Neural network involvement for religious experiences in worship measured by EEG microstate analysis

Abstract

To date, not much is known about large-scale brain activation patterns in religious states of mind and previous studies have not set an emphasis on experience. The present study investigated the phenomenon of religious experiences through microstate analysis, and it was the first neurocognitive research to tackle the dimension of experience directly. Hence, a total of 60 evangelical Christians participated in an experiment where they were asked to engage in worship and try to connect with God. With a bar slider, people were able to continuously rate how strongly they sensed God's presence at any given moment. A selection of songs was used to help in the induction of the desired experience. With 64 electroencephalography (EEG) electrodes, the brain activity was assessed and analyzed with five clusters of microstate classes. First, we hypothesized that the neural network for multisensory integration was involved in the religious experience. Second, we hypothesized that the same was true for the Default Mode Network (DMN). Our results suggested an association between the auditory network and the religious experience, and an association with the salience network as well as with the DMN. No associations with the network thought to be involved with multisensory integration was detected.

The Induction of Religious Experiences and Temporal Lobe Activation: Neuronal Source Localization Using EEG Inverse Solutions

“…These findings add interesting information to the discovery that, in part, the auditory as well as the default mode network, but most poignantly the salience network, appear to be implicated in such experiences [64]. The next section briefly discusses the relevance of the temporal cortex in regard to the present findings concerning religious experiences.…”

“…A previous publication on the same population used microstate analyses to disentangle the involved neural networks in these experiences [64]. It was shown that microstate (MS) class 1 (the auditory network) showed a significant association with the average rating values of the religious experience based on its duration, contribution, and mean global field power (GFP) of the microstate.…”

EEG Microstates in Social and Affective Neuroscience

“…Third , microstate analysis can examine if different socio-affective states involve different neural network dynamics, as evidenced by unique changes to microstate features. For example, researchers have analyzed continuous EEG data recorded while participants are processing socio-affective information, such as watching emotional videos (e.g., Chen et al 2021 ; Hu et al 2022 , 2023 ; Liu et al 2023 ) or engaging in worship (Walter and Koenig 2022 ). For example, Hu et al ( 2023 ) examined archival EEG data in which the original authors manipulated emotional states with the presentation of music videos.…”

A Cosmological Neuroscientific Definition of God

“…Second, EEG studies in laboratory settings found changes in the parietal association cortex during prayer and religious chanting (Dobrakowski et al, 2020;Walter & Koenig, 2022).…”