Neural correlates of religious behavior related to Christianity: an ALE meta-analysis

Background: Multiple neuroimaging studies have been published to report brain processing of religious behavior related to Christianity, such as prayer and recitation of the Bible. This meta-analysis aimed to pool data across studies to identify brain regions consistently activated in response to such religious tasks. Methods: Web of Science, Scopus, and PubMed were queried to identify relevant studies. Brain coordinates and sample size were manually extracted from the identified studies, and entered into a dedicated software called GingerALE to conduct meta-analysis. Results: Meta-analytic results based on 11 studies showed that brain processing of Christian behavior was associated with the right middle frontal gyrus and superior frontal gyrus, with a peak location (at 44, 38, 26; cluster size = 760 mm³) preferentially associated with working memory, cognitive task, and executive function according to Neurosynth data. Sub-analyses on Christian subject data revealed no significant results at the pre-defined threshold. With a more liberal threshold, Christian tasks > non-Christian tasks showed activation in the anterior cingulate and medial frontal gyrus (peak at 4, 48, −4; cluster size = 256 mm³) that were frequently associated with reward, self-referential, and reinforcement learning, whereas non-Christian tasks > Christian tasks showed activation in the right middle frontal gyrus (peak at 48, 36, 24; cluster size = 472 mm³) that frequently associated with working memory, executive function, arithmetic, and calculation. Conclusion: This study has revealed the relevance of frontal and limbic regions to Christian behavior.