The neural correlates of religious and nonreligious belief

The truth is in there: Belief processes in the human brain

Belief, defined by William James as the mental state or function of cognizing reality, is a core psychological function with strong influence on emotion and behavior. Furthermore, strong and aberrant beliefs about the world and oneself play important roles in mental disorders. The underlying processes of belief have been the matter of a long debate in philosophy and psychology, and modern neuroimaging techniques can provide insight into the underlying neural processes. Here, we conducted a functional magnetic resonance imaging study with N = 30 healthy participants in which we presented statements about facts, politics, religion, conspiracy theories, and superstition. Participants judged whether they considered them as true (belief) or not (disbelief) and reported their certainty in the decision. We found belief-associated activations in bilateral dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, left superior parietal cortex, and left lateral frontopolar cortex. Disbelief-associated activations were found in an anterior temporal cluster extending into the amygdala. We found a larger deactivation for disbelief than belief in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex that was most pronounced during decisions, suggesting a role of the vmPFC in belief-related decision-making. As a category-specific effect, we found disbelief-associated activation in retrosplenial cortex and parahippocampal gyrus for conspiracy theory statements. Exploratory analyses identified networks centered at anterior cingulate cortex for certainty, and dorsomedial prefrontal cortex for uncertainty. The uncertainty effect identifies a neural substrate for Alexander Bain's notion from 1859 of uncertainty as the real opposite of belief. Taken together, our results suggest a two-factor neural process model of belief with falsehood/veracity and uncertainty/certainty factors.

Cybersecurity in neural interfaces: Survey and future trends

With the joint advancement in areas such as pervasive neural data sensing, neural computing, neuromodulation and artificial intelligence, neural interface has become a promising technology facilitating both the closed-loop neurorehabilitation for neurologically impaired patients and the intelligent man-machine interactions for general application purposes. However, although neural interface has been widely studied, few previous studies focused on the cybersecurity issues in related applications. In this survey, we systematically investigated possible cybersecurity risks in neural interfaces, together with potential solutions to these problems. Importantly, our survey considers interfacing techniques on both central nervous systems (i.e., brain-computer interfaces) and peripheral nervous systems (i.e., general neural interfaces), covering diverse neural modalities such as electroencephalography, electromyography and more. Moreover, our survey is organized on three different levels: (1) the data level, which mainly focuses on the privacy leakage issue via attacking and analyzing neural database of users; (2) the permission level, which mainly focuses on the prospects and risks to directly use real time neural signals as biometrics for continuous and unobtrusive user identity verification; and (3) the model level, which mainly focuses on adversarial attacks and defenses on both the forward neural decoding models (e.g. via machine learning) and the backward feedback implementation models (e.g. via neuromodulation and stimulation). This is the first study to systematically investigate cybersecurity risks and possible solutions in neural interfaces which covers both central and peripheral nervous systems, and considers multiple different levels to provide a complete picture of this issue.

Evidence for Spinozan "Unbelieving" in the Right Inferior Prefrontal Cortex

Humans can think about possible states of the world without believing in them, an important capacity for high-level cognition. Here, we use fMRI and a novel "shell game" task to test two competing theories about the nature of belief and its neural basis. According to the Cartesian theory, information is first understood, then assessed for veracity, and ultimately encoded as either believed or not believed. According to the Spinozan theory, comprehension entails belief by default, such that understanding without believing requires an additional process of "unbelieving." Participants (n = 70) were experimentally induced to have beliefs, desires, or mere thoughts about hidden states of the shell game (e.g., believing that the dog is hidden in the upper right corner). That is, participants were induced to have specific "propositional attitudes" toward specific "propositions" in a controlled way. Consistent with the Spinozan theory, we found that thinking about a proposition without believing it is associated with increased activation of the right inferior frontal gyrus. This was true whether the hidden state was desired by the participant (because of reward) or merely thought about. These findings are consistent with a version of the Spinozan theory whereby unbelieving is an inhibitory control process. We consider potential implications of these results for the phenomena of delusional belief and wishful thinking.

An updated classification of meditation methods using principles of taxonomy and systematics

This paper revisits the proposal for the classification of meditation methods which we introduced in our initial 2013 publication, "Toward a Universal Taxonomy and Definition of Meditation". At that time, we advanced the thesis that meditation methods could be effectively segregated into three orthogonal categories by integrating the taxonomic principle of functional essentialism and the paradigm of Affect and Cognition; and we presented relevant research findings which supported that assertion. This iteration expands upon those theoretical and methodological elements by articulating a more comprehensive Three Tier Classification System which accounts for the full range of meditation methods; and demonstrates how recent neuroscience research continues to validate and support our thesis. This paper also introduces a novel criterion-based protocol for formulating classification systems of meditation methods, and demonstrates how this model can be used to compare and evaluate various other taxonomy proposals that have been published over the past 15 years.

