Frontiers in human neuroscience
January 1, 2024
Patrick Mcnamara, Jordan Grafman
8 citations
Religious and spiritual experiences depend on interactions among three large-scale brain networks: the default mode network, the frontoparietal network, and the salience network. This pattern aligns with the Triple Network Model of neuropsychiatric function. A cycling version of that model can explain the neural basis of ecstatic seizures, brain scans of religious participants, psychedelic mystical states, and perceptions of supernatural agents. To fully account for perceptions of supernatural agents, REM sleep and dreaming mechanisms likely play a role. Future work should explore how such perceptions develop and how brain-mediated religious beliefs affect in-group cohesion and out-group hostility.
Cortex; a journal devoted to the study of the nervous system and behavior
December 1, 2023
Patrick Mcnamara
5 citations
Grafman and colleagues' research shows that religious beliefs and behaviors are mediated by standard social cognitive networks in the brain, but their work also points beyond treating religious cognition as merely a type of general social cognition. Data from experiments targeting mystical states and reports of encounters with supernatural agents during controlled psychedelic experiments suggest that brain mediation of such experiences involves both disruption or downregulation of social cognitive networks and activation of an additional, partially identified neural process. This indicates that a full neuroscience account of religious beliefs, behaviors, and experiences must extend beyond treating religion as an ordinary social process.
Consciousness and cognition
July 1, 2024
John Balch, Rachel Raider, Joni Keith et al.
People who have more dissociative experiences during the day also tend to have more nightmares, lucid dreams, and beliefs in paranormal phenomena, and they take longer to fall asleep. The coherence and perspective of dreams—specifically how stable and first-person the dreamed self feels—predicts about 26% of the variation in dissociative symptoms. These findings suggest that REM sleep intruding into waking consciousness may contribute to some dissociative experiences. The results come from 219 volunteers who completed surveys including the Dissociative Experiences Scale, plus dream reports and sleep measures from a subgroup. The authors propose that dream content stability could be a useful indicator of dissociative tendencies and that treating nightmare distress might help reduce dissociation.
January 1, 2011
Patrick Mcnamara
A two-volume work reviews spirit possession across history and cultures, from the upper Paleolithic era to the present, examining cases where individuals appear overtaken by an unseen entity that replaces their soul, causing symptoms like levitation, speaking in tongues, and physical distortion. It addresses phenomenological, psychological, and neurobiological aspects, as well as societal effects. Volume one covers historical periods, while volume two focuses on case studies and exorcism rites.