The Science of Wanting: How Manifestation Meets Neuroscience
What if manifestation isn’t magic, but misunderstood neuroscience? In a world of vision boards and viral affirmations, science may explain why wanting something hard enough can actually change your brain.
Before algorithms, hashtags, or TikTok affirmations, I clung to two sentences in my planner as if they could bend reality: “Mark 9:23—anything is possible for those who believe,” and “You could rattle the stars only if you dared.” I wasn’t trying to “manifest” anything—the word didn’t exist in my vocabulary yet—but those lines worked on me like caffeine.
Years later, that same quiet, almost private superstition that belief could shape the world has now been renamed, rebranded, and algorithmically packaged. In the age of vision boards and TikTok affirmations, manifestation has become the self-help movement’s favorite buzzword, suspended somewhere between mystical promise and personal accountability. But beneath the visualization and trending audios lies a sharper question: Is manifestation simply magical thinking, or is it rooted in something more tangible?
From self-help to scroll culture
Once a fringe practice of self-help enthusiasts, manifestation slipped into the mainstream with The Secret by Rhonda Byrne and has since been reengineered for the internet age. On TikTok, Instagram, and X, it thrives as both democratized ritual and commodified spectacle.
In the endless scroll, self-anointed “manifestation coaches” offer tutorials on “scripting,” the “whisper” and “list” methods, and the “law of assumption,” promising tangible life changes that can arrive overnight: a confession from a crush, six digits falling into your lap, or even your dream job.
The aesthetics are soothing, the promises audacious—and the comment sections, full of believers. In the Philippines, where dasal is petition and swerte feels like inheritance, the idea of willing good fortune into being isn’t foreign—it’s simply faith, rebranded.
Is manifesting with science possible?
One of the first persons to link manifestation with science is James Doty, MD, a neurosurgeon and the author behind Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything.
“According to Dr. James Doty’s concept, you’re actively manifesting things all the time,” says Jose Miguel M. Medrano, MD, FPNA, a neurocritical care hospitalist at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Quezon City.
“However, most of the things you’re manifesting are from your subconscious. The process of manifestation is just for you to try and add a higher level [of] intention into the subconscious levels. So it’s basically just conditioning your brain into following these routines, and then these routines [and habits] help you become the person that has what you want, essentially.”
He adds that this is also why regulating your thoughts and cultivating positive thinking is crucial. Negative thoughts are equally powerful, and if embedded in your subconscious, they can trigger a downward spiral.
Still, Dr. Medrano cautions against overestimating the science of self-optimization. “The current glut of all these neuroscience-backed approaches to hacking your brain is born from the predominant societal view that optimization of the self is the way to success,” he says. “The reality is that this view is not always the case. Manifestation is a view to ‘optimize’ your behaviors by intentionally influencing your subconscious behaviors.”
However, Dr. Medrano notes, there’s no guarantee that the brain will interpret these cues as intended—or that the original intention is even correct. “If you think your problem is poor health, and you want to influence your behavior to do more exercise with certain cues and [because of] that you sacrifice sleep, your manifesting will possibly lead to a negative outcome.”
This is where neuroscience comes in: by repeatedly focusing on a specific outcome, you condition your brain to notice and act on cues that align with it. Dr. Doty’s framework leans on how the brain’s reticular activating system (RAS) works—once you plant an intention, you prime your mind to notice it. If you decide you want to see a red car, you’ll suddenly spot them everywhere. They were always there, but now your brain is tuned to pick them out from the noise.
This is also why “scripting,” the manifestation method of writing your goals as if they’ve already happened, works at a biological level: by committing the desired outcome to paper, you reinforce it in memory and feed it back into the RAS, sharpening your brain’s filter so it flags any relevant opportunities you might otherwise have overlooked.
In Dr. Medrano’s view, this is less about magic and more about behavioral reframing, embedding conscious desires into the unconscious patterns that shape decision-making and perception.
But what happens when your brain starts catching those signals? Neuroplasticity—the brain’s capacity to rewire itself—takes over. Visualization and mental rehearsal activate neural circuits similarly to actually performing actions. This is why athletes or musicians mentally rehearse before their performances.
While specific studies on manifestation and neuroplasticity are rare in peer-reviewed literature, goal-setting research offers compelling support. This study found that people who wrote down their goals were 42 percent more likely to achieve them than those who didn’t.
