About

Patrick McNamara is an Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Minnesota. His academic role involves teaching and research within the department, which is committed to providing students with an understanding of the past through diverse and interdisciplinary research interests. As part of his professional responsibilities, he contributes to the department's mission of supporting student learning and scholarly inquiry.

Research topics

• Psychology
• Neuroscience
• Epistemology
• Cognitive science
• Sociology
• Social psychology
• Social Science
• Art
• Cognitive psychology
• Literature
• Philosophy

Selected publications

• No evidence for a relationship between Emotional Connection to God and Emotional Intelligence in a sample of male combat veterans with Brain injury

  Research Square · 2025-09-09

  preprintOpen access
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Do We Dream About the People We See Every Day?: A Longitudinal Test of the Social Simulation Theory of Dreaming

  Research Square · 2025-02-04

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Attachment style and its impact on connection to God in individuals with brain injury: behavioral and lesion-based findings

  Frontiers in Neurology · 2025-04-24

  articleOpen access

  Attachment style shapes one's connections with important figures in their life. One such unique relationship is the connection to God (CTG), which may be shaped by attachment style. Stronger CTG has been associated with secure attachment, yet the neural mechanisms underlying this relationship remain unclear. While previous research has implicated the prefrontal cortex (PFC) in CTG, findings have been mixed and may depend on attachment style—an idea that has yet to be directly tested. This study aimed to (1) examine whether individuals with a secure attachment style report higher levels of CTG compared to those with a non-secure attachment style, and (2) identify the brain regions associated with CTG in individuals with secure vs. non-secure attachment. We assessed attachment style and CTG in a sample of male combat veterans ( N = 150), the majority of whom had focal traumatic brain injuries (pTBI; N = 119). Brain imaging (CT scans) was also obtained. Behaviorally, after controlling for age, years of education, and brain volume loss, individuals with a secure attachment style reported stronger CTG. Voxel-based lesion-symptom mapping revealed that damage to the right orbitofrontal cortex was associated with stronger CTG in individuals with secure—but not insecure—attachment. These findings suggest that attachment style shapes CTG at both behavioral and neural levels. Moreover, they highlight the potential role of attachment style in TBI recovery, offering insights that could inform spiritually integrated therapeutic interventions and support strategies.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dream content influences daily spirituality

  Frontiers in Psychology · 2025-07-28

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Introduction: The daily effects of supernatural-agent (SA) concepts on spirituality remain poorly understood. In this study, we focused on dreaming as an avenue to study the effect of SA concepts on spirituality. This work contributes to a long history of research linking together dreaming and spirituality by utilizing quantitative and longitudinal methods. Methods: = 61 wearing the Dreem 3 EEG headband to measure sleep architecture We collected dream reports and assessed supernatural content, dream affect, and dreamer agency. Linear mixed effects modeling examined relationships between dream variables and daily spirituality measures To evaluate our time-series data, we constructed a temporal neural network (TSANN) to test causal lagged relationships between our dream predictors and daily spirituality measures. Results: Dreams containing supernatural content were associated with reduced dreamer agency and more negative affect, and were rated as more bizarre, strange, and scary. Mixed effects models demonstrated that dream affect and REM sleep percentage significantly predicted next-day closeness-to-God ratings and authoritarian God concepts when controlled for participant variance in trait spirituality, as well as effects at a 4-day lag for dream agency and dream affect. The neural network analysis established causal support for the lagged closeness-to-God mixed effects models, with saliency maps showing that 3-4 day lagged predictors influenced model outputs more than 1-2 day lags, demonstrating the importance of multi-day effects in measuring the impact of dream variables on daily closeness-to-God ratings. Discussion: These findings indicate that SA concepts in dreams contribute to daily levels of spirituality both the following day and with a multi-day lag. We conclude that dreams thus represent a key pathway for the influence of SA concepts on spirituality, and provide a valuable area of study for future research in the psychology of religion.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Author response: A high-throughput platform for single-molecule tracking identifies drug interaction and cellular mechanisms

  2025-01-09

  peer-reviewOpen access
  PublisherDOI

• The “demonic” in dreams and nightmares.

  Dreaming · 2025-06-09

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Relationship and personality factors predict longitudinal changes in dream content

  Scientific Reports · 2025-05-03 · 1 citations

  articleOpen accessSenior author

  Researchers have established that dreams are intensely social and populated by diverse characters, including important figures from the dreamer's daily life. This study examines the types of characters that appeared in participant dreams over two weeks. We found that the majority of dreams include strangers in addition to known individuals, and that personality measures impact the likelihood of dreaming about different types of people. Appearance of known individuals from daily life in dreams was assessed by comparing dream reports to the core support networks of participants and daily diaries. We found that relationship-specific variables and daily interaction were important predictors of the likelihood of support network dream appearances. While daily interaction generally increases the likelihood of dream appearances, this effect is reversed for important family members like parents or siblings, indicating that dreams may play a compensatory role in maintaining relationships with close others when they are not present.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Nightmare disorder in women.

  Dreaming · 2025-04-24 · 1 citations

  article1st authorCorresponding
  PublisherDOI

• Prodromal dreams

  Frontiers in Psychiatry · 2025-08-28

  articleOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  I present a provisional model and promising evidence, pending robust longitudinal validation, for the possibility of prodromal dreams: dreams that predict onset of illness before overt symptoms appear. Interoceptive signals are compressed and summated/integrated within brain networks that are most highly active during REM sleep. If there is a bodily problem an error signal is generated and the brain then attempts to infer a cause or explanation for the distortions in the bodily image. It is this picture or updated model of the body (which attempts to depict or explain the distortions or errors in bodily senses) which I suggest then gets depicted in dreams. Prediction error can be remedied either via active inference leading to corrective action, or by model updating-generating models that explain away the error. I suggest that the depiction of the cause of the predictive error (bodily distortions) emerges in dreams (typically with picture language or metaphor) and thus can be interpreted to help diagnose emerging illnesses. The active inference portion of the model updating process on the other hand will depict potential solutions to the predictive error and if this information emerges in dreams these dreams might plausibly contain information to ameliorate/treat the causes of the bodily distortions.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Dream Content Influences Daily Spirituality

  SSRN Electronic Journal · 2024-01-01

  preprintOpen accessSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Recent grants

• NIH Grant R21MH076916

  NIH · $447k · 2009

• NIH Grant R01DC007956

  NIH · $1.4M · 2011

• NIH Grant R01MH070415

  NIH · $936k · 2007

Frequent coauthors

• Raymon Durso

  University of Molise

  65 shared

• Erica Harris

  32 shared

• Charles L. Nunn

  Duke Institute for Health Innovation

  31 shared

• Jordan Grafman

  21 shared

• Wesley J. Wildman

  19 shared

• Sanford Auerbach

  Framingham Heart Study

  17 shared

• Paul Butler

  15 shared

• Deirdre McLaren

  VA New England Healthcare System

  14 shared

Awards & honors

• Arthur "Red" Motley Exemplary Teaching Award, College of Lib…
• University of Minnesota Community-Engaged Scholar Award (202…