An fMRI study measuring analgesia enhanced by religion as a belief system.
Open accessAbstract
Although religious belief is often claimed to help with physical ailments including pain, it is unclear what psychological and neural mechanisms underlie the influence of religious belief on pain. By analogy to other top-down processes of pain modulation we hypothesized that religious belief helps believers reinterpret the emotional significance of pain, leading to emotional detachment from it. Recent findings on emotion regulation support a role for the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC), a region also important for driving top-down pain inhibitory circuits. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging in practicing Catholics and avowed atheists and agnostics during painful stimulation, here we show the existence of a context-dependent form of analgesia that was triggered by the presentation of an image with a religious content but not by the presentation of a non-religious image. As confirmed by behavioral data, contemplation of the religious image enabled the religious group to detach themselves from the experience of pain. Critically, this context-dependent modulation of pain specifically engaged the right VLPFC, whereas group-specific preferential liking of one of the pictures was associated with activation in the ventral midbrain. We suggest that religious belief might provide a framework that allows individuals to engage known pain-regulatory brain processes.
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Practicing Catholics had lower pain ratings when watching the image of the Virgin Mary.
“According to previous research, practicing Catholics had lower pain ratings when watching the image of the Virgin Mary.”
From Repetitive Religious Chanting Modulates the Late-Stage Brain Response to Fear- and Stress-Provoking Pictures (2017) · cites this paper as Wiech et al., 2008
Detachment strategy enhanced by a religiously positive image could help participants detach from an immediate negative experience.
“It is suggested that detachment strategy enhanced by the religiously positive image could help the participants detach from an immediate negative experience (Wiech et al., 2008).”
From Repetitive Religious Chanting Modulates the Late-Stage Brain Response to Fear- and Stress-Provoking Pictures (2017) · cites this paper as Wiech et al., 2008
These findings provide evidence that Buddhist chanting, or in a broader sense repetition of religious practice, can also modulate brain responses to negative stimuli.
“These findings echo the previous findings of a research on watching the image of the Virgin Mary by providing evidence that Buddhist chanting, or in a broader sense, repetition of religious practice, can also modulate brain responses to negative stimuli (Wiech et al., 2008).”
From Repetitive Religious Chanting Modulates the Late-Stage Brain Response to Fear- and Stress-Provoking Pictures (2017) · cites this paper as Wiech et al., 2008
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“Reappraisal is a process of reinterpreting the meaning of a stimulus leading to a change in one’s emotional response to it [9].”
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Self-citation
- Authors
- Wiech, K., Farias, M., Kahane, G., Shackel, N., Tiede, W., & Tracey, I.
- Affiliations
- University of Cambridge (GB)
- University of Oxford (GB)
- John Radcliffe Hospital (GB)
- Corresponding author
- Wiech, Katja
- Venue
- Pain
- Published
- 2008-10-15
- Volume
- 139
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 467-476
- ISSN
- 0304-3959 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W2083236941
- Cited by
- 251
- References
- 8
- Citations by year
- 2026: 2 · 2025: 2 · 2024: 7 · 2023: 43 · 2022: 14 · 2021: 9 · 2020: 37 · 2019: 37 · 2018: 11 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 12 · 2015: 10 · 2014: 9 · 2013: 10 · 2012: 8
- FWCI
- 10.94
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
- philarchive.org
- Locations
- Pain (publishedVersion)
- PubMed (publishedVersion)
- Oxford University Research Archive (ORA) (University of Oxford) (acceptedVersion)
- PhilPapers (PhilPapers Foundation) (submittedVersion)
- Funders
- John Templeton Foundation
- Wellcome Trust (086041)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Health › Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology
- Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Pain Management and Placebo Effect
- Health Sciences › Medicine › Physiology › Pain Mechanisms and Treatments
- Keywords
- religious beliefs, analgesia, pain modulation, right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, emotion regulation, religious images, ventral midbrain, Catholics
- MeSH terms
- Adult, Analgesia, Culture, Female, Humans, Magnetic Resonance Imaging, Male, Pain, Religion
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