CNRC Subproject Meeting: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Cognition Studied from Diverse Fields of View
Subprojects under the CNRC umbrella met to present project updates. Research Project Coordinator Chanel Reed shares a recap of the September 28 gathering.
Funded Subprojects
The CNRC includes the work of several esteemed research teams from around the globe, each conducting research in the cognitive neuroscience of religious cognition arena from a unique vantage point through a variety of subprojects. A primary objective of our work is to build up and out the emerging field of the cognitive neuroscience of religious cognition (CNRC). One way we hope to catalyze this has been to foster collaboration across diverse fields and unique approaches to studying CNRC. Establishing these subprojects allows for stimulating novel collective research within the CNRC umbrella.
September 28, 2023: Subproject Meeting
CNRC Project Leaders Dr. Jordan Grafman and Dr. Patrick McNamara hosted a meeting with the subproject Principal Investigators and their teams. Attendees included experts from a wide range of fields including (but not limited to) neuroscience, medicine, pathology, psychology, sleep, dreaming, and religious studies. Observing attendees such as Dr. William Newsome, Professor of Neurobiology at Stanford University School of Medicine, and Mickey Sanchez, Campus Staff Minister of Northwestern University InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, were present. Researchers joined via Zoom from near and far: Israel, Netherlands, France, Italy, Canada, and the United States.
The meeting was recorded, and subproject leaders presented updates to share how the research is moving along at this approximate halfway point of their projects’ timelines. Many projects are well underway, with a portion having reached data collection and others conducting some initial analyses. We were pleased to hear about projects highlighting a wide array of topics interesting with CRNC, such as supernatural agent cognition, lucid dreaming, autism, schizotypy, attachment, Parkinson’s disease, neurological dysfunction, semantic content, biblical interpretation, predictive coding, embodied representations, computational simulations, and more. Based on the presentations, it is clear that this group of projects represents one of the largest concerted efforts to study religion and the brain, and we are looking forward to the eventual final results.
A recording of the September 28 Subproject Meeting is posted in the Media section of our website. We also recommend checking out our CNRC Subproject Interview series there, which highlights subproject PIs individually.
We will meet with the Subproject PIs again around the end of their projects to wrap things up. We can’t wait to see the results of these absolutely fascinating and invaluable research studies!
Written by Chanel Reed (M.A., PSY), Research Project Coordinator, CNRC
