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Religion, Brain & Behavior

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Prayer as an interpersonal relationship: Aneuroimaging study

Raymond L. Neubauer

To cite this article: Raymond L. Neubauer (2014) Prayer as an interpersonalrelationship: A neuroimaging study, Religion, Brain & Behavior, 4:2, 92-103, DOI:10.1080/2153599X.2013.768288

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2013.768288

Published online: 03 Apr 2013.

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Prayer as an interpersonal relationship: A neuroimaging study

Raymond L. Neubauer*

School of Biological Sciences, University of Texas, Austin, USA

This fMRI study describes neural correlates of prayer during periods in whichpeople report in after-scan surveys that they felt the presence of God. Participantswere part of a broad movement in modern Christianity that goes by various termssuch as Pentecostal, charismatic, or spirit-filled. For them, the presence of God isa strong and immediate experience during improvised, personal prayer. Prayerwas compared to imaginatively speaking to a loved one, a significant other in theperson’s life, and to a ground state of visualizing and naming a parade of animals.Results show an overlap between prayer and speaking to a loved one in brainareas associated with theory of mind, suggesting that the brain treats both as aninterpersonal relationship. These brain areas are also associated with the defaultmode network, where the mind evaluates past and possible future experiences ofthe self. It is suggested that the high personal significance that participants attachto prayer experiences is due in part to their taking place in core areas of self-understanding.

Keywords: fMRI; theory of mind; default mode network; self; Christianity;prayer

Introduction

At the core of many religions is some form of prayer. In The Varieties of ReligiousExperience, William James (1902/1985, p. 365) defined prayer as “every kind ofinward communion or conversation with the power recognized as divine.” The terms“communion” and “conversation” imply a two-way relationship whereby theindividual makes his/her thoughts known to a deity and in some way feels a response.

The core of this experience, that precise moment when the individual feels incontact with the divine, is difficult to capture because it is a fleeting and highlypersonal event. It has been attempted in only a small number of neuroimagingstudies. While Michael Persinger (1984) has for years applied weak, complexmagnetic fields to the temporal lobes and evoked the sensed presence of a “SentientBeing” that he associates with the presence of God, his EEG studies are not specificenough to localize the effect beyond a general temporoparietal area. AndrewNewberg and colleagues have studied prayer using radioactive tracers in singlephoton emission computed tomography (SPECT), but their sample sizes aresmall, with three Franciscan nuns in one study and five Pentecostals in another(Newberg, Pourdehnad, Alavi, & d’Aquili, 2003; Newberg, Wintering, Morgan, &Waldman, 2006). Elsewhere, a study asked Carmelite nuns to remember and relivethe most intense mystical experience of their lives, then compared this with theirmost intense state of union with another human being (Beauregard & Paquette,

*Email: rneubauer@utexas.edu

Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2014Vol. 4, No. 2, 92–103, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2013.768288

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2006). Unfortunately, the nuns relied upon memory because they stated that “Godcan’t be summoned at will” (p. 187).

A study of Danish Christians sympathetic to Pentecostal prayer practicescompared improvised prayer to God with making wishes to Santa Claus (Schjoedt,Stdkilde-Jorgensen, Geertz, & Roepstorff, 2009). This study was able to distinguishprayer by distinctive brain activity in areas associated with theory of mind (ToM)and proposed that theistic prayer is a kind of interpersonal relationship. The areasactivated—the medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC), the precuneus, and the tempor-oparietal junction (BA 39)—are also part of a larger network known as the defaultmode network (DMN) that a variety of studies have indicated is central to anunderstanding of the self (Andrews-Hanna, 2012; Buckner, 2012; Northoff et al.,2006). In the DMN, the mind ranges over past and future experiences to considerhow they relate to the self. The overlap with ToM suggests that we use our ownreactions to experiences to understand how other people might react to similarexperiences (Amodio & Frith, 2006; Benoit, Gilbert, Volle, & Burgess, 2010;Schilbach, Eickhoff, Rska-Jagiela, Fink, & Vogeley, 2008).

The aforementioned researchers studying Danish Christians found a differentpattern of brain activity for prayer to God compared to making wishes to SantaClaus. They attributed this difference to participants believing God to be real but notbelieving in the reality of Santa Claus (Schjoedt et al., 2009). They suggested that athird comparison would be useful between prayer and imaginatively speaking to a realperson, and they predicted that similar areas associated with ToM would be activatedboth in prayer and also in the relation to a real person. The present study fills that gapby comparing improvised, personal prayer to imaginatively speaking to a “loved one,”defined as a person important in the participant’s life, such as a relative or best friend.

Attempting to clarify the elusive nature of prayer in a neuroimaging study,I sought people for whom prayer is an immediate and powerful experience. They arepart of a movement in modern Christianity that is variously known as Pentecostal,charismatic, or spirit-filled. While the emphasis upon ecstatic worship and directcontact by the individual with God through prayer began in Pentecostal denomina-tions, it has expanded as movements within mainline churches, as well as a variety ofnon-denominational congregations. Within Catholicism, people who practice thisstyle of worship are known as charismatics (Grim, 2009). The hypothesis was thatpeople for whom prayer is such a powerful and immediate experience would provideinsight into which areas of the brain are active when people state that they feel thepresence of God, and that this might also provide insight into why many religiouspeople consider prayer such an important activity in their lives.

Methods

Participants

Volunteers were recruited from local prayer groups and churches. Many of thesechurches were non-denominational. In a post-scan questionnaire, all participants(n = 14) reported they had an active prayer life for at least four years, and 57% said10 years or more. Ages ranged from 19 to 62 years (mean age=34), with eight femalesand six males.

All participants described themselves as either Pentecostal, charismatic, or spirit-filled. They are part of a broad movement in modern Christianity that is sometimes

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referred to in scholarly literature as “renewalist.” Pentecostal-style renewalistcongregations are one of the fastest growing segments of global Christianity, makingup about a quarter of approximately 2 billion Christians in the world (Pew Forum,2006). In 1910, there were about 1 million renewalist Christians worldwide; by 2009,they numbered about 614 million, many in churches of large size (Cox, 1995;Johnson, 2009).

A survey of 1,827 members of a Pentecostal denomination, the Assemblies ofGod, found that 85% reported feeling “the unmistakable presence of God duringprayer” on at least some days (Poloma & Green, 2010). Nor is such an interpersonalrelationship with God unusual in modern America as a whole, evidenced by a 2005survey of 1,721 Americans conducted by the Gallup Organization for the BaylorReligion Survey (2006), which found that 71.5% pray at least once a week and that54.4% believe God is highly involved in their daily lives, in either an authoritarian orbenevolent way.

All participants in the present study were right-handed, with no reported historyof psychiatric disorders. None reported taking any mood-altering medicines, such asantidepressants. All reviewed and signed the informed consent form of theInstitutional Review Board of the University of Texas. Participants were paid $25for completing the study.

Of 16 people who originally volunteered, two had to be dropped due to problemsof data recovery. For similar reasons, one of the three runs in each scan had to bedropped for two other individuals in the study (see below). Their results are basedstatistically on two runs instead of three.

Conditions and procedures

The study used a block design with three conditions: (A) active prayer (90 seconds);(B) imagining and silently speaking to a loved one (90 seconds); and (C) imaginingand naming animals (35 seconds). These are elaborated below:

(A) Active prayer: A pre-trial survey identified individuals who felt they couldevoke the presence of God within 90 seconds of starting prayer. People were asked topray in their usual way, but silently and without moving their mouths or the rest ofthe body. Participants were also preferentially chosen for utilizing visual imageryduring prayer, either through imagining Jesus or through an imaginative sense ofGod’s presence during some part of silent prayer.

(B) Loved one: The loved one was defined as a close personal friend with whomthe participant had a non-sexual relationship, such as a relative or best friend.Participants were asked to imagine that person was present and to silently expresstheir love and gratitude for ways in which that person has helped them.

(C) Animals: Participants were asked to imagine a variety of animals and namethem one by one in a kind of parade in a continuous series for 35 seconds. Thiscondition was used as a baseline for comparisons with the other conditions.

