Stacy Long

AFA Journal staff writer

January 2015 – A child totters on unsteady first steps to his mother’s knee. A student calculates a mathematic equation. A swimmer strokes through the water. Those activities are possible because of the design of the human body. But what enables spiritual experience? Is the key to that mystery found in the body’s design?

Does prayer change your brain?
Andrew Newberg, neuroscientist and professor of religious studies, analyzed brain scans taken during religious acts. While science is unable to search far into such a realm, it has found a few clues, as Rob Moll details in the book What your Body Knows about God.

For one, not all religions appear to be the same. In comparing Buddhist meditation, prayers of Franciscan nuns, and atheist meditation, the brain behaved differently during each. While atheist meditation produced no change from the brain’s resting state, and some neurological activity resulted with Buddhist meditation, only Christian prayer increased activity in both the frontal lobes and language area of the brain, indicating the relational nature of Christian prayer.

Longer, attentive prayers even had lasting impact when regularly practiced. Newberg observed that after at least 12 minutes of concentrated prayer every day for 12 weeks, brain scans detected a significant physical change in the brain. 

As Newberg described, the act of prayer actually restructures neural connections in the brain, which leads to an enduring change in brain function and resultant behavior.

While any kind of focused activity will cause the brain to change, Newberg and other researchers found the brain’s response to prayer to be unique. For example, prayer stimulates the area of the brain involved when experiencing feelings of compassion. As Newberg reported, “Religious contemplation … strengthens a unique neural circuit that specifically enhances social awareness and empathy while subduing destructive feelings and emotions.”

How do we connect with God?
However, while researchers may be able to determine that the brain has a unique reaction to prayer, they are unable to find physical explanations for why or how a person engages in prayer.

“Clearly our bodies are unique in our ability to communicate with God,” Dr. David Menton, an anatomist who works with Answers in Genesis, told AFA Journal. “There is no animal that can pray. There is not a single culture, no tribe so remote or out of touch that they don’t have a religion. But there’s absolutely no religious sense that has ever been documented in any nonhuman creature.

“What distinguishes man from animals is not primarily anatomy or physiology. In fact, there is enough similarity that, in a course I taught at medical school, more than half of the microscope slides used to study the human body were of animal cells. Animals have brains just as we do, but humans are very different when it comes to having a religious sense.”

What studying the human brain can reveal about the effects of prayer is very limited, and it could be debated. Menton emphasized that physical means or scientific studies can never provide sufficient explanation for what is really the power of God.

“We can’t put God under a microscope, and as Christians we need to be careful about trying to deal in mechanistic ways with what’s truly supernatural,” Menton cautioned. “I wouldn’t for a second equate a materialistic explanation with the power of prayer, which is the ability of calling on the God who created heaven and earth.”  

Learn more about God’s incredible design for the human body:
▶ What Your Body Knows About God  by Rob Moll
▶ In the Likeness of God by Dr. Paul Brand and Philip Yancey
▶ Answers in Genesis
answersingenesis.org 859-727-2222