Neurotheology – The idea that the impulse behind shamanism and other religions originates in brain chemistry, put forward in Michael Winkelman’s Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing (2000). Winkelman explains the crosscultural commonality of shamanism and other healing practices in terms of a biological imperative: Since all humans are capable of altering consciousness and such altered states of consciousness are derived from the human central nervous system, so shamanism specifically is “humanity’s original healing practice.”
See also Neuropsychological Model.
SOURCE:
Historical Dictionary of Shamanism by Graham Harvey and Robert J. Wallis 2007