Figure 1.

Schematic of neural structures and networks putatively involved in spiritual experience and practices, as well as placebo responses and effect. Provocative inputs include internal and/or external sensory stimuli that are evoked by environmental effects, including specific circumstances, behaviours and/or rituals. These may incur bottom-up body–brain/mind events that activate ascending and intracerebral integrative networks. Cognitive awareness of—and emotionality related to—these effects produces distinct conscious experience(s) by engaging attentional and non-attentional mechanisms to produce ‘consciousness of’ and ‘state(s) of consciousness’, respectively, as related to particular stimuli and their environmental circumstance(s). These events are important for the induction of top-down processes that activate brain/mind–body mechanisms, inclusive of physiological responses that may mediate or induce salutogenesis. OFC, orbitofrontal cortex; PFC, prefrontal cortex. Adapted with permission from Giordano & Engebretson [24].