Working back and forth between neuroscientific methods and ethnographic phenomenology can inspire new ways of thinking. A neurophenomenological project investigated the evangelical Christian practice of speaking in tongues. After several years of ethnographic participant observation in tongues-speaking churches and careful interviews with tongues-speakers, the researchers developed a neuroimaging experiment to capture what they heard. Their interdisciplinary approach revealed shifts in the experience of speaking in tongues, which they call "dropping in." Combining ethnographic phenomenology and neuroscience brought a deeper understanding of tongues prayer in unexpected ways.
Hearing the voice of God or seeing an ancestor's spirit are experiences of the mind, tied to mental models and cognitive-epistemic attitudes about the mind. With the right combination of these, one's own thoughts and inner sensations can be experienced as coming from somewhere or someone else. Results from a large-scale study of U.S. adults (N = 1779) support the theory that spiritual experiences are facilitated by a dynamic interaction between mental models and cognitive-epistemic attitudes: a person is more likely to hear God speak if they have the epistemic flexibility and cultural support to shift temporarily away from a mundane model of mind into a more 'porous' way of thinking. This lays a foundation for considering how such interactions might also facilitate fiction writing and scientific discovery.