Marianna de Abreu Costa Author

Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Research Center in Spirituality and Health (NUPES), School of Medicine, Federal University of Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Brazil. Chair of the Section on Spirituality of the Latin American Psychiatric Association (APAL). Former chair of the Sections on Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry of the World Psychiatric Association (WPA 2014-20) and the Brazilian Psychiatric Association (ABP 2014-21). He has worked on the scientific investigation of spiritual experiences for more than 25 years, authoring more than 170 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. His primary emphasis in the last decade has been the investigation of evidence of consciousness’ activity beyond the brain, especially for evidence for survival of human consciousness after death. Editor of the books Exploring Frontiers of the Mind-Brain Relationship (Springer, 2012) and Spirituality and Mental Health Across Cultures (OUP, 2021).

Marianna de Abreu Costa, M.D., Ph.D., is a psychiatrist, member of the psychiatry and spirituality department of the Psychiatry Association of Rio Grande do Sul, DPE – APRS and of the Section on Spirituality of the Brazilian Psychiatric Association, ABP. She obtained her doctorate in Psychiatry and Behavioural Sciences at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul, UFRGS, Brazil (2019), conducting a randomized clinical trial (RCT) evaluating the efficacy of a mindfulness-based intervention. In addition, her studies emphasize the integration of spirituality and religiosity in psychotherapy. Currently, her interest has been more focused on anomalous experiences and the study of the mind-brain relationship. She is currently conducting a large national genetic study with spiritist mediums, coordinated by Professors Alexander Moreira-Almeida, M.D., Ph.D. (UFJF) and Wagner Farid Gattaz, M.D., Ph.D. (Universidade de São Paulo, USP).

Humberto Schubert Coelho, Ph.D., is Associate Professor for Metaphysics and Modern Philosophy of the Department of Philosophy and Co-Director of the Research Center in Spirituality and Health (NUPES), at the Federal University of Juiz de Fora, and holder of the chair Nr. 23 of the Brazilian Academy of Philosophy. He is a visiting researcher at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Oxford University (2019-2020). Dr. Coelho's research is devoted to the metaphysical ground for meaning and purpose in life, which includes a series of proofs for the existence of God and the immortality of the soul, along with cultural analyses of the relationship between philosophy, religion, and scie