Each condition therefore had both a visual and verbal (interior speech) component.Each run had three iterations of each condition, such as ABC, ABC, ABC, with30 seconds of rest between runs. There were three runs for each participant, with theconditions presented in a pseudo-randomized order. Thus, each of the three runsbegan with a different condition, and no pattern was repeated until all possible

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combinations of the three conditions had been used with all the participants. Threeruns per person resulted in nine iterations of each condition for each individual.Together with two structural scans, this took about 50 minutes per participant. Thestart of each condition was announced with a five-second sign on the scanner’sprojection screen, and then the screen went blank (light blue). Instructions were givenvisually for the start and end of each condition, so participants were asked to keeptheir eyes open during the runs. Visual instructions were used to avoid the problem ofhearing spoken instructions over the scanner noise. Right after the scan, participantsfilled out a multiple-choice questionnaire about their experiences in the scanner andabout their prayer lives in general.

The 30-second rest period at the end of each run was otherwise undefined. Unlikeduring the test conditions, participants could have their eyes open or closed while atrest. As religious people, they may also have prayed during the rest periods. Rest,therefore, was considered an unreliable condition for comparisons.

On each of the three days before the scans, participants were asked to practice thethree conditions for a total of 20 minutes at home while lying down and looking at ablank area of the ceiling. There was also one practice session in the mock scannerroom at the imaging center anywhere from one to three days before the actual scans.In the mock scanner, participants were shown a screen with instructions for eachcondition to make sure they could see them plainly, and they were able to practice thethree conditions while a recording simulated scanner noise.

Data acquisition and analysis

Data acquisition was performed on a 3T functional magnetic resonance imaging(fMRI) scanner using an eight-channel phased array head coil. A multi-echoGRAPPA parallel imaging EPI sequence developed at Stanford was used. T2*functional echo planer (EPI) images were collected utilizing whole-head coveragewith slice orientation to reduce artifacts (oblique angle, TR=2s, three shot,TE=30ms, 36 axial slices oriented for best whole-head coverage, acquisition voxelsize=3.125!3.125!3 mm with a 0.3 mm inter-slice gap, flip angle=90˚, FOV=25.6, matrix=96!96). The first four EPI volumes were discarded to allow scans toreach equilibrium.

In addition to EPI images during the three experimental runs, two high-resolution T1 SPGR scans were acquired that were empirically optimized for highcontrast between grey matter (GM) and white matter (WM), and between GM andcerebrospinal fluid (CSF). These images were acquired in the sagittal plane using a1.3 mm slice thickness with 1.0 mm3 in plane resolution. The functional scans of thethree experimental runs together with the two structural scans took about 50minutes. In all cases, instructions were viewed utilizing a back-projection screen and amirror mounted on the top of the head coil.

Data were analyzed using standard techniques for fMRI block designs, using theFEAT analysis package (Smith, 2001). The following pre-processing steps wereconducted on imaging data: the data were skull stripped, motion corrected, spatiallysmoothed using an 8 mm FWFM Gaussian kernel, and a high-pass filter at 160s wasapplied. General Linear Model (GLM) analysis was conducted on pre-processeddata. Registration of mean functional image to standard MNI space was done with athree-stage registration process. First-level design matrices contained regressors forprayer, loved ones, animals, and rest. Each of these conditions was modeled as a

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stick function convolved with a hemodynamic response. The duration of thehemodynamic response was modeled as the actual duration of each condition (90sprayer, 90s loved one, 35s animals, 30s rest). Using FLAME, first-level analysis waswithin a run, second-level combined runs within a subject using fixed effects, andthird-level was group analysis for each condition. Cluster correction with a voxel-wise cluster-forming threshold of z = 2.3 and corrected extent threshold of p < .05was used to control for multiple comparisons.

