Joan of Arc listened to divine voices that guided her steps in battle. Saint Teresa of Jesus described mystical ecstasies that left her paralyzed. For centuries, these experiences have been framed exclusively in the realm of faith and dogma, but modern science has decided to look into the abyss of mysticism with a much more earthly tool: brain scans.
It has its science. It is called neurotheology and it is a discipline that is beginning to emerge, although it is not free of controversy. Its objective is not to prove the existence of God as such, but to decipher the neural circuits that light up when humans try to communicate with him.
The “neurons of God.” In his recent book “God’s neurons”biologist and researcher Diego Golombek proposes a fascinating hypothesis for the most mystical situations. They point out that many of the visions and extreme spiritual experiences that have been documented by figures who have gone down in history could be closely linked to neurological phenomena such as temporal lobe epilepsy.
According to Golombek, these electrical storms in the brain activate regions linked to intense emotions and altered perceptions, creating an experience that the subject interprets as direct contact with divinity. Although the question here is whether there is a ‘God button’ in the brain or an area that is activated when we focus on our spirituality. The short answer here is no.
What was known. For years there was speculation about the existence of a “brain module” exclusive to the divine, but classic studies, such as the one carried out in 2006 by neuroscientist Mario Beauregard with Carmelite nuns, refuted this idea.
To demonstrate this, he introduced the nuns in fMRI machines and asked them to relive their deepest mystical experiences. Here the results demonstrated that there is no single “God zone” but rather that prayer mobilizes a complex and extensive network that includes the caudate nucleus, the insula and the parietal lobe. This is why God, neurologically speaking, is a team effort.
The real impact. Beyond the debate about the origin of visions, neurotheology has found very fertile ground in psychiatry and mental health. Andrew B. Newberg, one of the world’s pioneers in this field and author of “Principles of Neurotheology”, has been documenting for decades how religious practices and meditation physically alter our gray matter.
In recent studies from this same 2025, Newberg’s team has addressed the practical applications of neurotheology in integrative psychiatry. The findings are revealing, since people with a consistent religious or spiritual practice show significant correlations with lower levels of depression, anxiety, and greater general well-being.
Because? When praying or meditating routinely, there is sustained activation in areas such as the prefrontal cortex, which is responsible for attention and decision making, in addition to alterations in the insula, which suggests that these practices have a protective effect on mental health. For authors such as Newberg or Víctor Páramo Valero himself, these data reject purely materialist and reductionist explanations, since neuroscience does not deny God, but rather explains how our brain is equipped to process spirituality.
There is controversy. Not everything in neurotheology is a bed of roses, since there are also many criticisms around. We have an example in the researcher Javier Bernácer, who warns about the danger of confusing correlation with causation. Thus, the fact that areas of the brain light up in a scanner while someone prays does not prove that prayer is the sole cause of that activation. He notes that much of today’s neuroimaging offers “anecdotes, not definitive evidence,” and calls for the discipline to adopt controlled trials to rule out cognitive biases.
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