What do Dostoevsky, his character Prince Myshkin from The Idiot, Napoleon Bonaparte, Socrates, Joan of Arc, Gustave Flaubert, Muhammad, and Saint Paul have in common? "Do not look for creative or genius reasons," warns scientist Diego Golombek in The Neurons of God (Siglo XXI editorial). "They all suffered from what the Greeks called the sacred disease, epilepsy," he continues. Until Hippocrates, the father of Medicine, arrived, and it was understood that "nothing is more sacred or divine than others, but it has its own nature, like all diseases."
According to Golombek, Hippocrates "even predicts that the source of epilepsy lies in the malfunction of the brain." "The curious thing is that, even if it were true that the gods cannot create the sacred disease, it does seem true that epilepsy can, in some cases, invoke God," concludes the Argentine writer in an interview during his brief visit to Spain to participate in the recent Cultural Forum held in Valladolid.
His essay, published in February, is subtitled A neuroscience of religion, spirituality, and the light at the end of the tunnel, delving into the intricacies of an emerging branch of neurology that, in recent years, has seen effervescent development: neurotheology or neurospirituality, the quest for data and certainties, fueled by today's technology capable of reading the brain - we will delve into nuances - about what happens in it when there is activity related to prayer, meditation - yes, mindfulness too - and even trance or mystical experience, which can also be achieved with natural substances like ayahuasca and psilocybin.
Whether one has temporal lobe epilepsy, like Joan of Arc (according to retrospective studies) or ecstatic epilepsy seizures (like Saint Teresa of Jesus). The voices and visions of the former, a 15th-century French peasant who led the French army to victories like the one in the Hundred Years' War, have been linked to partial seizures - symptoms of idiopathic partial epilepsy with auditory seizure (IPEAF). And the ecstasies of the latter are attributed to her neurological condition.
This is how Dostoevsky describes the experience in his novel The Idiot: "For a few moments before the attack, I experience a feeling of happiness impossible to imagine in a normal state and of which other people have no idea. I feel in total harmony with myself and with the whole world, and this feeling is so strong and so delightful that for a few seconds of such blessing I would gladly give ten years of my life if not my whole life."
And in The Neurons of God, Golombek provides an exhaustive overview of the research that, in recent decades, has detailed how the neurons of praying nuns, meditating Buddhists, and those enlightened by peyote or hallucinogenic mushrooms function. "Neuroscience is identifying brain circuits that could be the origin and imprint of religious experiences: on one hand, certain changes in the electrical activity of certain areas can result in mystical visions, and on the other hand, some spiritual activities (prayers, mantras, ritual dances) are capable of leaving a characteristic mark in our minds," he argues.
But in the field of neuroscience, among neurologists - accustomed to enduring the neuro label supporting various issues - there is reluctance to make such huge claims as praying can make us better, even though research shows that it reduces levels of anxiety and depression, stress, and even the righteous anger for which Joan of Arc was also famous. Thinking that praying makes us better may be appealing, but in neurological terms, it is a mammoth assertion.
As early as 2014, the study Neurotheology: the relationship between the brain and religion warned of the danger of the excessive use of the neuro label. "One of the initial problems is the exploitation of the term neurotheology, too often used incorrectly or inappropriately." However, one of the most recent research studies, Neurotheology, practical applications in integrative psychiatry, from 2025, signed by one of the American scientists who have worked on it the most, the research director of the Marcus Institute for Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (Philadelphia), Andrew B. Newberg, states: "Numerous research studies conducted in the last 30 years have documented the positive effects of religious and spiritual attitudes on mental health. Religiosity correlates with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and substance abuse. People who practice religion regularly report higher levels of satisfaction and vital happiness compared to those who do not practice. These effects tend to be protective throughout life, including childhood and adolescence."
Shedding some light on the matter is Javier Bernácer, scientific director of the International Center for Neuroscience and Ethics (CINET), created by the Tatiana Foundation to promote dialogue between cutting-edge neuroscience, psychology, and the ethical issues arising from it. Also a member of the Science, Reason, and Faith group at the University of Navarra, Bernácer believes that "we cannot assert that brain activation is due to a person praying or meditating."
"The claim that technological innovation allows us to observe what happens in a brain while a person prays, while not incorrect, is not entirely correct. Neuroimaging techniques do allow us, albeit with many nuances, to see what happens in a brain while a person prays or meditates. However, we cannot ensure that the activation we see there is precisely because that person is praying or meditating." He explains: "Imagine I take a picture of Donald Trump's brain right now. Anything I find, I will say that this or that part is larger or smaller than normal because Trump is a dangerous dictator. Based on what can I say that? These findings could be entirely spurious, and those brain regions may be larger or smaller due to genetics, because Trump likes to read, because he takes walks in Mar-a-Lago, because he speaks very loudly, because of his sleep patterns, or for thousands of other variables that I do not control or simply do not know."
Therefore, Bernácer believes that rigorous research (probably unmanageable) would be needed "to be able to say that the brains of those who pray are different from those who do not, precisely because of praying." He reflects: "I would have to recruit a large sample of participants, randomly divide them into two balanced groups in terms of sex, age, income, and many other variables that could blur my results. None of them should be people who pray. I would perform an anatomical and functional brain scan on them. Then, I would have one group pray, but of course, in a very rigorous and systematic way. I make sure they do. As for the other group, I have to ensure they do not pray, but still, I have to have them do something that is very similar to praying but not praying. For example, meditating. Why do I have to do this? Because otherwise, who can tell me that the possible differences I find are due to praying and not because I have been monitoring them, or because they have spent 20 minutes a day focused on themselves, or for any other reason?"
"Furthermore, the project has to be double-blind: the participant should not know if they are included in the prayer group or the meditation group. And in this case, it would be impossible. Therefore, I always have to consider that perhaps my results depend on the participant knowing that they are included in the group of interest, in the prayer group, and that biases their brain activity."
Considering science, let's ask belief. For example, the physician, neuroscientist, and priest José Manuel Giménez Amaya. In God in the Brain. The religious experience from neuroscience, a lecture given at the XXXI International Theology Symposium at the University of Navarra in 2010, he stated: "From a neurobiological point of view, we see that the religious experience is capable of orchestrating very complex neural networks involving perceptual, cognitive, and emotional brain regions synthetically. And it is logical to think that something like this would happen: the richness of the religious experience requires those networks to occur; but now we might wonder if those networks are the direct cause of this spiritual process. And to answer this question, we need to critically analyze the procedure used to obtain the results we have mentioned."
The loop seems never-ending and the questions appear endless between science and belief, religion and the brain, faith and... goodness of spirit? 'Much water (and much dynamite) has flowed under the bridges between science and religion. Perhaps a good summary is the opinion of physicist Stephen Weinberg: "Science has not made it impossible to believe in God; if anything, it has made it possible not to believe in God,"' writes Golombek in his essay, which ultimately offers scientific explanations for some religious phenomena 'that can and should be considered natural."
Let's look at one of them in a little more detail to try to get an overview of this complicated issue. In 2006, Dr Mario Beauregard of the Department of Psychology at the University of Montreal in Canada conducted research with cloistered Carmelite nuns. None of them had any psychiatric or neurological disorders that could interfere with the experiment, so they were asked to recall an inner experience characterised by a sense of union with God. Brain activity was recorded using magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalography techniques, and the tests showed that several regions of the brain were activated during this type of life experience. However, to quote Giménez Amaya's lecture, "there was no exclusive site of activation that indicated the existence of a brain area or module that governed religious experience".