Originally published January 10, 2015 at 3:01 PM | Page modified January 10, 2015 at 7:18 PM

SALT LAKE CITY At the push of a button, the gurney holding Auriel Peterson slides slowly into the pale blue glow of a magnetic resonance imaging machine. Soon, all thats visible are the shins of her black track pants and the chartreuse-and-white soles of her running shoes, angled like the fins of a torpedo.

Behind a window in an adjacent room, a splayed-out cauliflower pattern appears on a computer screen in black-and-white. Its Petersons brain. And its probably the last thing about this exercise that will be so simply shaded.

From Petersons perspective, the next hour will be spent in service, like the day she packed donated eyeglasses to send to Zimbabwe. But the ardent Mormon also knows she could be adding to a centuries-old debate about God and science. So she says a silent prayer: I hope they get what they need.

Religious cognition

Other animals have hierarchies, organized behaviors, even a semblance of norms. Only humans have religion and science. And the two have seldom been on civil terms.

Jeff Anderson and Julie Korenberg, neuroscientists at the University of Utah, want to change that. Theyre among a growing number of scientists aiming their fields most sophisticated machinery at religious cognition.

It amazes me how one of the most profound influences on human behavior is virtually completely unstudied, Anderson said. We think about how much this drives peoples behavior, and yet we dont know the first thing about where in the brain thats even registered.

The researchers want to see more than religions registry on the brain. They want to know whether it differs across religions or by intensity of belief. They want to see what genes it activates, what hormones it releases and how it relates to social behaviors. Can the same basic circuitry produce Mother Teresa and Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta? If so, how?

To approach even speculative answers to such questions, the researchers have to capture what goes on in the brain of a believer during a religious moment.

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Scientists seek religious experience in their subjects brains