Results

fMRI results

Table 1 lists all areas showing significant activations for contrasts set at a thresholdof p< .05 corrected. The two largest areas of activation in both prayer>baseline andloved one>baseline are the medial prefrontal cortex (BA 9, 10) and the posteriorcingulate (BA 31). Each has been identified as a core area of both ToM and theDMN (Andrews-Hanna, 2012). Activation in the temporal lobe (BA 39) is near thetemporoparietal junction. Overall brain activation is decidedly biased to the lefthemisphere, but more so for prayer>baseline than for loved one>baseline. Asshown in Figure 1C and 1D, prayer overlaps areas activated by speaking to a lovedone, but occupies more restricted areas. Yet peak activations, as shown by MNIcoordinates in Table 1, are near each other for the two conditions in the medialprefrontal cortex (BA 10), the precuneus (BA 31), and the parietal lobe (BA 39).Activations for prayer>baseline are entirely within the area of loved one>baseline,so a third color was not deemed necessary to show overlaps in Figure 1.

Table 1. Regions showing significant differences in BOLD signal between conditions (p < .05corrected). Peak areas within a cluster are listed in MNI coordinates.

MNI (peak)

Study contrasts Region Side BA x y zClustersize z

Prayer>baseline Medial prefrontal b 10 "2 56 10 1921 4.32cortex l 9 "8 64 24 3.10

Posterior cingulate l 31 "4 "52 28 660 3.24Precuneous l 31 "2 "62 30 3.31Parietal lobe l 39 "52 "64 22 533 3.77

Loved one>baseline Medial prefrontal b 10 "2 56 6 4068 4.70cortex l 10 "2 68 16 4.50

b 9 "4 56 8 4.30b 9 6 58 8 4.43

Anterior cingulate l 32 0 44 2 3.96Posterior cingulate b 23 "2 "48 26 2137 4.0Precuneous b 31 0 "64 32 4.02

b 7 "2 "66 36 4.16Parietal lobe l 39 "52 "66 24 1022 3.36

Prayer> loved one Juxtapositionallobule

b 6 8 "6 58 513 3.14

Insular cortex l 13 "38 18 "6 589 3.35Loved one>prayer Frontal pole r 11 6 56 "22 1713 3.49

Precuneous b 31 "2 "56 30 2637 3.94

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The contrast of prayer> loved one has two new areas of activation: thejuxtapositional lobule (BA 6) and the insular cortex (BA 13). The involvement ofthe insula may explain the higher emotional valence felt during prayer over that feltwhile speaking to a loved one, shown in the after-scan survey results. The reversecontrast of loved one>prayer shows wide activations in the frontal pole (BA 11) andthe precuneus (BA 31).

After-scan survey results

Fourteen people filled out a multiple-choice survey after the scan, but not allquestions were answered. Based on the survey results, prayer clearly appears to be areciprocal relationship for these individuals. Unless otherwise noted, the followingpercentages in this section are of the responses made by all 14 participants.

All participants described their faith as either Pentecostal, charismatic, or spirit-filled. Ninety-two percent reported that during a typical time of prayer in daily life,they felt the presence of God within one minute or less of starting prayer.

All reported that they could feel the presence of God while praying during at leastsome of the scans. Of the nine separate times they were asked to pray over the threeruns, 57% felt God’s presence in all of them, 21% for 80–90% of the iterations, 14%for 75% of the iterations, and 7% for 50% of the iterations.

Figure 1. (A, B) Regions showing BOLD signal increase for the contrast loved one>baseline. (C, D) Regions showing BOLD signal increase for the contrast prayer>baseline(yellow) and their overlap with activations for loved one>baseline (blue).Note: Left side of the brain indicated with (L). All contrasts set at a threshold of p< .05corrected.

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When asked to compare prayer in the scanner to their normal prayer life in termsof how close they felt to God, using 1 for lowest and 5 for highest, 57% rated theirexperience in the scanner 4, 36% rated 3, and 7% rated 2.

When asked, “In all your prayer times, about how often do you feel God isspeaking to you?” 14% chose “90% or more of the time,” 21% chose “about 75% ofthe time,” 29% chose “about 50% of the time,” and 36% chose “25% or less of thetime.” Percentages were defined in the question so that 50%, for example, meant “in½ of all your prayer times.” God speaking was defined as “actual words rather thanjust a feeling” and included words in the form of “an inner voice rather than anexternal one.”