The relationships of family income and caste-status with religiousness: Mediation role of intolerance of uncertainty

The relationship between lower socioeconomic status (SES) and religiousness is well known; however, its (psychological mediation) mechanism is not clear. In the present study, we studied the mediation role of intolerance of uncertainty (IU; a personality measure of self-uncertainty) in the effect of SES on religiousness and its dimensions (i.e., believing, bonding, behaving, and belonging), in two different samples (students sample, N = 868, and community sample, N = 250), after controlling the effects of factors like age, sex, handedness, and self-reported risk-taking. The results showed that IU mediated the effects of lower family income and lower caste status (in students’ sample only) on religiousness and its dimensions; higher caste status had a direct effect on religiousness (and its dimensions), and; among the sub-factors of IU, only prospective IU affected religiousness. Thus, along with showing that IU is a mediator of the effects of lower family income and lower caste status on religiousness, the present study supports the contention that religiousness is a latent variable that varied factors can independently initiate. Moreover, the present study suggests a nuanced model of the relationship between the hierarchical caste system and religiousness.

Religious attendance and global cognitive function: A fixed-effects cross-lagged panel modeling study of older U.S. adults

OBJECTIVES

Evidence linking religious attendance to better cognitive function is based on flawed study designs. No population representative longitudinal studies on the topic have taken both unobserved confounding and reverse causation into account. Recently developed fixed-effects cross-lagged panel modeling (FE-CLPM) offers simultaneous traction on these issues. It also allows parsing of long-from short-run effects. Using FE-CLPM and ten-year data from the Health and Retirement Study-a national probability sample of U.S. adults over age 50-this study began to fill the gaps above.

METHODS

Gender-specific FE-CLPM models were used to examine bidirectional and within-person linkages of religious attendance with global cognitive function. Granger-Sims "causality" tests further examined short-run effects in both directions. Impulse response analysis was used to explore time patterns in these linkages.

RESULTS

At least among women, religious attendance had negative short-term prospective linkages with global cognitive function. Over successive time points, these associations increased in strength among both genders. Feedback effects-of cognitive status on religious attendance-were found in both women's and men's models, but had a gender-specific pattern.

DISCUSSION

Results contradict a large literature positing cognitive benefits of religiosity. Instead, they lend support to a recent "neural resource depletion" model-especially among women. Overall, findings illustrate the "dark side" of religious engagement, which studies increasingly present as a social determinant with "outcome wide" positive effects on multiple health dimensions.

To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding

Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completion tasks, conducted in five settings that differed both in religious traditions and in language: the United States, Ghana, Thailand, China, and Vanuatu. Participants everywhere routinely used different verbs to describe religious versus matter-of-fact beliefs, and they did so even when the ascribed belief contents were held constant and only the surrounding context varied. These findings support the view that people from diverse cultures and language communities recognize a difference in attitude type between religious belief and everyday matter-of-fact belief.

Neural mechanisms of modulations of empathy and altruism by beliefs of others' pain

Perceived cues signaling others' pain induce empathy which in turn motivates altruistic behavior toward those who appear suffering. This perception-emotion-behavior reactivity is the core of human altruism but does not always occur in real-life situations. Here, by integrating behavioral and multimodal neuroimaging measures, we investigate neural mechanisms underlying modulations of empathy and altruistic behavior by beliefs of others' pain (BOP). We show evidence that lack of BOP reduces subjective estimation of others' painful feelings and decreases monetary donations to those who show pain expressions. Moreover, lack of BOP attenuates neural responses to their pain expressions within 200 ms after face onset and modulates neural responses to others' pain in the insular, post-central, and frontal cortices. Our findings suggest that BOP provide a cognitive basis of human empathy and altruism and unravel the intermediate neural mechanisms.

