As a faculty member at Harvard Medical School, Dr. Ferguson directs the Neurospirituality Lab, where he has published peer-reviewed articles on cognition, spirituality, psychiatry, and neurology. His work has been featured in world-leading journals, including Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nature Communications, and Biological Psychiatry.
Dr. Ferguson has used his unique expertise in neuroscience and spirituality to launch the academic discipline known as “neurospirituality”. He has been deeply influenced by Dr. Patricia Churchland, the eminent scholar and founder of “neurophilosophy”. Like Dr. Churchland, Dr. Ferguson believes it is imperative to unify disciplines rather than merely bridge them.
Dr. Ferguson’s publication history of peer-reviewed scientific articles may be access through his Google Scholar profile. Sample citations for his neurospirituality work include:
- Ferguson, M.A., Asp, E.W., Kletenik, I., Tranel, D., Boes, A.D., Nelson, J.M., Schaper, F.L., Siddiqi, S., Turner, J.I., Anderson, J.S. and Nielsen, J.A., 2024. A neural network for religious fundamentalism derived from patients with brain lesions. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 121(36), p.e2322399121.
____________ - Ferguson, M.A., Schaper, F.L., Cohen, A., Siddiqi, S., Merrill, S.M., Nielsen, J.A., Grafman, J., Urgesi, C., Fabbro, F. and Fox, M.D., 2022. A neural circuit for spirituality and religiosity derived from patients with brain lesions. Biological Psychiatry, 91(4), pp.380-388.
____________ - Ferguson, M.A., Nielsen, J.A., King, J.B., Dai, L., Giangrasso, D.M., Holman, R., Korenberg, J.R. and Anderson, J.S., 2018. Reward, salience, and attentional networks are activated by religious experience in devout Mormons. Social neuroscience, 13(1), pp.104-116.
____________ - Ferguson, M.A., 2024. Toward a neuroscience of divine bonding. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 14(1), pp.54-56.