Prayer is also a significant activity in the lives of these individuals. Thirty-eightpercent of respondents considered prayer “the most important activity” in their lives,and the remaining 62% considered it “among the most important” (n = 13). Of allfourteen participants, 79% said prayer was the condition they experienced mostpowerfully in the scanner, while only 21% listed speaking to a loved one first.

Given a choice between a family member and a close friend, all participants chosefamily members: 71% a parent, 21% a child, and 7% a sibling.

All participants reported experiencing visual images of God in 75% or more ofthe nine separate times that they prayed in the scanner, and a slightly smaller set of71% reported visual images of God during all of their prayers. Similarly, 79%reported visual imagery every time they addressed their loved one, and all 14reported visual imagery in at least 75% of the times.

Discussion

This study shows that for a group of religious Christians, the brain areas activatedduring prayer to God overlap with areas activated during spontaneous speech to aloved one or to a significant person in their lives. This overlap takes place in areasassociated with ToM, suggesting that the brain treats both as a kind of interpersonalrelationship.

Meta-analyses show that the three brain regions found active in this study—themedial prefrontal cortex (BA 9, 10), the posterior cingulate cortex (BA 31), and theparietal lobe near the temporoparietal junction (BA 39)—have consistently beenassociated with tasks that involve social cognition or ToM (Andrews-Hanna, 2012;Spreng, Mar, & Kim, 2009; Van Overwalle, 2009). ToM, also called mentalizing,refers to thinking about the intentions, beliefs, and desires of others (Buckner,Andrews-Hanna, & Schacter, 2008). It has been suggested that we use ourselves as asurrogate to understand the minds of other people. By considering our own reactionsto experiences, we are able to estimate and understand the reactions of others tosimilar experiences.

These three brain areas are also part of a cluster of brain regions known as theDMN. The DMN is involved in introspective thought, especially as it relates to theself. During such thought, the mind ranges over the past and future, ruminating overprior experiences and planning possible future activities (Andrews-Hanna, 2012;Benoit et al., 2010; Northoff et al., 2006). Moreover, a large part of introspectivethought concerns our relationships to others and our place in a social network(Schilbach et al., 2008). It is not surprising, therefore, that ToM activities overlap theDMN. A meta-analysis of 51 brain-imaging studies found extensive functionaloverlap between autobiographical memory and ToM that mainly involved areas of

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the DMN (Spreng & Mar, 2012; Spreng et al., 2009). Another meta-analysis foundthat the activities associated with both mentalizing and self-knowledge largelyoverlap in BA 9 and 10 on the MPFC (Amodio & Frith, 2006). A study of traitwords applicable either to the self or to a best friend found largely overlapping areasof activation in the MPFC and the posterior cingulate cortex (PCC) and nearbyprecuneus (Benoit et al., 2010). Compared to a baseline of counting syllables, theoverlaps were also largely left-lateralized. These areas are strikingly similar to theareas of overlap discovered in the present study. Also, the strength of MPFCactivation in judging another person was directly correlated with the degree to whichthat person possessed traits similar to oneself, again indicating overlap in thinkingabout self and others. It should be noted, however, that Benoit et al. observedactivations in the temporal lobes not found in this report.

In a recent review that synthesizes structural and functional imaging studies ofthe DMN, Andrews-Hanna (2012) found the MPFC and the PCC to be core hubsfor both ToM activity and introspection about the self. Both of these areas displayedthe largest activations in comparison to baseline in the current prayer study and alsoin a study of improvised prayer among Danish Christians (Schjoedt et al., 2009).These central hubs each have branching subsystems that functionally connect to avariety of brain areas, depending on the specific task involved (Andrews-Hanna,2012). The dorsal MPFC subsystem, for example, is active in ToM, social reasoning,and conceptual processing. It might include the temporoparietal junction, temporalpole, or lateral temporal cortex, depending on the particular task. But in each case,the central cores of the MPFC and the PCC are active.

