In 2007, at the Memorial Hospital in Rhode Island, a premature baby was born by caesarean section after being severely deprived of oxygen in the womb. A few hours later, the baby's heartbeat slowed until it became almost imperceptible. The doctor in charge prayed for the baby, addressing his prayer to Salvador Valera Parra, a priest who died in Spain in 1889. After a few moments, the baby's heart began to beat again. Despite the lack of oxygen, the boy grew up to be a healthy young man. Eighteen years later, in July, Pope Leo XIV announced that this healing was officially considered a miracle. The Vatican has a miracle investigation office, the dicastery for the causes of saints, created in the 20th century. Before that, the Congregation of Rites, established in the 16th century, handled this subject. The role of the dicastery is to determine if a person can be properly canonized. As part of this process, the saint in question must be responsible for at least two inexplicable miracles from a scientific point of view. According to the Vatican's own definition, miracles, by their very nature, are not the domain of science; they defy the laws of nature and are not events that can be reproduced and tested, whose causes can be discerned. Jordan Grafman, a neuropsychologist at Northwestern University, has undertaken an investigation into miracles using tools such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and brain lesion mapping. His definition of a miracle is not so different from that given by the Vatican: it is an event or outcome that a person believes was influenced by supernatural agents. A miracle is not simply rare or fortuitous. For example, as a good resident of Chicago, Jordan Grafman supports the Cubs, the city's baseball team in the Major League. In 2016, they won the World Series championship. That day, at Wrigley Field stadium, this neuropsychologist could have euphemistically declared it a miracle. But it was actually a rare event, and not a miracle, he clarifies, not believing that a supernatural agent played any role in this victory. Jordan Grafman's work diverges radically from that of the Church. He is not trying to verify whether miracles, such as sudden healings or blood-stained hosts, are actually the work of a supernatural force. He rather wants to reveal another unknown: which parts of the brain are involved in belief in miracles and what influence these have on how an individual perceives himself and the people around him. Jordan Grafman's career is focused on understanding beliefs: political, social, and, now, religious. His colleagues and he have discovered that certain brain networks are associated with a more general religious belief and that brain lesions could increase or decrease an individual's religiosity. As he became more interested in religion, Jordan Grafman began to think that miracles were the key to understanding faith. The miraculous interaction with a supernatural being is at the heart of the history of religion, explains Patrick McNamara, a neuroscientist at Boston University's medical school and author of The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. "Humans have evolved in a world populated by these invisible spirits," he explains. Miracles provide evidence of the existence of God and play a key role in the fact that believers, particularly Christians, adhere to religious groups and remain within them. Although scientists have focused on mystical experiences or extreme religious beliefs, the study of miracles is unique in its kind. "We know very little today about the neural substrates of miracles," reveals Irene Cristofori, a cognitive neuroscientist at CNRS (National Center for Scientific Research) and former member of Jordan Grafman's laboratory. It is curious, according to him, that neuroscientists know so little about the process allowing humans to believe in miracles, given how common it is for people to declare having experienced them. Five million people make the pilgrimage to Lourdes each year, a place of miraculous healing. (It is commonly said of Lourdes that for those who believe, no explanation is necessary and for those who do not, none is possible. Jordan Grafman rejects this opinion.) Jordan Grafman has long wondered why humans believe in supernatural entities, what the biological mechanism behind these beliefs is, and what influence they have on social behavior. Miracles could be the key to answering these questions, if he can find an explanation for the inexplicable. Miracles are probably as old as religion itself. In the ancient region of Sumer, where the oldest civilization lived, the gods were endowed with powerful powers, being able to heal the sick as well as cause devastating floods. In ancient Greece, peoples believed that certain gods were capable of miraculous healings, such as Asclepius, whom Zeus eventually killed because he kept resurrecting the dead. Miracles are present in all religious groups and all cultures, specifies Patrick McNamara. He explains that they go hand in hand with religion, because if one believes in beings such as gods or angels, one expects to see them perform actions that ordinary mortals themselves cannot achieve. In Islam, the word for "miracle" is "sign." "It is a sign that God exists, that He