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By Kayla DeKraker
Did you know prayer changes your brain? Neuroscientists have spent about 20 years studying what happens inside the human brain when we pray, and the results are interesting.
Rather than one specific spot in the brain lighting up during prayer, multiple areas activate.
“People who pray regularly show increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which governs focus and decision-making, and the anterior cingulate cortex, associated with empathy,” Relevant Magazine said of the findings.
“Focusing attention is associated with increased frontal lobe function which can potentially benefit individuals by augmenting concentration as well as helping to regulate emotional responses,” Andrew Newberg, a research director at Thomas Jefferson University, explained.
Relevant said that those benefits appear to “to kick in around 30 minutes of focused prayer or meditation at least four days a week.”
“That’s when the brain begins building stronger emotional regulation and resilience — becoming, in measurable terms, less reactive and more capable of sustained empathy,” the outlet explained.
Newberg, a pioneer in the field of neurotheology, said that what we believe changes how our brain “perceives reality.”
Related: Actress Calls Prayer “Anti-Intellectual”
“A person who has a fear-based perspective is likely to see fear in everything resulting in strong anxiety and distress in the brain,” he explained. “A person who has a more compassion or love-based perspective is more likely to see connections between things and be open to other people and ideas.”
But overall, having a foundation of faith helps our brains and improves our mental health.
“Religious and spiritual faith, as well as spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer, can be psychologically beneficial by improving resilience and decreasing anxiety and depression,” Newberg suggested.
He added, “It is essential that these practices focus on positive emotional processes such as compassion, love, altruism or charity.”
On his website, Newberg posits something profound: it is impossible to make God to go away.
“The main reason God won’t go away is because our brains won’t allow God to leave,” he said. “Our brains are set up in such a way that God and religion become among the most powerful tools for helping the brain do its thing — self-maintenance and self-transcendence. Unless there is a fundamental change in how our brain works, God will be around for a very long time.”
He explores the topic further in his book How God Changes Your Brain, which shares how God impacts everything from our physical health to our emotional and spiritual health.
What an incredible reminder of the power of prayer.
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