Neuropsychologia
November 26, 2015
Irène Cristofori, Joseph Bulbulia, John H. Shaver et al.
104 citations
People who suffer damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) report markedly more mystical experiences—subjectively believed encounters with a supernatural world—than healthy controls. In a study of 116 Vietnam veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury and 32 matched controls, lesions to frontal and temporal brain regions, especially the dlPFC and middle/superior temporal cortex, were linked with greater mysticism. Pre-injury data on general intelligence and executive performance rule out individual differences as an explanation. The findings indicate that executive functioning in the dlPFC causally helps down-regulate mystical experiences, supporting earlier speculation that executive brain functions underpin such experiences.
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.
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.