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What is Andrew Newberg known for?
Andrew Newberg is a neuroscientist and physician best known for founding and popularizing neurotheology—the study of how brain function relates to religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences. He is a professor and director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital, and he is board certified in internal medicine and nuclear medicine.
His signature work involves brain imaging (such as SPECT scans) of people while they pray, meditate, chant, or enter trance states, in order to see what changes in the brain during those practices. Alongside this research, he is a prolific author and public communicator, writing books and articles that translate neuroscience for general readers and speaking widely in media, podcasts, and lectures.
What he is most associated with
- Neurotheology as a named field, including brain scans of prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance
- Books on religion, spirituality, and the brain, such as How God Changes Your Brain and Sex, God, and the Brain
- Peer-reviewed journal articles and popular-press writing, including pieces in Scientific American and The Washington Post
- Public-facing work: interviews, videos, courses, and lectures on neuroscience and spiritual experience
A useful distinction
Newberg is sometimes described as proving or disproving religious claims, but his work is better understood as mapping correlations between brain activity and reported spiritual states. That framing matters if you are evaluating his conclusions: brain changes during meditation or prayer show that these experiences have biological correlates, not that any particular theological claim is true or false.
If you want to explore further, a practical next step is to decide whether you want the research side (journal articles on neurotheology and brain imaging) or the accessible overview (his books and media interviews), then start there rather than trying to read everything at once. For official background, see Andrew Newberg.
How does neurotheology explain spiritual experiences?
Neurotheology treats spiritual experiences as events that involve the brain rather than as things that happen entirely apart from it. On this site, Dr. Andrew Newberg describes his work as studying the relationship between brain function and mental states, including prayer, meditation, rituals and trance. The core claim is not that brain activity disproves or replaces a spiritual explanation; it is that any experience a person has—including a religious one—is expressed through brain processes that can be observed and described.
Andrew Newberg
H3 What the approach actually looks like
The method is straightforward: take brain scans of people while they are engaged in spiritual or religious practices, then compare what changes. That lets researchers ask which regions become more or less active during prayer, deep meditation or trance, and how those patterns relate to what the person reports feeling—unity, loss of self, calm, awe or a sense of contact with something larger.
A useful way to think about the explanation is that it has two layers:
- The reported experience: what the practitioner says happened, in their own religious or personal language.
- The measured correlate: what the scanner shows about blood flow or activity in particular brain areas at that moment.
Neurotheology links the two without insisting that one layer cancels the other. A person can describe an encounter with the divine, and a researcher can describe a distinctive pattern of brain activity, and both descriptions can be accurate at their level.
H3 Why the framing matters
This matters for how you read claims about spirituality and science. If someone says spiritual experiences are "just" brain activity, that is a philosophical move, not a scan result. Conversely, if someone says neuroscience has nothing to do with spiritual life, that ignores the fact that experiences are mediated by the brain. Newberg's stated aim is understanding the nature of religious and spiritual practices and attitudes, which is a research question rather than a verdict on whether any tradition is true.
H3 A concrete reader scenario
Suppose you meditate regularly and sometimes have a striking sense of boundaries dissolving. A neurotheological account would point to specific changes in brain regions involved in self-representation and spatial orientation, and would connect those changes to the feeling you report. It would not tell you whether that feeling was a genuine spiritual encounter. It would give you a vocabulary for the mechanism while leaving the meaning question to you, your tradition or your own reflection.
H3 How to decide whether it is useful to you
- If you want a framework that takes both brain data and religious experience seriously, this approach is built for that.
- If you want a definitive answer on whether spiritual experiences are real in a metaphysical sense, neurotheology will not supply one.
- If you are a clinician, researcher or student, the value is in the empirical side: studies of prayer, meditation and ritual as measurable mental states.
For a next step, look at the journal articles and popular-press pieces collected on the site, which show how the research is presented to academic and general audiences respectively.
What does Dr. Newberg's research reveal about prayer and meditation?
Dr. Newberg's research examines what happens in the brain during prayer, meditation, ritual and trance states, and it treats those practices as measurable events rather than purely private beliefs. The central finding is that spiritual practice is not "all in the mind" in the dismissive sense: it engages specific brain systems, and different practices do not produce identical results. Prayer that involves speaking, listening or visualizing tends to look different from silent, focused meditation, and both differ from ecstatic or trance states.
