TY - JOUR
T1 - Religion and Psychiatry in the Age of Neuroscience
AU - Phillips, James
AU - El-Gabalawi, Fayez
AU - Fallon, Brian A.
AU - Majeed, Salman
AU - Merlino, Joseph P.
AU - Nields, Jenifer A.
AU - Saunders, David
AU - Norko, Michael A.
N1 - Funding Information:
Dr Norko acknowledges the support of the Connecticut Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.
Publisher Copyright:
© Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2020/7/1
Y1 - 2020/7/1
N2 - In recent decades, an evolving conversation among religion, psychiatry, and neuroscience has been taking place, transforming how we conceptualize religion and how that conceptualization affects its relation to psychiatry. In this article, we review several dimensions of the dialogue, beginning with its history and the phenomenology of religious experience. We then turn to neuroscientific studies to see how they explain religious experience, and we follow that with two related areas: the benefits of religious beliefs and practices, and the evolutionary foundation of those benefits. A final section addresses neuroscientific and evolutionary accounts of the transcendent, that is, what these fields make of the claim that religious experience connects to a transcendent reality. We conclude with a brief summary, along with the unresolved questions we have encountered.
AB - In recent decades, an evolving conversation among religion, psychiatry, and neuroscience has been taking place, transforming how we conceptualize religion and how that conceptualization affects its relation to psychiatry. In this article, we review several dimensions of the dialogue, beginning with its history and the phenomenology of religious experience. We then turn to neuroscientific studies to see how they explain religious experience, and we follow that with two related areas: the benefits of religious beliefs and practices, and the evolutionary foundation of those benefits. A final section addresses neuroscientific and evolutionary accounts of the transcendent, that is, what these fields make of the claim that religious experience connects to a transcendent reality. We conclude with a brief summary, along with the unresolved questions we have encountered.
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U2 - 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001149
DO - 10.1097/NMD.0000000000001149
M3 - Article
C2 - 32032179
AN - SCOPUS:85087465570
SN - 0022-3018
VL - 208
SP - 517
EP - 523
JO - Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
JF - Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease
IS - 7
ER -