BUSM Researcher Provides Medical Perspectives on Religion and Neuroscience

Patrick J. McNamara, Ph.D., associate professor of Neurology at BUSM and Director of BUSM’s Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory seeks to understand how the human brain mediates religious experiences. His newest book The Neuroscience of Religious Experience examines this topic and provides a theoretical model of how the mediation occurs.

In his book, McNamara explains recent technical advances in the life and medical sciences that have revolutionized understanding of the brain. The emerging disciplines of social, cognitive and affective neuroscience continue to reveal connections of higher cognitive functions and emotional states associated with religious experience to underlying brain states. At the same time, a host of developing theories in psychology and anthropology suggest evolutionary explanations for the ubiquity and persistence of religious beliefs and the reports of religious experiences across human cultures, while gesturing toward physical bases for these behaviors.

Previously, McNamara edited a book titled Evolution of Sleep: Phylogenetic and Functional Perspectives which analyzes research from the past two decades that produced major advances in understanding sleep within particular species. Molecular advances have made it possible to generate phylogenetic trees, while new analytical methods provide the tools to examine macroevolutionary change on these trees. These methods have recently been applied to questions concerning the evolution of distinctive sleep state characteristics and functions. This book synthesizes recent advances in understanding of the evolutionary origins of sleep and its adaptive function, and lays the groundwork for future evolutionary research by assessing sleep patterns in the major animal lineages. Both books are published by the Cambridge University Press and are currently available.

Dr. Patrick McNamara is an associate professor of Neurology at Boston University School of Medicine. He previously edited the three-volume series on religion and the brain entitled Where God and Science Meet: How Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Religion. He is the recipient of a Veterans Affairs Merit Review Award for the study of Parkinson’s Disease and several National Institutes of Health awards for the study of sleep mechanisms. Dr. McNamara is a member of the American Psychological Association, Division 36, Psychology of Religion; the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion; the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion; and the Human Behavior and Evolution Society.