Modulation of Religious and Spiritual Neural Networks for Improving Mental Health
Preprints.org November 4, 2025 preprint DOI: 10.20944/preprints202511.0227.v1 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Review |
|---|---|
| Topics | Anxiety Neuroplasticity |
| Keywords | Mental health Cognition Neurocognitive Psychological resilience Salience neuroscience Mental illness Psychotherapist Cognitive psychology Clinical psychology Developmental psychology |
| Key findings | Religious and spiritual practices recruit brain networks that regulate self-referential processing, salience, executive control, reward, and social bonding, and are linked to reduced depression and anxiety when positively engaged. |
Abstract
Religious and spiritual (R/S) practices and experiences invoke measurable neurocognitive processes that enhance resilience and recovery from affective disorders. Converging evidence from functional neuroanatomy and network studies demonstrate R/S practices recruit brain networks that regulate self-referential processing, salience attribution, executive control, reward, and social bonding. Lesion mapping, functional neuroimaging, and electrophysiology show involvement of the default mode, salience, and frontoparietal networks, as well as limbic and temporoparietal structures act collective to support spiritual cognition and experience. These states are biochemically mediated by serotonergic and dopaminergic signaling, endogenous opioids, and oxytocin. Systemic health benefits arising from R/S practices are reflected in psychoneuroimmunology evidence of decreased stress and inflammatory biomarkers. Epidemiologic and clinical studies link positive R/S engagement and spiritually integrated psychotherapy to lower depression and anxiety, while religious struggles predict worse outcomes. Resting posterior alpha activity has emerged as a candidate trait marker of R/S importance and resilience. Emerging efforts to advance psychedelic-assisted therapy provides a pragmatic opportunity to explore how network plasticity and R/S or mystical experiences often produced by treatments can mediate durable clinical benefits. Taken together, these data motivate an integrative pluralism in mental healthcare that combines conventional treatments with targeted R/S practices to restore meaning, connection, and adaptive neural network function. This paper discusses mechanistic frameworks linking spiritual cognition to measurable brain–body pathways with attention to their clinical implications for improving mental health.
Comparable studies
Other narrative reviews on neuroplasticity, most cited first.
| Study | Year | Design | Participants |
|---|---|---|---|
| A neurotrophic hypothesis of depression: role of synaptogenesis in the actions of NMDA receptor antagonists | 2012 | Review | |
| Towards an understanding of psychedelic-induced neuroplasticity. Review of preclinical and clinical studies | 2023 | Review | |
| Buddha's Brain: Neuroplasticity and Meditation [In the Spotlight] | 2008 | Review | |
| Neuroplasticity as a convergent mechanism of ketamine and classical psychedelics | 2021 | Review | |
| Psychedelics in Psychiatry: Neuroplastic, Immunomodulatory, and Neurotransmitter Mechanisms | 2020 | Review |