Spiritual Experiences Can Activate Brain Pleasure Centers

From PsychCentral:

“Profound new research suggests religious and spiritual experiences activate brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs, and music.

Investigators at the University of Utah School of Medicine believe science is just beginning to understand how the brain participates in experiences that believers interpret as spiritual, divine, or transcendent.

“In the last few years, brain imaging technologies have matured in ways that are letting us approach questions that have been around for millennia,” said senior author and neuroradiologist Jeff Anderson, M.D., Ph.D.”