Religious chanting improves psychological resilience to stress-provoking events

Abstract

The objective of this study is to examine whether and how religious chanting could promote stress resilience. Firstly, we have used an event-related potential (ERP) to assess whether chanting Amitofo Buddha can reduce brain response related to stress. Twenty-one participants with at least one-year experience of chanting Amitofo were recruited. Stress-provoking pictures (versus neutral pictures) were presented to the participants while they were chanting Amitofo (versus chanting Santa Claus or no chanting control conditions). The ERP analysis demonstrated that chanting Amitofo did not change the early-perceptual stressful information processing, as denoted by ERP component N170, but it decreased the typical late-stage response to stress-provoking events, as denoted by the late-positive potential (LPP) component (figure 1). These ERP results are in line with the Buddhist text of Salltha Sutta, a well-trained practitioner would experience the initial pain to harmful events, but would not react with additional negative emotions. Secondly, to further explore the neural correlates of chanting Amitofo, one monk with advanced experience underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while mentally chanting Amitofo. Eigenvector Centrality Mapping analysis showed lower computational centrality in the posterior cingulate cortex (figure 2), a brain area known to be more active during the processing of autobiographical memories and self-reflection. It implies that during chanting Amitofo, self-oriented 'ME' thoughts play a less central role over the activity of the rest of the brain. These two results implied that chanting Amitofo can decrease the impact of stressful events, possibly through diminishing the influence of self-centered thoughts.