In their study of Danish Christians sympathetic to Pentecostal practices, Schjoedtet al. (2009) concluded that improvised prayer is a form of interpersonal relationshipbecause it recruited areas of social cognition. The present study reinforces thatconclusion in showing an overlap in brain activation patterns between prayer andimaginatively addressing a loved one in the participant’s life. All participantsreported feeling the presence of God while praying in the scanner (see Results). Thus,something like a reciprocal relationship is taking place because they feel a responseto their prayers. It is interesting that this takes place in areas related to ToM, wherewe try to understand the thoughts of others.

If a relationship to God is another kind of interpersonal relationship, we mightfind an effect in people with difficulties in social relations. A recent study found thatautistic individuals were only 11% as likely to believe in God as matched neuro-typical controls, and this relationship persisted after controlling statistically for IQ.Mentalizing—as assessed by parents rating their autistic child in terms of interest inothers’ beliefs and desires and in terms of the child’s understanding of emotion—proved to be an independent, robust predictor of belief in a personal God(Norenzayan, Gervais, & Trzesniewski, 2012). For autism, a similar effect appliesto the DMN, and lower default network activity tracks social dysfunction in a linearfashion. Those with the greatest social impairment have the most atypical ventralMPFC activity (Buckner et al., 2008).

Personal significance of prayer

All participants in this study described prayer as the most significant or among themost significant activities in their lives (see Results). This may be related to thecentral role the DMN appears to play in an understanding of self.

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The DMN is anti-correlated with attention to external activities. There appears tobe a limited amount of energy available for mentation, and it can be expended eitheron activities orientated toward the external world or on evaluating experiencesintrospectively. Surveys indicate we spend a large fraction of time on introspectivethought, as much as 30–50% of daily life (Andrews-Hanna, Reidler, Huang, &Buckner, 2010; D’Argembeau, Lardi, & Van der Linden, 2012; Killingsworth &Gilbert, 2010). These are not just daydreams, but highly significant personal andgoal-directed thoughts related to the recent past or near future (Andrews-Hanna,2012). Some researchers have suggested this area represents a core of the self, wherewe consolidate past experience and make plans for the future (Andrews-Hanna,2012; D’Argembeau, Jedidi et al., 2012; Northoff et al., 2006).

The high significance attached to prayer by participants in this present study maybe related to the fact that it touches a core area of the self. As mentioned above,participants feel that God is actually responding to their prayer, and all reportedfeeling the presence of God for at least part of the time while praying inside thescanner. For these individuals, the creator and sustainer of the universe is respondingto their petitions. This understanding, coupled with activation in what appears to bea central area of the self, may be what makes the experience feel highly significant. Italso might explain the fact that 79% reported that prayer was the condition theyexperienced most powerfully during the runs in the scanner (see Results).

The left-side bias for personal prayer found in both the present study and thestudy of Danish Christians (Schjoedt et al., 2009) may also be related to a centralunderstanding of the self. Some studies of split-brain patients have indicated that theleft hemisphere interprets experience and puts together a narrative that best explainsevents. For example, if the left eye and right eye view different scenes, the subject willoffer an explanation based on events seen by the left hemisphere. Based on this,Roser and Gazzaniga (2004) suggested that the left hemisphere “interpreter,” aregion where primary language centers are also located, may be responsible for oursense of unified conscious experience.

While personal prayer has a greater left-hemisphere bias than speaking to a lovedone, its overall area of activation is smaller in area (see Table 1). Participants wereasked to have some visual sense of the presence of both the loved one and God. Onewould expect that a close family member would be easier to visualize than God, yetno areas of the visual cortex show up in the contrast of loved one>prayer. However,the DMN has been shown to be a general imaginative area where one constructsscenes (Daselaar, Porat, Huijbers, & Pennartz, 2010), and the larger areas activatedfor loved one>baseline than for prayer>baseline may reflect the greater ease anddetail with which one can imagine a close family member compared to God.

