A group of researchers at the University of Utah has launched a new project aimed at understanding how the brain operates in people with deep spiritual and religious beliefs.

The Religious Brain Project, which kicked off this week, aims to foster dialogue and understanding among people with diverse viewpoints on religion by learning how private religious experience may affect the “social brain,” and how religion may affect social behavior. The new project is a broad, multidisciplinary effort that engages many religious and scientific communities from the University of Utah, Brigham Young University, Utah Valley University, and Westminster College. The project’s first initiative revolves around studying the brains of people who have returned from serving missions on behalf of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.

Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D., an associate professor of neuroradiology at the University of Utah who is also the project’s director, said the study is among the first of its kind in trying to uncover the neuroscience behind the brains of religious and spiritual people.

“Religious and spiritual stimuli are among the most profound influences on behavior that exists. The neuroscience of spirituality, however, is almost completely unknown,” said Anderson. “We want to study what happens in the […]