Throughout human history, people have invented countless deities to worship.
At least 18,000 different gods, goddesses, and various sacred objects have been venerated since our species first emerged.
Some lasted for millennia before vanishing, while others continue to attract followers today.
What drives this persistent human tendency toward religiosity?
Recent neuroscience research offers a compelling answer: our brains may be specifically wired for spiritual belief.
A groundbreaking study has identified a neural circuit centered around a brain region called the periaqueductal grey that appears directly connected to feelings of spirituality and religious experience.
This ancient brain structure—located not in the sophisticated cortex but in the primitive brainstem—plays crucial roles in how we process fear, pain, and social behaviors like altruism.
The connection suggests our capacity for religious belief may have evolved as a survival mechanism, helping our ancestors cope with life’s uncertainties and encouraging cooperative behaviors.
The Universal Human Drive Toward Worship
Despite vast differences in culture, geography, and historical context, spirituality remains remarkably widespread. More than 80 percent of today’s global population identifies as religious or spiritual in some form.
This persistence is particularly striking when you consider the substantial resources humans have devoted to religious practices throughout history.
Our species has built massive pyramids to house the dead, constructed elaborate temples, and developed complex ritual systems requiring significant time and energy investments.
From an evolutionary perspective, such costly behaviors should disappear unless they provide tangible survival benefits. Yet religious devotion continues to thrive across human societies.
The endurance of spirituality suggests it serves important psychological or social functions—benefits significant enough to outweigh the resources devoted to religious activities.
The Gods We’ve Left Behind
Religious systems aren’t permanent. Many once-powerful deities have faded into obscurity.
Consider Ra, the Egyptian sun god. For thousands of years, Ra stood at the center of one of history’s most elaborate religious systems. Multiple cultures worshipped this deity through countless generations. Yet today, Ra exists primarily in museums and history books.
This pattern repeats throughout human history. Gods rise to prominence, command devotion for a period, then gradually lose influence as new belief systems emerge.
If historical precedent holds, many of today’s dominant religions may eventually find themselves replaced by others.
This constant evolution of spiritual beliefs raises intriguing questions about the underlying cognitive mechanisms that drive religious thinking.
The Neuroscience of Belief
Scientists have recently developed a specialized field—the neuroscience of religiosity—to explore the biological underpinnings of spiritual experience.
This research area employs sophisticated technology to examine what happens in the brain during religious activities.
Modern tools like electroencephalography (EEG), magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), functional MRI (fMRI), and positron emission technology allow researchers to observe neural activity during prayer, meditation, and other spiritual states.
One recent study gathered participants from diverse religious backgrounds—Christians, Buddhists, Muslims, and others—to identify common neurological patterns associated with spiritual experiences.
The research faced significant methodological challenges. Religiosity is notoriously difficult to quantify, and spiritual experiences vary dramatically across traditions and individuals.
Despite these obstacles, the researchers identified distinct neural signatures associated with religious states.
Multiple brain regions showed unique activity patterns during spiritual practices, including:
- Areas of the frontal cortex
- The posterior cingulate cortex
- The default mode network
These findings suggest that religious experiences produce consistent neurobiological effects distinct from non-spiritual states—regardless of the specific tradition practiced.
The Surprising Role of the Brainstem
When most people think about complex human behaviors like religious belief, they naturally assume these phenomena originate in the neocortex—the brain’s most evolved region, responsible for higher-order thinking.
But here’s where conventional wisdom gets it wrong.
A groundbreaking study published in Biological Psychiatry has identified a neural circuit for spirituality centered not in the sophisticated neocortex but in the evolutionarily ancient periaqueductal grey—a structure located in the brainstem.
This finding challenges fundamental assumptions about the nature of religious experience.
Rather than emerging primarily from abstract reasoning or cultural conditioning, spirituality appears connected to some of our most basic neural systems.
The periaqueductal grey influences critical survival functions, including our responses to fear and pain. It also plays a role in promoting altruistic behavior—actions that benefit others potentially at personal cost.
This connection provides a compelling evolutionary explanation for religiosity. By linking spiritual experiences to brain circuits that reduce fear and encourage cooperation, natural selection may have favored individuals with a predisposition toward religious belief.
In environments where group cohesion enhanced survival chances, those who could find meaning in shared spiritual practices might have enjoyed significant advantages.
When Brain Circuits Break Down
Further evidence for this neural basis comes from studies of patients with brain injuries.
Researchers have observed that damage to this brainstem circuit can produce delusions and peculiar neurological symptoms like alien limb syndrome—where a person perceives their limb as not belonging to them or acting independently.
