Mystical and religious experiences may arise from brief, electrical microseizures in deep temporal lobe structures, particularly the amygdala and hippocampus. The specific brain regions involved shape the content of these experiences, such as out-of-body sensations, distortions of time and space, intense meaningfulness, and dreamlike scenes. While cultural context and personal history influence details, shared temporal lobe properties across humans produce cross-cultural similarities. These experiences exist on a continuum from mild daily highs to intense, recurring religious conversions. Predisposing factors include genetic or biochemical conditions that increase temporal lobe instability. Life crises and near-death situations are common triggers. Because these microseizures activate brain reward regions and reduce death anxiety, they can become learned responses to existential trauma, powerfully shaping human behavior.
Concentrative meditation produces differential activation in the self-referential default network compared to a modified relaxation response. Regular concentrative meditation practitioners showed distinct brain activity patterns during meditation, while a control group practiced a modified version of the relaxation response. The findings are compared with those from other meditation techniques such as Transcendental Meditation and Qigong, and are discussed in relation to changes in perceptual awareness often reported by meditators.
Brief, seizure-like electrical activity confined to the temporal lobe, without convulsions, may underlie religious experiences. Two cases illustrate this: a Transcendental Meditation teacher showed a 10-second delta-wave seizure in the temporal lobe during a peak meditation experience, and a Pentecostal speaker had temporal-lobe spikes during prolonged glossolalia. Neither subject had psychiatric history. These observations suggest religious experiences are natural correlates of temporal lobe transients detectable by routine EEG.