It’s a Brain Puzzle: The Neuroscience of Prayer
When we look at prayer through the lens of neuroscience, we can make an interesting observation: Talking to God is not really different from talking to one’s friends and neighbors.
Praying is in many ways a fascinating phenomenon. To the believer it is a direct method for communicating with God, an ever-present source of comfort in school, at work, while walking, running, or driving. To some praying is a communication with the ultimate power, something that inspires awe, feelings of unconditional love, and, indeed, a sensed presence of God.
To scientists however, praying is fascinating for different reasons. Praying is a puzzling human phenomenon, especially from the perspective of brain science. The brain did not evolve to communicate with invisible supernatural beings. Rather, the brain evolved to cope with challenges in the natural environment, to survive predation and develop tools, and to understand social groups and to interact with other humans. Though complex and highly distributed, these skills seem to recruit specific systems in the brain that point to an evolved set of cognitive functions that enable us to do what we do.
So what happens when believers attempt to communicate with their God?