These findings suggest that proper functioning of this circuit helps maintain our normal sense of self and reality. When disrupted, unusual beliefs and perceptions can emerge.
This doesn’t mean religious beliefs are delusional. Instead, it indicates that the same neural systems that allow us to form spiritual connections when functioning normally can produce distinctly pathological experiences when damaged.
The Evolutionary Advantage of Belief
Why would evolution favor brains capable of embracing supernatural explanations? From a strictly rationalist perspective, beliefs in entities or forces without empirical evidence might seem disadvantageous.
Yet spirituality has persisted across cultures and throughout human history, suggesting it provides genuine benefits.
The periaqueductal grey’s involvement offers intriguing possibilities. This brain region helps regulate our responses to threatening situations and influences social behaviors like altruism.
By linking spiritual experiences to these systems, religious belief may have helped our ancestors:
- Manage existential fear – Providing explanatory frameworks for otherwise chaotic or frightening events
- Promote group cohesion – Encouraging shared values and cooperative behaviors
- Enhance altruism – Motivating individuals to make personal sacrifices for community benefit
In unpredictable environments where group cooperation significantly improved survival odds, these benefits could have outweighed the costs of religious practices.
Beyond Simple Explanations
It’s important to note that identifying neural correlates of religious experience doesn’t “explain away” spirituality. The relationship between brain activity and subjective experience remains one of science’s most profound mysteries.
Neuroscientific findings can tell us which brain regions activate during spiritual states but can’t resolve questions about the ultimate nature or validity of religious experiences.
Many religious traditions have incorporated neuroscientific insights into their understanding of spiritual practice. Various contemplative traditions have long recognized the embodied nature of spiritual experience, developing techniques specifically designed to influence mind-body states.
Modern research largely confirms these traditional understandings while adding precision regarding the specific neural systems involved.
Individual Differences in Spirituality
Not everyone experiences spirituality the same way—or at all. Studies suggest that predisposition toward religious belief has a significant heritable component, similar to other personality traits.
Are the brains of spiritual people fundamentally different from those of atheists or agnostics? Current evidence suggests some meaningful differences do exist, though these variations likely represent different points along a spectrum rather than categorical distinctions.
Individuals with higher self-reported spirituality tend to show particular patterns of brain connectivity, especially involving the periaqueductal grey circuit identified in recent research.
These differences may influence how people interpret experiences, what meaning they derive from events, and their susceptibility to certain types of religious or spiritual encounters.
The Future of Neurotheology
As neuroscience techniques continue advancing, our understanding of religiosity’s biological dimensions will likely grow more sophisticated.
Future research may clarify:
- How specific religious practices influence brain function
- Whether different spiritual traditions engage distinct neural systems
- How developmental factors shape susceptibility to religious experience
- The potential therapeutic applications of spiritual practices for neurological and psychiatric conditions
Whatever discoveries emerge, the relationship between brains and belief will remain a fascinating nexus where science, philosophy, and spiritual traditions intersect.
Finding Meaning in a Neurological Framework
Understanding the brain mechanisms underlying religious experience doesn’t diminish its significance or meaning for believers. In many ways, it adds new dimensions to appreciate the complexity of human spirituality.
The fact that evolution appears to have specifically selected for brains capable of spiritual experience suggests these capacities serve important functions in human life. Rather than viewing spirituality as a cognitive error or cultural accident, neuroscience increasingly recognizes it as an integral aspect of human psychology.
For those personally engaged with religious traditions, these findings offer opportunities to understand their experiences in additional contexts without necessarily contradicting their belief systems.
For researchers, the persistence and universality of religious inclinations across human societies provides a fascinating window into how our brains construct meaning and navigate social relationships.
In the end, the human tendency to create and worship deities reflects something fundamental about our neurological makeup. Whether this predisposition represents an adaptation to our ancestral environment or serves some deeper purpose remains an open and compelling question—one that may continue inspiring both scientific inquiry and spiritual reflection far into the future.
References
Ferguson MA et al (2021) A neural circuit for spirituality and religiosity derived from patients with brain lesions. Biological Psychiatry 2021
Rim J et al (2019) Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates. Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Vol 27, P 303-316
Mehta SK et al (2019) Can Religiosity Be Explained by ‘Brain Wiring’? An Analysis of US Adults’ Opinions. Religions, Vol 10, Article Number: 586.
When a brain region is identified, that still leaves open the question about what ultimately exercises that region, and how prone it is to nurture vs. nature. Are there “prodigies” in religiosity in the same way there are in art or music?