Brain activity during three Islamic spiritual practices—Dhikr, body scan meditation, and thinking about God—shares common neural networks, including the angular gyrus and parahippocampus, and differs from resting state in areas like the caudate and anterior cingulate. Twenty-two distinct neural networks were observed across 31 healthy, highly religious participants using fMRI. The three tasks also showed differences in the precuneus and posterior cingulate. The findings suggest these practices engage the default mode network in a non-directive way, supporting transcendent experiences and emotional regulation.
Meditation engages brain regions involved in attention, including the dorsal lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC). In a functional MRI study of 13 meditators, no significant whole-brain activations were found during meditation versus a control task using conservative thresholds. However, a region-of-interest analysis showed that DLPFC and ACC were statistically more active throughout meditation compared to the control. Long-term practitioners (over 10 years, n=5) displayed more consistent and sustained activation in these regions than short-term practitioners (n=8), suggesting that extensive meditation practice may be linked to better sustained attention and error monitoring.