WHO HE IS

• A cartographager of the sacred mind. A pathbreaking neuroscientist mapping god and the brain. 

• Leads Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

• Pioneer of Neurotheology -  someone who has scanned and mapped brain activity of everyone from chanting nuns, Buddhist monks to Islamic clerics.

HIS BREAKTHROUGH IDEAS

• Religion isn’t just doctrine, it’s also biological. Newberg has successfully traced spiritual experience to brain function and structure - mapped the neurological architecture of faith.

• There is circuitry behind what you believe. Different experiences light up different parts of your brain. And all of it can be captured using brain imaging (e.g., fMRI, PET scans) at times of triggers like forgiveness, meditation, prayer, spiritual development, morality, and belief. 

• We might be more similar than we are different when it comes to faith. A Buddhist monk, a Catholic nun and an Islamic cleric evoke similar neurological patterns in prayer.

• Religion can be therapeutic. Prayer and meditation can improve your tolerance, fire up the sympathetic system, reduce feelings of stress and fear.

• Sexuality and spirituality are actually linked. Both share the same fundamental pathways in the brain, activate similar regions and Newberg argues, have more in common than sceptics would like us to believe. 
  

BURNING QUESTIONS 

• Is it all in your head? - does the brain create God, or merely interpret him/it.

• What explains the inexplicable - the mystical, surreal and the supernatural ?

• Are we hard-wired to be believers? 

• If there are similarities in the neurological thumbprint - what invokes the differences in different religions?

• Is there such a thing as free will ?

• If everything is biological, where does self and identity come from?

• What is reality? What is consciousness? And will science ever be able to explain ‘why’, as opposed to just ‘how’?

AT SYNAPSE

Andrew Newberg will unpack the science behind faith, belief, religion and practice. Why we believe what we believe. The shared nature of our spiritual experiences, what makes them distinct still. How we can trace it back to the brain. And the age old question - does God exist?

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