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.
Magical ideation—beliefs about causality that lack empirical bases—was positively correlated with religious experience in Vietnam veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI), but not in healthy controls. Lesion mapping indicated that prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions were associated with increased magical ideation scores, and this relationship was mediated by religious experience. The findings suggest that suppression of the PFC opens people to religious experiences, which in turn increases magical ideation.