Abstract
The neural substrates of religious belief and experience are an intriguing though contentious topic. Here, we had the unique opportunity to establish the relation between validated measures of religiosity and gray matter volume in a large sample of participants (N = 211). In this registered report, we conducted a confirmatory voxel‐based morphometry analysis to test three central hypotheses regarding the relationship between religiosity and mystical experiences and gray matter volume. The preregisterered hypotheses, analysis plan, preprocessing and analysis code and statistical brain maps are all available from online repositories. By using a region‐of‐interest analysis, we found no evidence that religiosity is associated with a reduced volume of the orbito‐frontal cortex and changes in the structure of the bilateral inferior parietal lobes. Neither did we find support for the notion that mystical experiences are associated with a reduced volume of the hippocampus, the right middle temporal gyrus or with the inferior parietal lobes. A whole‐brain analysis furthermore indicated that no structural brain differences were found in association with religiosity and mystical experiences. We believe that the search for the neural correlates of religious beliefs and experiences should therefore shift focus from studying structural brain differences to a functional and multivariate approach.
Highlights
In the early 2000s, several newspapers headlined a study that had found the God‐spot—a brain region that could be considered the basis of the widespread belief in an omniscient omnipresent and powerful being
By using structural brain scans and voxel‐based morphometry (Ashburner & Friston, 2000), we investigated whether increased religiosity is associated with structural differences in gray matter volume, both in a confirmatory approach using ROI analyses of brain regions suggested by the literature as well using a whole‐brain analysis
We observed moderate evidence for the null model according to which gray matter volume in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), the bilateral inferior parietal lobe (IPL), the rMTL and the hippocampus are best explained by gender, age and intelligence, rather than religiosity or mystical experiences
Summary
In the early 2000s, several newspapers headlined a study that had found the God‐spot—a brain region that could be considered the basis of the widespread belief in an omniscient omnipresent and powerful being This news was based on pioneering work by Andrew Newberg, who identified the neural correlates of the unitary peak experience of monks (Newberg, Alavi, et al, 2001; Newberg & Iversen, 2003). One of their key findings was that the superior parietal lobe (SPL)—a brain region that has been associated with spatial attention and temporal processing—showed a reduced activity during meditative peak experiences compared to baseline This finding made sense in light of the phenomenological reports that often referred to feelings of a loss of sense of space and time and the awareness of a presence that was bigger than the self. Mystical experiences are characterized by a reduced awareness of the self, the loss of sense of space and time and the feeling of a strong connection with the surrounding world (Piedmont, 1999)
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