intervenes, that He is attentive, that He knows what is happening and that He can change things," argues anthropologist Scott Atran, author of In the Name of God: Religion in the Light of Evolution. "How else can one affirm the reality of the existence of God?" questions Jordan Grafman. "One of the ways is to highlight events that are not easily explained by probabilities or scientific knowledge." In the society of the high Middle Ages, Christian miracles were determined by the consensus of the people and, therefore, they were produced everywhere, all the time. Any event that caused wonder could be a miracle. In texts published between 740 and 1078, miracles were attributed to a monk named Winoc, such as the blindness of another monk who later regained his sight. However, alongside these, some other miracles performed by him seem much more modest: he repaired a cracked chalice used during the mass and, in another case, prevented a lamp that had fallen from breaking. What is attributed to Saint William is what historian Christopher Norton calls "one of the least remarkable miracles." In 1153, while he was traveling to York, a large crowd welcomed him as he crossed a bridge. The latter collapsed, yet no one was injured. The event was miraculous enough to confirm his sainthood. When a miracle occurs, it creates an "unregulated market of saints." In the 12th century, theologians began to establish a stricter distinction between natural events that caused wonder and events that seemed to violate the rules of nature. Only the latter were then considered official miracles, marking the premises of an opposition relationship between miracles and science. The increasingly acute understanding of medicine and physics favored this divide. In the 17th century, the philosopher Baruch Spinoza opposed the very concept of miracle. If God created the laws of nature, why would he break them? In 1748, David Hume wrote that one should trust the laws of nature more than the testimony of the first person encountered who witnessed a miracle. Voltaire also supported that "miracles could not be believed," adding that "he who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." We still believe in miracles today. For Jordan Grafman, the first step in his study of miracles in the minds of his contemporaries was to ask himself: Do people who believe today still believe in miracles? If so, how many of them and of what nature are they? To answer these questions, as well as others, the neuropsychologist has weekly meetings on the Zoom application with Mickey Sanchez, a pastor of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship, a group of evangelical Christians present in universities. "Miracles are a key element of our faith," he says. "If Jesus did not come back from the dead, our faith is not valid." Mickey Sanchez currently attends a Vineyard Church, a charismatic church that emphasizes the actions of God in everyday life. "We believe that miracles happen, we should expect them: healings, prophecies, that kind of thing," he adds. Jordan Grafman's conversations with Mickey Sanchez first allowed him to answer some basic questions. The pastor helped him create a religious register of nearly 400 people ready to participate in scientific research. For now, he limits himself to Christians from the Chicago area and to charismatic churches where miracles play an important role. From this register, Jordan Grafman conducted a pilot study, which has not yet been published although it was presented at scientific conferences, with seventy people participating. More than half of them, forty-two individuals, declared having experienced a miracle, either having experienced it themselves or through a person they knew. Other surveys reveal that believing in miracles is common, even spreading. The General Social Survey of the University of Chicago, which has been tracking social change since the 1970s, asked respondents if they "believed in religious miracles" in 1991, 1998, 2008, and 2018. Among those who align with religious traditions, the percentage of those believing in miracles rose to 62% in 2018, an increase of 14 points compared to 1991. Most of the miracles in Jordan Grafman's pilot study were related to health status, like this person who testified to having seen a close relative completely recover from cancer. Health-related miracles have been predominant for several decades; since 1950, all miracles announced by the Vatican have been miraculous healings. Some people reported financial miracles after praying for a job or money. Others said they witnessed the appearance of a beloved or supernatural being. Those who had experienced miracles were mostly educated, holders of a secondary or higher education degree, and of all genders, ages, and ethnic origins. Given the small number of people surveyed, it is difficult to draw conclusions from these demographic data for now, except that they suggest that all kinds of people can believe in miracles and that having a higher level of education does not exclude the possibility of such a belief. What does believing in miracles look like in the brain? After collecting the basic data from his miracle survey, Jordan Grafman can explore in more detail what happens in the brain. In 2024, he used brain imaging of a group of Vietnam War veterans to identify the brain regions associated with religious fundamentalism. He found that when certain brain networks, mainly in the right part of the brain, were damaged, individuals were more likely to display extreme religious beliefs. Brain damage in the right hemisphere was associated with delusional beliefs, fabrications, and a reduced ability to detect errors. Damage in these areas could lead a person to ignore doubts about religion or to see fewer conflicts between their religious beliefs and other beliefs. As part of this pilot study on miracles, Jordan Grafman and his colleagues revisited this older dataset to examine the results of a specific question asked to the veterans: "To what extent do you agree with the statement 'miracles exist really'?" When respondents had lesions in deeper brain regions and further back in the head, they declared less belief in miracles. Those with frontal lesions believed more in them. The results, although preliminary, contain some clues that Jordan Grafman wants to study. The brain regions associated with believing in miracles were different from the areas linked to magical thinking, which suggests that believing in miracles is not exactly the same as imagining that one's thoughts and desires have an influence on the external world. They were more closely associated with the regions related to the placebo effect, when hope or belief can lead to biological changes. Further research on people who believe in miracles could confirm whether these regions play or do not play a clear role in the accomplishment of these miracles. Any experience or belief, whether believing in God or thinking about lacing one's shoe, is reflected somewhere in the brain. It would not be surprising if an fMRI device could detect the activity of an individual who is thinking about miracles when Jordan Grafman submits people who believe in them to brain scans later in the year. What these individuals' brains can reveal is the level of similarity with other brain networks. If the brain regions associated with miracles overlap with other areas, or are far from these, it could indicate the type of belief that miracles are and the influence they may have on the way people act based on these beliefs. Does believing in miracles resemble more the placebo effect, a well-established political opinion, or even a delusion? Previous research has shown the interest in visualizing the neural basis of religious belief. In 2019, Scott Atran used neuroimaging to demonstrate that people who said they were ready to fight and die for their sacred values, that is, ideals with which they cannot compromise, such as the value of human life, activated different brain areas than those associated with deliberate or analytical thinking. This discovery suggests that sacred values are subject to a different appreciation than, for example, the choice of a daycare for one's child or stock market speculation. Other neuroimaging studies have revealed that when people prayed, the brain regions associated with socializing with friends were used. This could mean that some individuals would consider supernatural entities as "real" and the exchanges would be comparable to social interactions. If God is not abstract, but a dear friend, it is likely that this would change the way people react to affronts made to their beliefs or in the face of other individuals whose convictions are different. Later in the year, Jordan Grafman will renew his inquiry into miracles with a larger sample, counting at least a thousand participants. Based on the responses, he will provide indications for a neuroimaging study to verify his intuitions regarding the overlap between political convictions and beliefs about miracles. Based on his previous work, Jordan Grafman hypothesizes that brain imaging on healthy individuals will show that believing in miracles is enabled by brain networks similar to those of partisan political belief, through which humans are encouraged to establish causal relationships when the evidence is insufficient, also aligning closely with other individuals thinking in the same way. It will be a type of miracle inquiry very different from what has been done in the last centuries. However, although science and miracles have been in disagreement, these two areas have never been as closely linked as today. When the dicastery investigates a miracle, it relies on medical records, blood analyses and imaging to demonstrate that it cannot be explained by science, which is more difficult as scientific knowledge deepens. In 2024, the rules were updated by Pope Francis: an investigation into a miracle no longer needs to decide at the beginning whether an event is supernatural or not, in order to avoid it being declared supernatural and having to revisit this decision later. Jordan Grafman believes that, in a way, his work is easier to carry out. He does not have to prove that miracles have violated the laws of nature. On the contrary, the human brain he is exploring in search of God is one of the few places where one is sure to succeed. A metaphor of "God remains in us, even in atheists," concludes Jordan Grafman. "Even if you deny the existence of God, religions and miracles, he is always in your brain."