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SALT LAKE CITY — Auriel Peterson lay in the MRI machine with a prayer in her heart.

The recently returned LDS missionary tried to tune out the cranking sounds of the machine, muffled by her headphones. She tried not to focus on the fact that she was in a lab surrounded by computers and medical equipment.

And when she finally felt that her mind was clear, she prayed to God to let the researchers in the next room see what they were hoping to see.

More than two years ago, a group of scientists at the University of Utah began recruiting young, devout Mormons to study how the brain works in people with deep spiritual beliefs.

In their first round of results — published Tuesday in the journal Social Neuroscience — researchers reveal that the same region of the brain associated with love, music and drugs is also activated by the intense religious experiences described by returned missionaries.

“Across a wide range of stimuli, it’s a pleasure center for the brain,” said senior author and radiologist Dr. Jeff Anderson.

He launched the Religious Brain Project in 2014, seeking returned missionaries from The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints for the study due to their years of practice identifying when they are having an intense spiritual experience.

Recognizing and understanding the Spirit is an important part of the Mormon experience. The influence of the Holy Spirit is viewed by faithful LDS members as a conduit to God for guidance when making decisions or to confirm doctrinal principles.

Neurologists have rarely studied how the brain operates in people with deep religious convictions.

"We have over 7 billion people on this planet, most of whom practice some form of religion, and we know next to nothing about how the brain processes this stimuli," said University of Utah graduate student and fellow author Jace King.

In the experiment, researchers put 19 recently returned missionaries into MRI machines and showed them quotations from religious leaders, passages from The Book of Mormon and Church-produced videos of family and biblical scenes over the course of an hour.

Jace King discusses the data he collected at the Imaging & Neurosciences Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2016. Photo: Laura Seitz, Deseret News

In each experiment, participants were asked to rate how strongly they were "feeling the Spirit" on a scale of one to four.

Anderson said the team wasn't sure it would be possible for the participants to have spiritual experiences inside the machine. But it soon became clear that they could.

Their brains and bodies physically responded to religious stimuli, researchers said. Their hearts beat faster. Their breathing slowed. Many participants were in tears by the end of the scan, according to Anderson.

And in each stage of the exam, the researchers saw the same regions of the brain light up.

They saw the most activity in the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain that is also associated with romantic love, parental love, appreciation of music, gambling and certain drugs like cocaine and methamphetamines.

Peak activity in the nucleus accumbens consistently spiked several seconds before participants pushed the button indicating that they were strongly having a spiritual experience, according to the study.

To a religious believer, Anderson said, the result might be obvious: After all, religious experiences are often rewarding.

To others, the results may suggest classical conditioning — a brain mechanism that reinforces religious behavior and conviction by rewarding it with feelings of pleasure, in a manner similar to addiction.

Jace King points to the "reward" area of the brain at the Imaging & Neurosciences Center in Salt Lake City on Wednesday, Nov. 23, 2016. Photo: Laura Seitz, Deseret News

"The findings are going to be the findings whether the person that's looking at it is religious or not," King said. "What they make of that, where they go with that, how they interpret that is more up for interpretation."

Researchers also saw activation in the medial prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain associated with moral reasoning, as well as another part of the brain associated with focused attention and pattern recognition.

Taken together, these brain regions might be part of a network that processes religious experience, Anderson said.

In future studies, Anderson and his team would like to see whether certain individuals or religious groups react to spiritual stimuli differently. Depending on which molecules are activating these regions of the brain, this line of research could even point the way to new treatments for depression or addiction in the far future.

Peterson, now a wife and mother, said the experience has enriched her faith.

"I appreciated being able to see a small, tangible evidence that I'm not crazy," Peterson said. "When I say that I'm feeling the Spirit, it's not just me saying that. There is a physical expression happening that one can measure on a scan, on a monitor, that my brain is responding to something very special."

Peterson said she felt the familiar sensation — a burning in her chest and feeling of "perfect clarity" in mind and body — several times during the scan.

One particularly intense moment was when she was shown a video depicting Joseph Smith's First Vision.

"Anytime I’ve retold the account of Joseph's experience in his words, by quote, I can feel that same burning," Peterson said. "It's very peaceful and it's very strong."

"Having evidence of that," she added, "just makes sense to me."

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