The Science of Spirituality: How Devotion Rewires the Brain

Neuroscience confirms what ancient wisdom always knew: a spiritual practice protects the mind. Here’s how to cultivate it.

There’s an alchemy in the way the brain responds to devotion.

Not the kind bound by altars and dogma, though there is nothing wrong with those, but the kind that calls you and I into direct relationship with something vast, something just beyond the edges of what we can name. I’ve felt it in the wild rush of wind at Big Sur on a starry night. In the way certain songs (D'Angelo - I found my smile again) hold me like an old friend. In the simple, sacred act of sitting with someone’s heartbreak; bearing witness to their pain without needing to fix it. These moments don’t ask for belief, only presence.

And yet, they shape us. They remind us that we belong to something larger than ourselves.

Recently, i’ve been deeply interested in the work of Lisa Miller, a psychologist and researcher at Columbia University. She has spent years untangling the threads between spiritual practice and mental resilience. What she’s found is intetesting: people who engage in sustained spiritual practices, whether through meditation, prayer, time in nature, or acts of selfless service, literally alter the structure of their brains. Their cortices, particularly in regions tied to perception, self-reflection, and spatial orientation, are thicker and more resilient. In contrast, these same regions are often thin in individuals who suffer from recurrent depression.