Prayer and Neuroimaging: Concepts and Feasibility

Abstract

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Long recognized as a defi ning feature of religion, prayer, paradoxically, has received only sporadic empirical attention. Recent investigations in the U.S. and the Netherlands have sought to address this gap by exploring the topic of prayer in programmatic fashions, signifi cantly advancing the state of the art in terms of measurement of the practice of private prayer. The present paper fi rst offers one way to integrate and expand the contemporary prayer literature using a conceptual analysis of religion. Second, challenges and possibilities associated with moving from this synthetic defi nition to neuroimaging work are examined within the framework of social cognitive neuroscience.