The study of Danish Christians also found that the brain makes a distinctionbetween real and imagined persons (Schjoedt et al., 2009). Prayer was compared tomaking wishes to Santa Claus, and post-scan interviews demonstrated that allsubjects reported a belief in God but not in Santa Claus. They visualized God inhuman form and believed that He answers prayers. The comparison of makingwishes to Santa Claus>personal prayer activated areas outside the classicDMN, with as many right- as left-hemisphere areas. Other studies of imaginationfurther substantiate the brain’s ability to distinguish between real and fictitiouspersons or conditions (Abraham, von Cramon, & Schubotz, 2008; Benoit et al.,2010; Harris, Sheth, & Cohen, 2008; Hassabis, Kumaran, & Maguire, 2007).Abraham et al. (2008) contrasted imaginatively meeting George Bush versus

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Cinderella. The real>fictional person activated areas of the DMN: MPFC (BA 10)and posterior cingulate/precuneus (BA 31/23); while fictional>real person activatednon-DMN areas: inferior frontal gyrus (BA 45, 47) and medial occipital gyrus (BA18). The results of the present study show an activation overlap in areas associatedwith the DMN between speaking to an important person in the individual’s personallife and addressing God, indicating that the participant considers both to be real.

Limitations

While it might be objected that this study shows prayer to be just another form ofimaginative experience, this alone does not explain the deep significance that prayerhas for the participants. Moreover, a variety of studies indicate that the brain makes adistinction between imagining real and fictitious persons or events, as demonstratedby the specific areas that are activated (Abraham et al., 2008; Benoit et al., 2010;Daselaar et al., 2010; Harris et al., 2008; Hassabis et al., 2007). All participants in thepresent study imagined a member of the family as their loved one, and the fact thatprayer activated overlapping areas with speaking to these loved ones suggests thatGod may be as real to these individuals as a member of their own family.

Although prayer does appear to activate brain areas associated with ToM and theDMN, this study does not explore the functional connectivity between these brainareas and only shows that they are both active within the 90s periods of prayer andspeaking to a loved one. Similarly, the direction of causation cannot be determinedfrom this study. It cannot be determined whether the feeling of significanceassociated with prayer leads to the activation of certain brain areas, or whetheractivating those areas leads to a feeling of significance. This latter issue is entangledwith the mind–body problem, which must be explored in a more philosophical paper.

Another objection might be that this study surveys a fairly limited population:people who identify with the renewalist Christian movement. It would be interestingto know whether informal, personal prayer activates the same brain areas in othermonotheist religions that do not view God in as distinctly human terms, such asJudaism and Islam.

Finally, the present results average BOLD signals over the entire time course ofeach condition. A more precise study might identify those segments of prayer whenthe individual felt the presence of God most strongly. A future experiment, forexample, might distinguish intervals of heightened spiritual experience from lessintense periods by giving participants a button to push.

Conclusion

This study shows brain areas that are active when a group of highly religiousChristians report that they feel the presence of God during prayer. Improvised prayerwas compared to imaginatively speaking to a loved one and to a baseline of naminganimals. Prayer and speaking to a loved one overlap in areas related to ToM in thebrain. This indicates that the mind treats both experiences as a kind of interpersonalrelationship. These areas are also central parts of the DMN, where a personintrospectively evaluates the past and future possibilities for the self. It is suggestedthat the high personal significance that prayer holds in the lives of these individualsrelates to experiencing the presence of God in a central area of the self.

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Historically, religion has provided a strong sense of identity to people and hasalso promoted social cooperation among believers. The very act of sharing anexperience with others that is profoundly meaningful to the self probably promotessocial bonding. This would likely be reinforced when the experience activates brainareas involved in understanding and responding to the minds of others. Thus, inwardexperiences may enhance outward social practices. Ultimately, the personal identityprovided to adherents and the cohesion promoted within large social groups mayhelp to explain the persistence of religion throughout history.

Acknowledgments

This study was supported in part by a grant of time on the 3T GE scanner as part of graduatetraining by the Dept. of Psychology, University of Texas at Austin. I am grateful to Dr. DavidSchnyer for help in designing the protocol and for advice on analysis. I am indebted to Dr.Tyler Davis for writing the computer program that ran the experiment in the scanner and foradvice on data analysis and issues in this paper.

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