Neural correlates of mystical experience

People who suffer damage to the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) report markedly more mystical experiences—subjectively believed encounters with a supernatural world—than healthy controls. In a study of 116 Vietnam veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury and 32 matched controls, lesions to frontal and temporal brain regions, especially the dlPFC and middle/superior temporal cortex, were linked with greater mysticism. Pre-injury data on general intelligence and executive performance rule out individual differences as an explanation. The findings indicate that executive functioning in the dlPFC causally helps down-regulate mystical experiences, supporting earlier speculation that executive brain functions underpin such experiences.

Study at a glance

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.