SynthesisBrain and behavior2026
The Neuroscience of Religious and Spiritual Practices: A Systematic Review of Neurotheological Evidence.
Synthesis in Brain and behavior, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. An erratum has been issued. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
- Erratum issued
Authors and funding
11 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundReligious and spiritual practices are among the most ancient and universal human behaviors, yet their neurobiological substrates remain incompletely characterized. Neurotheology-the scientific study of the relationship between spiritual experience and brain function-has produced growing evidence that such practices generate measurable, systematic, and neuroplastic changes in brain structure and function. However, prior reviews have been limited to single practice types, narrow evidence bases, or narrative methods, with none synthesizing the full spectrum of traditions, practices, and neuroimaging modalities in a single review.
methodsAdhering to the PRISMA 2020 guidelines and registered on the Open Science Framework, Scopus, PubMed/MEDLINE, and ProQuest (23 sub-databases) were searched from inception to June 30, 2026. Eligible studies comprised those using objective neuroimaging or neurophysiological techniques. After multi-stage screening, 105 studies (1998-2026) were synthesized narratively using the synthesis without meta-analysis (SWiM) framework, given substantial heterogeneity.
resultsStudies spanned Buddhist, Christian, Islamic, Hindu, Santo Daime, Spiritist, Sant Mat, and mixed traditions, examining meditation, prayer, chanting, recitation, worship, retreat, mystical experience, mediumistic trance, and ritual altered states. Consistent engagement appeared across the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate, default mode network (DMN), insula, amygdala, hippocampus, temporoparietal junction, and dopaminergic/serotonergic systems. Practice-specific signatures emerged: meditation (DMN suppression, prefrontal augmentation), prayer (social-cognition networks), chanting/recitation (limbic deactivation, gamma/delta enhancement), and mystical states (most distributed profiles). Long-term practitioners showed structural neuroplasticity, and clinical-population studies linked these circuits to depression, anxiety, and stress.
conclusionsReligious and spiritual practices produce consistent, practice-specific, and neuroplastic modifications to brain systems governing attention, emotion regulation, self-referential processing, and reward-supporting a plausible mechanistic link between spiritual engagement and mental health, and positioning neurotheology as an empirically grounded dialogue between contemplative tradition and clinical neuroscience.
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