ArticleCerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991)2019
Neural Correlates of Personalized Spiritual Experiences.
Article in Cerebral cortex (New York, N.Y. : 1991), 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. It is linked to trial NCT05485181 (Validating Promoted Spiritual Experience), which is not on this map. Cited by 14 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Validating Promoted Spiritual Experience: A Pilot Study
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- The Neuroscience of Religious and Spiritual Practices: A Systematic Review of Neurotheological Evidence.Brain and behavior · 2026Pooled it
- Trial
- Religiosity, Financial Risk Taking, and Reward Processing: An Experimental Study.Journal of gambling studies · 2025Article
- Achieving our highest potential through character development (Husn-i-Akhlaaq): an Islamic perspective on holistic personality development, spiritual growth and human flourishing.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Influence of nature on spirituality and cognition: an examination of short-term exposure through video clips.Frontiers in psychology · 2025Article
- Spirituality is associated with immune parameters and disease activity in primary Sjögren's syndrome: a cross-sectional study.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Features Linked to Treatment Outcomes in Behavioral Addictions and Related Disorders.International journal of environmental research and public health · 2023Review
- Altruism and "love of neighbor" offer neuroanatomical protection against depression.Psychiatry research. Neuroimaging · 2021Article
- Is spirituality a component of wisdom? Study of 1,786 adults using expanded San Diego Wisdom Scale (Jeste-Thomas Wisdom Index).Journal of psychiatric research · 2021Article
- A Review on Research and Evaluation Methods for Investigating Self-Transcendence.Frontiers in psychology · 2020Review
- Spiritual experiences are related to engagement of a ventral frontotemporal functional brain network: Implications for prevention and treatment of behavioral and substance addictions.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2019Article
- Assessing spirituality: is there a beneficial role in the management of COPD?NPJ primary care respiratory medicine · 2019Review
- Family Risk for Depression and Prioritization of Religion or Spirituality: Early Neurophysiological Modulations of Motivated Attention.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2019Article
- A mindful model of sexual health: A review and implications of the model for the treatment of individuals with compulsive sexual behavior disorder.Journal of behavioral addictions · 2018Review
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
7 authors.
Funding
Abstract
Across cultures and throughout history, human beings have reported a variety of spiritual experiences and the concomitant perceived sense of union that transcends one's ordinary sense of self. Nevertheless, little is known about the underlying neural mechanisms of spiritual experiences, particularly when examined across different traditions and practices. By adapting an individualized guided-imagery task, we investigated neural correlates of personally meaningful spiritual experiences as compared with stressful and neutral-relaxing experiences. We observed in the spiritual condition, as compared with the neutral-relaxing condition, reduced activity in the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), a result that suggests the IPL may contribute importantly to perceptual processing and self-other representations during spiritual experiences. Compared with stress cues, responses to spiritual cues showed reduced activity in the medial thalamus and caudate, regions associated with sensory and emotional processing. Overall, the study introduces a novel method for investigating brain correlates of personally meaningful spiritual experiences and suggests neural mechanisms associated with broadly defined and personally experienced spirituality.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.