But Dr. Medrano warns about the risks of relying solely on bite-sized manifestation content online: “I always advise people to try and look for the source material, because when you try to compress these big ideas into short snippets, you lose a lot of the value in the process. For example, even in his own work in Mind Magic, I think Dr. Doty cites several areas where even he’s not very sure about the specific effects of doing these kinds of practices long term, or how it can be used in different cultures with different peoples. So that’s lost if you’re only watching a summary video, a TikTok, or a [YouTube] Short, where people just make… very short, catchy phrases that can be totally taken out of context.”
Faith, frequencies, and Filipino luck
“Vibrations” and prayers share the same purpose: to bridge the gap between effort and hoped-for outcomes with language that offers the illusion of control. The appeal is obvious: It frames success as both personal control and cosmic fate. “Dasal lang”—”just pray”—holds the same emotional architecture, but with roots in faith rather than faux science. Whether you call it prayer or positive energy, both rest on the same impulse: to feel in control of what’s beyond us—a psychological salve as old as beauty itself.
For Kit Malvar Llamas, a conscious parenting coach, Gallup-certified strengths coach, and founder of Conscious Alchemy, the way Filipinos interact with manifestation is shaped by cultural hybridity and constant online exposure. In a country where spirituality and social media collide, manifestation becomes cultural remixing. “We are the social media capital of the world. Putting religious practices side by side with self-help improvement [content online], they sort of come together. I think we naturally “remix” these spiritual ideas, rituals, and practices. [Look at how] young people buying crystal bracelets nowadays. [It] is very similar to lolas buying rosaries.”
Llamas believes that manifestation and prayer are cousins, bound by the same principles of hope, surrender, and alignment. “Prayer knocks on heaven’s door, while manifestation knocks on the universe. The language is just different, [but] at the core, they’re the same. There’s a universal longing to trust the unknown, whether it’s the universe, or whether it’s divine power, higher consciousness, or God—it’s something greater than ourselves.”
This interplay between internal attunement and external action, she explains, is deeply woven into Filipino practices: “We mix prayer and action. We pray the rosary or have novenas before a job interview, we bless our homes, we sage our spaces. And at the same time, we budget, we fix, we repair, we do so many things. So both faith and action are intertwined [in a sense].” She remarks that Filipinos are natural alchemists, whether their beliefs are rooted in religion or neuroscience, because Filipinos have the innate habit of backing up intention with action.
When manifestation meets mindfulness
However, the paradox of manifestation, Llamas explains, lies in its duality: self-actualization when it works, self-blame when it doesn’t. A dynamic that can ignore trauma and disability. “Now, though, it can be very simplistic—and that’s where the danger lies. At Conscious Alchemy, we operate through trauma-informed approaches,” because for Llamas, not everyone can just “assume” and watch their dreams appear. “When you ignore trauma or disability, advice like that can feel like spiritual gaslighting,” she adds. “Your agency to be able to think positive is hijacked when you’re traumatized.”
Llamas emphasizes that manifestation must be grounded in embodied practices: “It has to be coupled with very specific tools: nervous system calibration, breath work, meditation, mindfulness, gratitude, journaling—all these activities. That can create a more sustainable framework for manifesting.” In other words, manifesting only works when you move beyond wishing—and start rewiring.
Without this framework, Llamas warns, the process can become emotionally punishing: “When you [simply desire and wait for it to fall into your lap], you can end up empty-handed, and it can lead to negative feelings toward yourself. Then you become a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
For Llamas, manifestation isn’t magic, it’s a process of self-discovery. “My definition of manifestation [is] it’s really exciting in a sense because that’s what real life [is]. You’re just unfolding to who you truly are.” Manifestation, like mindfulness, only works when practiced mindfully, anchored in attention, habit, and a generosity of self.
The real magic: rewiring the mind
Even pop culture has joined the movement—proof that the desire to believe in something bigger than ourselves is trending for a reason. Celebrities have embraced manifestation practices, with Dua Lipa sharing her scripting rituals and Ariana Grande dedicating not one, but multiple songs to the concept. In “Pete Davidson,” Grande sings, “I thought you into my life”. And Grande is right: It can feel “just like magic.”
But the real magic lies not in the objects of desire, but in the subtle rewiring of the brain—the attunement, the habits, the focused attention that neuroscience tells us can actually shift perception and behavior.
Manifestation’s staying power may lie precisely in this ambiguity: It feels both ancient and cutting-edge, both spiritual and scientific. While the internet continues to trade in mantras and moon phases, neuroscience quietly provides a more grounded explanation for why some forms of manifestation actually work.
Maybe what we manifest isn’t magic at all—it’s mindfulness. The quiet rewiring of our own brains, the focus to see opportunities, and the courage to become who we were always meant to be.
