In the spiritual condition, as compared with the neutral-relaxing condition, we see 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

Neural Correlates of Personalized Spiritual Experiences. Lisa Miller, Iris M Balodis, Clayton H McClintock, Jiansong Xu, Cheryl M Lacadie, Rajita Sinha, Marc N Potenza. Cerebral Cortex, bhy102, https://doi.org/10.1093/cercor/bhy102


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.

keywords: functional magnetic resonance imaging, perception, spirituality, stress

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For the spiritual script, participants were given the following
instructions:


“We would like you to describe a situation in which you felt a strong connection with a higher power or a spiritual presence. Spiritual states are those that through a felt-sense connect you to something bigger than oneself, a oneness, or strong force which may be experienced as an energy, force, higher power, G-d, deity or transcendent figure or consciousness. Such states may be experienced in places of worship, at home, in your daily life, or outdoors in nature. Choose a personal lived situation that you directly experienced, whether others were present or not. Also, include in your description the bodily sensations you have experienced in these situations.


Some common experiences of transcendent connection include a two-way relationship with a higher power, a felt-sense of oneness in nature by the ocean or atop a mountain, being in a zone of intense physical activity (such as sports or yoga), sudden awareness, bodily felt connectivity or buoyancy, meditation or prayer. These may be extremely vivid or intense experiences, or these relatively accentuated experiences may filter into an ongoing felt transcendent connection or daily way of being connected to something more.


Sometimes it is difficult to think of a positive transcendent or spiritual experience “on the spot”. It may help to close your eyes and try to imagine yourself in the situation. While you are imagining the situation, try to generate the same sensations and feelings you would experience if you were actually in the situation. Describe the situation as though you are helping me see it as if I was there with you. (Please include such details as who was there; what you were doing; where you were; how things looked; what bodily sensations you experienced.)”

[...]

The present study showed reduced activity in the left IPL following spiritual cues, which is consistent with several previous investigations suggesting an inverse relationship between spiritual awareness and parietal activity. The posterior parietal cortex has been implicated in religiosity and spirituality across a wide variety of measures including importance of religion and spirituality (Miller et al. 2014), trait self-transcendence (Urgesi et al. 2010), implicit religiousness and spirituality (Crescentini et al. 2014, 2015), mindfulness meditation training (Lazar et al. 2000; Farb et al. 2007), and contemplative prayer (Newberg et al. 2003, 2015). Furthermore, activity in this region has been linked to spatiotemporal perceptual processes and, in particular, the representation of the human body in time and space (Assmus et al. 2003; Lou et al. 2004; Bolger et al. 2014). Since spiritual practices and experiences typically involve a perceived alteration in time and space (Newberg and Waldman 2009; Yaden et al. 2017), often an expanded sense of self in relation to the environment including subjective reports from the current study (see Supplementary Material), these findings lend support to our hypotheses and the relatively blunted activity of the IPL observed in the present study. The hemispheric lateralization of posterior parietal activation differs, however, across various studies of spirituality, which invites a more nuanced interpretation. Research has implicated the right IPL in the cognitive representation of one’s own body in space, while the left IPL has been linked to the visuo-spatial representation of others (Felician et al. 2003; Lou et al. 2004; Muhlau et al. 2005). Functionally connected to the ventral premotor cortex, the IPL contains both motor and mirror neurons which allow an observer to perceive individuals’ motor behaviors and intentions, and the left IPL in particular has been implicated in reading others’ intentions (Fogassi et al. 2005; D’Argembeau et al. 2008; Bonini et al. 2010). Moreover, research has linked the IPL to the attribution of agency, whereby left IPL activity may signal an attribution of agency outside of oneself (Farrer and Frith 2002). Taken together, the present finding suggests that spiritual experiences may involve a perceived encounter with a spacious “presence” or entity external to oneself. This interpretation is consistent with a strong feeling of connection or surrender to a deity or other revered figure, as often reported in religious and spiritual literature (James 1902; Wilber 2006).

The IPL has also been implicated in episodic memory retrieval as well as processing human faces (Leube et al. 2003; Mayes et al. 2004; Wagner et al. 2005), possibly suggesting that spiritual experiences interact with memory retrieval processes in a unique way. This possibility, however, is tempered by the fact that all three conditions involved re-experiencing highly salient memories, including those that may involve recollection of people (and thus their faces). As such, the experimental design argues against these possibilities. Nonetheless, future investigations involving larger samples may permit investigation of scripts with and without specific features (e.g., recollection of people or spiritual beings) to investigate such possibilities directly. Additionally, it is worth noting that the responses during the spiritual cue condition are congruent with the notion that systemsbased changes may occur on neural levels in response to changes in perception (Freiwald et al. 2016; Mazzarella et al. 2013).