 Michael Persinger is a neurophysiologist who has worked at Laurentian University in Greater Sudbury , Ontario , Canada . He trained as a psychologist and focused on the impacts of religious experience . Persinger is the author of the book Neuropsychological Basis of Human Belief , and since its publication he has researched and examined the physiological and neurological causes of religious belief systems . Normand Carrey received education as a medical doctor and specialized in psychiatry . He became a child psychiatrist , and worked out of Dalhousie University in Halifax , Canada . Carrey has conducted studies into psychological resilience , and has taught physicians in a psychiatry residency program in the field of family therapy . He has worked in the field of adolescent psychiatry at IWK Health Centre . Lynn Suess assisted Persinger in 1980 , in researching geological phenomena which may have affected unidentified flying object sightings in Washington . Suess and Persinger performed similar research in Toronto and Ottawa . 
