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Meditative practices typically require several coordinated cognitive activities. This study measured changes in cerebral blood flow during "verbal" based meditation by Franciscan nuns involving the internal repetition of a particular phrase. These results are compared with those we previously described in eight Buddhist meditators who use a type of "visualization" technique. Three experienced practitioners of verbal meditation were injected via i.v. at rest with 260 MBq of Tc-99m HMPAO and scanned 30 min. later on a triple head SPECT camera for 45 min. Following the baseline scan, subjects meditated for approximately 40 min. at which time they were injected with 925 MBq of HMPAO while they continued to meditate for 10 min. more (total of 50 min. of meditation). The injection during meditation was designed not to disturb practice. Subjects were scanned 20 min. later for 30 min. Counts were obtained for regions of interest for major brain structures and normalized to whole-brain blood flow. Compared to baseline, mean verbal meditation scans showed increased blood flow in the prefrontal cortex (7.1%), inferior parietal lobes (6.8%), and inferior frontal lobes (9.0%). There was a strong inverse correlation between the blood flow, change in the prefrontal cortex and in the ipsilateral superior parietal lobe (p<.01). This study on a limited number of subjects demonstrated the feasibility of studying different types of meditation with neuroimaging techniques, suggested that several coordinated cognitive processes occur during meditation, and also raised important methodological issues.

This paper first considers the current confusion in categorizing and even describing mystical states, including experiences of God, the Void, and lesser religious experiences. The paper presents the necessity of studying the neuropsychological substrate of such experiences both to understand them in greater depth and to help resolve scholarly confusion in this area. As a prelude to presenting a neuropsychological model, the basic principles of brain organization are reviewed, including hemisphericity; primary, secondary, and tertiary sensory receptive areas; their motor analogues; prefrontosensorial polarity; and the integration of limbic functioning into cortical activity. A neuropsychological model for mystical states is then presented in terms of differential stimulation and deafferentation of various tertiary sensory association areas, along with integration of various patterns of limbic stimulation. Newberg is a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania Medical School and is in his first postgraduate year of medical education. His research experience includes nuclear medicine and brain visualization techniques. He may also be reached at Limina,

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An analysis of the underlying neurophysiology of aesthetics and religiousexperience allows for the development of an Aesthetic‐Religious Continuum. This continuumpertains to the variety of creative and spiritual experiences available to human beings. This mayalso lead to an understanding of the neurophysiological mechanism underlying both“positive” and “negative” aesthetics. An analysis of this continuumallows for the ability to understand the neurophenomenological aspects of a variety of humanexperiences ranging from relatively simple aesthetic experiences to profound spiritual and unitarystates such as those obtained during meditation. However, it may be possible through aneuropsychological analysis to determine the similarities that exist across such experiences.Thus, certain parts of the brain may be functioning in similar ways during different experiences.It may be the case that the specific neuropsychological components of a given experience maydepend on the strength of the affectual response of the person and the ability to mark suchexperiences as significant. Further, even though similar structures may be functioning duringdifferent experiences, their inhibitory and excitatory interactions may be different. Finally, byconsidering the Aesthetic‐Religious Continuum, we may eventually arrive at a betterunderstanding of how we experience and define reality.

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