Neural correlates of religious experience.
The European journal of neuroscience April 1, 2001 N P Azari, J Nickel, G Wunderlich et al.
Religious experience, often thought of as a direct, emotional event, may actually be a cognitive process involving evaluation of one's own thoughts. Using functional neuroimaging, brain activity during religious recitation in self-identified religious subjects showed activation in a frontal-parietal circuit—the dorsolateral prefrontal, dorsomedial frontal, and medial parietal cortex. These areas are known to support reflexive evaluation of thought. This suggests that religious experience, while feeling immediate, may arise from cognitive appraisal.