Experienced meditators show reduced activity in brain regions linked to self-referential thought and mind-wandering, particularly the medial prefrontal and posterior cingulate cortices, across different meditation types. They also exhibit stronger connections between areas involved in self-monitoring and cognitive control, such as the posterior cingulate, dorsal anterior cingulate, and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, both at rest and during meditation. These neural patterns align with decreased mind-wandering, offering insight into how meditation may support present-moment awareness and well-being.
Spiritual experiences engage a distributed brain network, particularly a ventral frontotemporal circuit, that activates at the start and end of a spiritual condition but not during stress or neutral-relaxing conditions. The degree of network engagement correlated strongly with participants' self-reported spirituality during the task and moderately with a separate measure of spirituality taken outside the scanner. These findings suggest a specific functional neural network underlies spiritual experiences and may help explain how spirituality supports recovery from behavioral addictions.