http://www.nitrc.org/forum/forum.php?forum_id=6100 <table border="0" width="100%"><tr><td align="left"/></tr></table> <p><b>An initial fMRI study on neural correlates of prayer in members of Alcoholics Anonymous.</b></p> <p>Am J Drug Alcohol Abuse. 2016 Mar 25;:1-11</p> <p>Authors: Galanter M, Josipovic Z, Dermatis H, Weber J, Millard MA</p> <p>Abstract<br/> BACKGROUND: Many individuals with alcohol-use disorders who had experienced alcohol craving before joining Alcoholics Anonymous (AA) report little or no craving after becoming long-term members. Their use of AA prayers may contribute to this. Neural mechanisms underlying this process have not been delineated.<br/> OBJECTIVE: To define experiential and neural correlates of diminished alcohol craving following AA prayers among members with long-term abstinence.<br/> METHODS: Twenty AA members with long-term abstinence participated. Self-report measures and functional magnetic resonance imaging of differential neural response to alcohol-craving-inducing images were obtained in three conditions: after reading of AA prayers, after reading irrelevant news, and with passive viewing. Random-effects robust regressions were computed for the main effect (prayer &gt; passive + news) and for estimating the correlations between the main effect and the self-report measures.<br/> RESULTS: Compared to the other two conditions, the prayer condition was characterized by: less self-reported craving; increased activation in left-anterior middle frontal gyrus, left superior parietal lobule, bilateral precuneus, and bilateral posterior middle temporal gyrus. Craving following prayer was inversely correlated with activation in brain areas associated with self-referential processing and the default mode network, and with characteristics reflecting AA program involvement.<br/> CONCLUSION: AA members' prayer was associated with a relative reduction in self-reported craving and with concomitant engagement of neural mechanisms that reflect control of attention and emotion. These findings suggest neural processes underlying the apparent effectiveness of AA prayer.<br/> </p><p>PMID: 27015258 [PubMed - as supplied by publisher]</p> en-us Copyright 2000-2026 NITRC OSI Mon, 04 May 2026 13:11:45 GMT http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss NITRC RSS generator