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through their veins. I thought this was pretty nifty, even though I am not fond of catheters. We were charting new territory—territory I will cover more fully in the next chapter. Would my brain “respond” to Scott’s prayers? To guard against anticipatory frontal lobe excitement in my brain—He’s praying for me now! Oh yeah, baby, I can feel it!—we conducted two sessions. During one session, Scott would pray for me (prayer state). During the other, he would think about nothing in particular (baseline state). But I wouldn’t know which was which. We would then see if my brain “responded” to his thoughts. This is called a “blind” study, where the subject does not know whether she’s getting the placebo or the real thing—Scott’s wandering mind or his prayers.

In a stroke of genius that would fell the whole endeavor, I had hired a sound man to record Scott’s session, and in particular, the instructions Newberg gave him. (I was reporting the story for NPR as well, and thus needed the sound; but I could not be in the room when Scott prayed, or did not, as that would “unblind” the study.) All went well, until the intermission between sessions, when the engineer, clearly bored, began to chat with me.

“You know, it was interesting,” he said helpfully. “After Scott had finished the session, he told me it was really hard not to—”

“Stop!” I said, covering my ears. “Do not say another word!”

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“Nothing. Don’t worry about it.”

The damage was done. I knew where that sentence was going: “—really hard not to pray.” And thus the blind study was foiled.

I told Newberg that I knew that Scott had not prayed for me in the first session and he would pray for me during the next. Newberg stood there for a beat with a slightly frozen smile, then graciously reassured me that this sort of thing happens all the time in research. I was not comforted. I felt guilty and, frankly, peeved that it had taken a year for all the planets to align to allow Newberg, Scott, me, and the SPECT scanner to be free—only to be thwarted by a half-sentence. Newberg said he would continue the study for my sake: Scott would pray for someone else and get the scan, so we could see his brain in prayerful action. But the quirky side experiment that I was certain would change the world and defy materialism for good—that hope was dead.

As it turned out, Scott did pray for me, but my brain appeared to show no unusual activity.

Maybe another day.

4 S. Begley, “Your Brain on Religion: Mystic Visions or Brain Circuits at Work?” Newsweek, May 7, 2001.

5 Newberg did see one major difference in the two practices. The nuns were focusing on a word or phrase, and so the area of the brain that handles language lit up. The monks were focusing on a visual image, and so the visual areas of the brain lit up.

6 This story is recounted in Newberg and Waldman, Why We Believe What We Believe, pp. 198-99.

7 A. B. Newberg et al., “The Measurement of Regional Cerebral Blood Flow During Glossolalia: A Preliminary SPECT Study,” Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging 148 (2006): 67-71.

8 Romans 8:26 (New International Version).

9 See Nina P. Azari et al., “Neural Correlates of Religious Experience,” European Journal of Neuroscience 13 (2001): 1649-52.

10 S. Begley, Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain (New York: Ballantine, 2007), p. 234.

11 R. J. Davidson et al., “Alterations in Brain and Immune Functions Brought by Mindfulness Meditation,” Psychosomatic Medicine 65 (2003): 564-70.

12 In addition, both the newly minted meditators at Promega and the control group received a flu vaccine. As seen in other studies, the meditators developed more flu antibodies than did the control group, and suffered fewer flu symptoms. And the more meditation, the better the immune system: those whose brain-wave activity tilted more leftward developed higher antibody titers.

13 F. Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis: The Scientific Search for the Soul (London: Simon & Schuster, 1994), p. 3.

CHAPTER 9. OUT OF MY BODY OR OUT OF MY MIND?

1 Michael Sabom has published two books on near-death experiences: