Its the parietal lobe!
We found that the Franciscan nuns activated several important parts of the brain during prayer. One part was the frontal lobe. I've been particularly interested in the frontal lobe because it tends to be activated whenever we focus our mind on something. This can be very mundane, like focusing on a problem we're trying to solve at work. Or it can be focusing on a phrase from the Bible, which was happening with the Franciscan nuns. They would focus their attention on a particular prayer of great meaning, and they'd begin to feel a lot of unusual experiences. They would lose their sense of self. They would feel absorbed into the prayer itself. They'd no longer see a distinction between who they are and the actual prayer process itself. Some people call it a feeling of connectedness or oneness.
Another part of the brain that changes in the prayer state is the parietal lobe. This is located toward the back top part of the head. The parietal lobe normally uses our sensory information to create a sense of our self and relates that self spatially to the rest of the world. So it's that part of our brain that enables us to get up out of our chair and walk out the door. We've hypothesized that when people meditate or pray -- if they block the sensory information that gets into that area -- they no longer get a sense of who they are in relation to the world. They may lose their sense of self, and they feel they become one with something greater -- ultimate reality or God.
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