In practical terms, his work suggests two things for a reader:
- Practice type matters. A person seeking calm and emotional regulation may get more from slow, repetitive contemplative practice; someone interested in peak or self-transcendent experiences is dealing with a different set of brain processes.
- Effects are not automatically good or bad. The same intensity that can deepen a sense of meaning can, in some people, contribute to unusual or distressing experiences. That is why his writing often pairs neurological explanation with clinical caution.
His book How God Changes Your Brain is the most accessible entry point for this topic, while Sex, God, and the Brain extends the argument to the relationship between sexuality and spirituality. For a reader deciding where to start, choose the first if your interest is prayer, meditation and brain change, and the second if your interest is how spiritual and bodily experience connect.
How can I book Andrew Newberg for a speaking event?
Booking Andrew Newberg for a speaking event typically starts through his own site's contact page rather than a booking agency. His site hosts a dedicated Contact page, and his professional profile lists lecture topics, which suggests he handles speaking inquiries directly through his office.
What to do first
- Go to Andrew Newberg and open the Contact page.
- In your message, state the event date, location (or virtual format), audience size, and the topic you want him to address.
- Mention his listed Lecture Topics so he or his team can tell you quickly whether your theme fits.
- Include who is organizing the event, your budget range, and whether travel is involved.
Why this route works
Newberg is a professor and director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital, and is board certified in internal medicine and nuclear medicine. His speaking usually centers on neurotheology — the relationship between brain function and religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences — so requests tied to neuroscience, meditation, prayer, or the biology of spiritual experience will match his expertise most closely.
His site also points to a Jefferson University Hospitals page and a Marcus Institute page, which is useful if your event is academic, medical, or institutional and you need an official affiliation listed in the program.
Practical decision criteria
- Lead time: Academic and hospital-based speakers often book months ahead. Reach out as early as possible.
- Fit: If your event is corporate wellness or general neuroscience, frame your request around brain function and mental states rather than only religious topics.
- Format: Ask whether he offers virtual talks; this can reduce cost and scheduling friction.
- Materials: Request a short bio, headshot, and talk abstract once he confirms, so you can promote the event.
If the contact form doesn't get a reply within a week or two, follow up once with a brief summary of your original message before assuming he's unavailable.
Is Andrew Newberg accepting new patients at Jefferson University Hospital?
No — the site does not present him as a clinician taking new patient appointments. It describes Dr. Andrew Newberg as a professor and director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health, and as a physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital, but his public-facing activity here centers on research, books, articles, media and lectures. There is no appointment request, referral form, clinic schedule or patient intake information.
If your goal is to see a clinician at Jefferson, the practical route is to contact Jefferson Health directly and ask whether Dr. Newberg has any clinical availability or whether a colleague in integrative medicine or nuclear medicine is accepting patients. If your goal is to engage with his work, the site offers other paths: his books, journal articles, popular press pieces, podcasts, videos and courses.
Who this site is actually for
- Readers curious about neurotheology — the study of brain function during prayer, meditation, rituals and trance states.
- Students, clinicians and researchers looking for publications and lecture topics.
- Media and event organizers seeking an expert voice.
- General readers who want the ideas without a clinical relationship.
What to do instead
- For care: call Jefferson Health or the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health and ask about current providers and referrals.
- For research: browse the journal articles and popular press sections, then follow the linked PDFs.
- For general background: his Wikipedia entry and IMDb profile are linked from the site, and his books are the most accessible entry point.
One caution: hospital affiliations and clinical availability change, and a physician listed at a hospital is not necessarily accepting new patients. Confirm directly with the institution rather than relying on a personal website.
What is the main argument of the book Sex, God, and the Brain?
Sex, God, and the Brain argues that sexuality and spirituality are not opposites but deeply connected, and that this connection can be examined through neuroscience. The book's premise, as presented on Andrew Newberg, is that the long-assumed conflict between the two may be mistaken — and that brain science offers a way to understand how they intertwine.
Because Newberg is a neuroscientist who studies brain function during prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance states, the book's argument likely draws on that research approach: treating spiritual and sexual experience as brain-related phenomena rather than purely cultural or moral categories.
A practical next step: if you want to judge the argument for yourself, start with the "New Book" section on his site, then read a journal article such as "The Neurotheology Link" to see how he connects spirituality and health before committing to the full book.
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