title: Neural correlates of mystical experience.
abstract: Mystical experiences, or subjectively believed encounters with a supernatural world, are widely reported across cultures and throughout human history. Previous theories speculate that executive brain functions underpin mystical experiences. To evaluate causal hypotheses, structural studies of brain lesion are required. Previous studies suffer from small samples or do not have valid measures of cognitive functioning prior to injury. We investigated mystical experience among participants from the Vietnam Head Injury Study and compared those who suffered penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI; n=116) with matched healthy controls (HC; n=32). Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping analysis showed that lesions to frontal and temporal brain regions were linked with greater mystical experiences. Such regions included the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) and middle/superior temporal cortex (TC). In a confirmatory analysis, we grouped pTBI patients by lesion location and compared mysticism experiences with the HC group. The dlPFC group presented markedly increased mysticism. Notably, longitudinal analysis of pre-injury data (correlating with general intelligence and executive performance) excludes explanations from individual differences. Our findings support previous speculation linking executive brain functions to mystical experiences, and reveal that executive functioning (dlPFC) causally contributes to the down-regulation of mystical experiences.
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Brain Injury Research, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60611, USA; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. Electronic address: irene.cristofori@northwestern.edu.
authors.forename: Irene
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Cristofori
authors.affiliation: School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of New Zealand, Wellington 6140, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Joseph
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Bulbulia
authors.affiliation: School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of New Zealand, Wellington 6140, New Zealand.
authors.forename: John H
authors.initials: JH
authors.lastname: Shaver
authors.affiliation: Department of Psychology, Victoria University of New Zealand, Wellington 6012, New Zealand.
authors.forename: Marc
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Wilson
authors.affiliation: Molecular Neuroscience Department, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA; Department of Psychology, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA.
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Krueger
authors.affiliation: Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory, Brain Injury Research, Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, Chicago, IL 60611, USA; Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA; Department of Neurology, Feinberg School of Medicine Northwestern University, Chicago, IL 60611, USA. Electronic address: jgrafman@northwestern.edu.
authors.forename: Jordan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Grafman
mesh_terms: D000368:Aged; D000704:Analysis of Variance; D001921:Brain / Q000473:pathology*; D001930:Brain Injuries / Q000473:pathology*; D001931:Brain Mapping; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007091:Image Processing, Computer-Assisted; D008137:Longitudinal Studies; D008279:Magnetic Resonance Imaging; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D009228:Mysticism; D009483:Neuropsychological Tests; D014057:Tomography, X-Ray Computed
keywords: Mystical experience; Penetrating traumatic brain injuries; Religious belief; Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping