Religion Brain & Behavior
March 31, 2026
Kurt Stocker, Matthias Hartmann, Frederick S. Barrett et al.
Mystical dynamics—the notion that mystical oneness may unfold involving ego disintegration, renewal, and luminous light—has been discussed anecdotally by psychedelic researchers and therapists but has not yet been empirically examined in controlled settings. This study investigated the occurrence and dose-dependency of mystical dynamics in healthy participants after administration of...
Religion Brain & Behavior
October 25, 2024
Ann Taves, Elliott Ihm
As a book that seeks to update William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (VRE) for a general audience, it has many features to commend. It offers a finely nuanced discussion of James bo...
Religion Brain & Behavior
July 11, 2024
Ari Brouwer, Charles L. Raison, F. Leron Shults
3 citations
Fruitful comparison of psychedelic, spiritual, and psychotic experiences requires a degree of phenomenological nuance. Some shared features of these phenomena, such as encounters and communications with supernatural entities, are obfuscated by scientific and clinical terminology. Other supposed distinctions are based on an atemporal view of dynamic experiences. In Section 2 of this...
Religion Brain & Behavior
June 29, 2023
Péter Rácz
1 citation
Possession trance is an altered state of consciousness resulting from spirit possession, belief in an alien entity residing in the self. Though treated as an individual psychopathological condition in Western medicine, cultural anthropology has long tied possession trance, and trance and possession phenomena in general, to marginalization by increasingly complex and inflexible social...
Religion Brain & Behavior
March 10, 2023
Andreas Nordin
5 citations
Dreaming is often connected with religious ideas and enjoys distinct epistemic status as a source of trusted information for divinatory practices—oneiromancy. These tendencies suggest the existence of a distinct content affordance relevance for dream divination, hypothesized in the “CARDD theory.” CARDD theory predicts that dreams containing nightmarish and threatening content, omission of...
Religion Brain & Behavior
April 3, 2021
A. Petersen
Ariel Gluklich takes up an important and according to him partly overlooked topic in The Joy of Religion (2020). The book has many qualities, and much of its argument is challenging, original, and thoughtful. It attends to pleasure and joy in an imbalanced fashion, but there is a reason. While the former is usually culturally excoriated, the latter is eulogized, but howdoes that relate to their...
Religion Brain & Behavior
June 5, 2018
Neil Van Leeuwen, Michiel van Elk
91 citations
We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as God exists) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as God appeared to me last night). On our model, people...
Religion Brain & Behavior
December 22, 2017
David L. R. Maij, Michiel van Elk, Uffe Schjoedt
32 citations
We explored the effects of alcohol on expectancy-driven mystical and quasi-mystical experiences by manipulating participants’ expectations. By using the so-called God Helmet suggestion, participants were led to believe that a placebo brain stimulation could elicit mystical experiences. In this pre-registered field study, we set out to test whether alcohol could increase participants’...
Religion Brain & Behavior
March 22, 2017
Andrew B. Newberg, Nancy Wintering, David B. Yaden et al.
19 citations
Spiritual retreats are a commonly used intensive program of meditation and prayer, along with other elements, designed to provide participants with opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth. While individual elements of such retreats have been studied, there have been no reports in the literature regarding the neurophysiological effects of these retreats. This preliminary study...
Religion Brain & Behavior
April 8, 2014
Bruce Greyson, Donna K. Broshek, Lori L. Derr et al.
45 citations
Alterations of consciousness are critical factors in the diagnosis of epilepsy and seizure disorders. With this alteration in consciousness, some persons report unusual experiences that have been thought to resemble spontaneous mystical experiences. This study was designed to identify and characterize the mystical experiences associated with seizure activity, through the use of a quantitative...