role; rite-of-passage predicts emotional differences, specifically that ritual initiates will express relatively negative valence when compared with non-initiates. To evaluate model predictions, images of participants in a Spanish fire-walking ritual were extracted from video footage and assessed by nine Spanish raters for arousal and valence. Consistent with rite-of-passage predictions, we found that arousal jointly increased for all participants but that valence differed by ritual role: fire-walkers exhibited increasingly positive arousal and increasingly negative valence when compared with passengers. This result offers the first quantified evidence for rite of passage dynamics within a highly arousing collective ritual. Methodologically, we show that surprisingly simple and non-invasive data structures (rated video images) may be combined with methods from evolutionary ecology (Bayesian Generalized Linear Mixed Effects models) to clarify poorly understood dimensions of the human condition.

The power of charisma--perceived charisma inhibits the frontal executive network of believers in intercessory prayer.

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how assumptions about speakers' abilities changed the evoked BOLD response in secular and Christian participants who received intercessory prayer. We find that recipients' assumptions about senders' charismatic abilities have important effects on their executive network. Most notably, the Christian participants deactivated the frontal network consisting of the medial and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex bilaterally in response to speakers who they believed had healing abilities. An independent analysis across subjects revealed that this deactivation predicted the Christian participants' subsequent ratings of the speakers' charisma and experience of God's presence during prayer. These observations point to an important mechanism of authority that may facilitate charismatic influence, a mechanism which is likely to be present in other interpersonal interactions as well.

Highly religious participants recruit areas of social cognition in personal prayer.

We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate how performing formalized and improvised forms of praying changed the evoked BOLD response in a group of Danish Christians. Distinct from formalized praying and secular controls, improvised praying activated a strong response in the temporopolar region, the medial prefrontal cortex, the temporo-parietal junction and precuneus. This finding supports our hypothesis that religious subjects, who consider their God to be 'real' and capable of reciprocating requests, recruit areas of social cognition when they pray. We argue that praying to God is an intersubjective experience comparable to 'normal' interpersonal interaction.