Cerebral Cortex
May 14, 2018
Lisa Miller, Iris M. Balodis, Clayton H. Mcclintock et al.
65 citations
People across cultures and throughout history report spiritual experiences that involve a sense of union transcending the ordinary self, but their neural mechanisms are poorly understood. Using an individualized guided-imagery task, the authors compared brain activity during personally meaningful spiritual experiences with that during stressful and neutral-relaxing experiences. During spiritual experiences, the left inferior parietal lobule showed reduced activity compared to neutral-relaxing experiences, suggesting this region contributes to perceptual processing and self-other representations. Compared to stress cues, spiritual cues reduced activity in the medial thalamus and caudate, regions linked to sensory and emotional processing. The findings point to neural mechanisms underlying broadly defined, personally experienced spirituality.
Journal of Behavioral Addictions
December 1, 2019
Clayton H. Mcclintock, Patrick D. Worhunsky, Jiansong Xu et al.
18 citations
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.
Behavioral Sciences
February 23, 2026
Joshua Lipson, Hannes Kettner, Robin Carhart-Harris et al.
Mood before taking a psychedelic substance and factors like social connectedness, mindfulness, and spirituality influence how the experience unfolds. People with higher baseline depression and anxiety tend to have more challenging experiences but not more mystical ones, while those with greater wellbeing report more mystical and fewer challenging experiences. Mindfulness and spirituality are linked to more mystical experiences, and social connectedness and mindfulness are linked to fewer challenging ones. Mystical and challenging experiences were weakly but positively correlated overall.
Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences
October 1, 2011
Lisa Miller, Kenneth Miller, John Haught et al.
A panel of an evolutionary biologist and two theologians discusses questions about immortality, the existence of the soul beyond the body, and scientific evidence for mystical experience, drawing on cultural, historical, and scientific perspectives. The conversation, moderated by a journalist, took place at the New York Academy of Sciences and is presented as an edited transcript.
The international journal for the psychology of religion
October 1, 2024
Joshua Lipson, Thomas Ford, Miles Beattie et al.
Among 763 U.S. adults, three distinct profiles emerged: Transcendent Wellness, Transcendent Struggle, and Non-Transcendent Wellness. The Transcendent Wellness profile showed higher belongingness, mindfulness, and lived/integrated spirituality than the Transcendent Struggle profile. Belongingness and mindfulness reduced the positive link between mystical experience and depression and anxiety symptoms. Lived/integrated spirituality also weakened this link, especially for anxiety. Conventional religiosity did not show the same moderating effects. The authors propose that relationally grounded spirituality—connection to others, self, and a higher power—supports processing and sense-making of mystical experiences.
Religions
June 12, 2020
Elsa Lau, Clayton H. Mcclintock, Marianna Graziosi et al.
Spirituality is lived differently across the United States, India, and China, though certain themes appear universally. Analyzing responses from 6,112 participants (41% women, mean age 29, range 18–75) and focusing on a subset of 900, the study identified five major thematic categories: religion, contemplative practice, ancestors, the natural world, and metaphysical phenomena. The metaphysical category included extrasensory perception, psychokinesis, survival-related experiences (near-death and out-of-body experiences, apparitions), and faith or energy healing. Cultural context shapes both the prevalence and specific forms these spiritual experiences take.
Frontiers in Psychology
January 1, 2016
Clayton H. Mcclintock, Elsa Lau, Lisa Miller
Five universal dimensions of spirituality—love, unifying interconnectedness, altruism, contemplative practice, and religious and spiritual reflection and commitment—were identified across China, India, and the United States. Love, interconnectedness, and altruism were associated with lower risk of depression, suicidal ideation, generalized anxiety, and substance-related disorders in all three countries. Religious and spiritual reflection and commitment and contemplative practice were linked to lower risk in India and the United States but to greater risk in China. Education correlated positively with spiritual awareness in India and China but negatively in the United States. The findings suggest spirituality is a universal phenomenon with dimensions that may offer protective effects against psychiatric conditions.
Journal of Religion and Health
June 1, 2015
Lisa Miller, Yakov A Barton
Depression diagnosis has low reliability partly because the condition is heterogeneous. Among adolescents, very high rates of moderate or sub-threshold depression (35-45% beyond the 20-25% with major depressive disorder) suggest a potential subtype called developmental depression (DD), proposed as a normative process of spiritual individuation. This study tested for unique comorbidity and neural correlates in 125 adolescents aged 15-19 from a larger MRI dataset. Sub-threshold depression was associated with greater occipital brain volume and comorbidity with mania, ADHD, and anxiety. In adolescents low in self-transcendence, sub-threshold depression was linked to conduct disorder and heavy substance use. Findings support the possibility of DD as a distinct subtype.