Brain circuitry underlying the ABC model of anxiety

Anxiety Disorders are prevalent and often chronic, recurrent conditions that reduce quality of life. The first-line treatments, such as serotonin reuptake inhibitors and cognitive behavioral therapy, leave a significant proportion of patients symptomatic. As psychiatry moves toward targeted circuit-based treatments, there is a need for a theory that unites the phenomenology of anxiety with its underlying neural circuits. The Alarm, Belief, Coping (ABC) theory of anxiety describes how the neural circuits associated with anxiety interact with each other and domains of the anxiety symptoms, both temporally and spatially. The latest advancements in neuroimaging techniques offer the ability to assess these circuits in vivo. Using Neurosynth, a large open-access meta-analytic imaging database, the association between terms related to specific neural circuits was explored within the ABC theory framework. Alarm-related terms were associated with the amygdala, anterior cingulum, insula, and bed nucleus of stria terminalis. Belief-related terms were associated with medial prefrontal cortex, precuneus, bilateral temporal poles, and hippocampus. Coping-related terms were associated with the ventrolateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, basal ganglia, and anterior cingulate. Neural connections underlying the functional neuroanatomy of the ABC model were observed. Additionally, there was considerable interaction and overlap between circuits associated with the symptom domains. Further neuroimaging research is needed to explore the dynamic interaction between the functional domains of the ABC theory. This will pave the way for probing the neuroanatomical underpinnings of anxiety disorders and provide an evidence-based foundation for the development of targeted treatments, such as neuromodulation.

Effect of a One-Week Spiritual Retreat on Brain Functional Connectivity: A Preliminary Study

Background: Many individuals participate in spiritual retreats to enhance their sense of spirituality or to improve their overall mental and spiritual well-being. We are not aware of any studies specifically evaluating changes in functional connectivity using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in individuals undergoing an intense spiritual retreat program. The goal of this study was to determine whether such changes occur as a result of participating in the Spiritual Exercises of St. Ignatius. Methods: We conducted psychological and spiritual measures in conjunction with functional connectivity analysis of fMRI in 14 individuals prior to and following shortly after their participation in a one-week spiritual retreat. Results: Significant changes in functional connectivity were observed after the retreat program, compared to baseline evaluation, particularly in the posterior cingulate cortex, pallidum, superior frontal lobe, superior parietal lobe, superior and inferior temporal lobe, and the cerebellum. Significant changes in a variety of psychological and spiritual measures were identified as result of participation in the retreat. Conclusion: Overall, these preliminary findings suggest that this intensive spiritual retreat resulted in significant changes in brain functional connectivity, and warrants further investigation to evaluate the physiological, psychological, and spiritual impact of these changes.

Repetitive Religious Chanting Invokes Positive Emotional Schema to Counterbalance Fear: A Multi-Modal Functional and Structural MRI Study

Introduction

During hard times, religious chanting/praying is widely practiced to cope with negative or stressful emotions. While the underlying neural mechanism has not been investigated to a sufficient extent. A previous event-related potential study showed that religious chanting could significantly diminish the late-positive potential induced by negative stimuli. However, the regulatory role of subcortical brain regions, especially the amygdala, in this process remains unclear. This multi-modal MRI study aimed to further clarify the neural mechanism underlying the effectiveness of religious chanting for emotion regulation.

Methodology

Twenty-one participants were recruited for a multi-modal MRI study. Their age range was 40–52 years, 11 were female and all participants had at least 1 year of experience in religious chanting. The participants were asked to view neutral/fearful pictures while practicing religious chanting (i.e., chanting the name of Buddha Amitābha), non-religious chanting (i.e., chanting the name of Santa Claus), or no chanting. A 3.0 T Philips MRI scanner was used to collect the data and SPM12 was used to analyze the imaging data. Voxel-based morphometry (VBM) was used to explore the potential hemispheric asymmetries in practitioners.

Results

Compared to non-religious chanting and no chanting, higher brain activity was observed in several brain regions when participants performed religious chanting while viewing fearful images. These brain regions included the fusiform gyrus, left parietal lobule, and prefrontal cortex, as well as subcortical regions such as the amygdala, thalamus, and midbrain. Importantly, significantly more activity was observed in the left than in the right amygdala during religious chanting. VBM showed hemispheric asymmetries, mainly in the thalamus, putamen, hippocampus, amygdala, and cerebellum; areas related to skill learning and biased memory formation.

Conclusion

This preliminary study showed that repetitive religious chanting may induce strong brain activity, especially in response to stimuli with negative valence. Practicing religious chanting may structurally lateralize a network of brain areas involved in biased memory formation. These functional and structural results suggest that religious chanting helps to form a positive schema to counterbalance negative emotions. Future randomized control studies are necessary to confirm the neural mechanism related to religious chanting in coping with stress and negative emotions.

Epilepsy characteristics and cognitive, social, and mood functions in relation to intrinsic religiosity

PURPOSE

The purpose of the study was to relate the Intrinsic Religiosity Inventory (IRI) with clinical epilepsy variables, the occurrence of depressive symptoms, and the quality of life (QoL) of 169 adult people with epilepsy (PWEs). Data were compared with those of a similar control group (CG) without psychiatric disorders, with p < 0.05.

RESULTS

A higher intrinsic religiosity (IR) was observed in PWEs when compared with the CG. Impairment in multiple cognitive domains was found in 41 (24.2%) cases, and a score >15 in the Neurological Disorders Depression Inventory for Epilepsy was observed in 44 (26%) cases. In PWE, a greater IR was associated with the use of more than one antiepileptic drug (AED), epileptiform activity (EA) in the left hemisphere, temporal lobe epilepsy with hippocampal sclerosis (TLE-HS), and the absence of depressive disorders. An early age of onset and the social functioning dimension of the Quality of Life in Epilepsy Inventory (QOLIE-31) were the predictive factors for a higher IR in the linear multivariate regression analysis.

CONCLUSION

The IR was significantly higher in PWE. A higher IR was related to TLE-HS, EA in the left hemisphere, later onset of epilepsy, a better performance in the semantic verbal fluency (SVF) test, and the absence of depressive disorders, suggesting a complex neurophysiological relationship involving multiple factors.

God Spots in the Brain: Nine Categories of Unasked, Unanswered Questions

Neurotheology is an emerging academic discipline that examines mind-brain relationships in terms of the inter-relatedness of neuroscience, spirituality, and religion. Neurotheology originated from brain-scan studies that revealed specific correlations between certain religious thoughts and localized activated brain areas known as “God Spots.” This relatively young scholarly discipline lacks clear consensus on its definition, ideology, purpose, or prospects for future research. Of special interest is the consideration of the next steps using brain scans to develop this field of research. This review proposes nine categories of future research that could build on the foundation laid by the prior discoveries of God Spots. Specifically, this analysis identifies some sparsely addressed issues that could be usefully explored with new kinds of brain-scan studies: neural network operations, the cognitive neuroscience of prayer, biology of belief, measures of religiosity, role of the self, learning and memory, religious and secular cognitive commonalities, static and functional anatomy, and recruitment of neural processing circuitry. God Spot research is poised to move beyond observation to robust hypothesis generation and testing.

The Neural Basis of Religious Cognition

Religion’s neural underpinnings have long been a topic of speculation and debate, but an emerging neuroscience of religion is beginning to clarify which regions of the brain integrate moral, ritual, and supernatural religious beliefs with functionally adaptive responses. Here, we review evidence indicating that religious cognition involves a complex interplay among the brain regions underpinning cognitive control, social reasoning, social motivations, and ideological beliefs.

Patients with Lesions to Left Prefrontal Cortex (BA 9 and BA 10) Have Less Entrenched Beliefs and Are More Skeptical Reasoners

The effect of prior beliefs on reasoning and decision-making is a robust, poorly understood phenomenon, exhibiting considerable individual variation. Neuroimaging studies widely show the involvement of the left pFC in reasoning involving beliefs. However, little patient data exist to speak to the necessity and role of the left pFC in belief-based inference. To address this shortcoming, we tested 102 patients with unilateral focal penetrating traumatic brain injuries and 49 matched controls. Participants provided plausibility ratings (plausible/implausible) to simple inductive arguments and (separately) strength of believability ratings of the conclusion to those same arguments. A voxel-based lesion symptom mapping analysis identified 10 patients, all with lesions to the left pFC (BA 9 and BA 10) as rating significantly fewer arguments with highly believable conclusions as "plausible," compared with all other patients. Subsequent analyses, incorporating the right hemisphere homologue of these patients (n = 12) and normal controls (n = 24), revealed patients with lesions to left pFC found fewer arguments plausible in the high believable than either of these groups, and there was no difference in the behavioral scores of the right pFC patients and normal controls. Further analysis, utilizing the belief ratings as the dependent measure, revealed a Group × Belief Rating interaction, with left pFC patients having less intense beliefs about the conclusions of moderately believable and highly believable arguments. We interpreted these results to indicate that lesions to left pFC (BA 9, BA 10) increase incredulity and make these patients more skeptical reasoners. The former can partially, but not fully, explain the latter. The other relevant factor may be that unilateral left pFC lesions disrupt hemispheric equilibrium and allow for an increased inhibitory role of the right pFC. We speculate that individual differences in belief bias in reasoning in the normal population may be a function of individual differences in the left and right pFC interactional dynamics.

Neural mechanisms underlying subsequent memory for personal beliefs:An fMRI study

Many fMRI studies have examined the neural mechanisms supporting emotional memory for stimuli that generate emotion rather automatically (e.g., a picture of a dangerous animal or of appetizing food). However, far fewer studies have examined how memory is influenced by emotion related to social and political issues (e.g., a proposal for large changes in taxation policy), which clearly vary across individuals. In order to investigate the neural substrates of affective and mnemonic processes associated with personal opinions, we employed an fMRI task wherein participants rated the intensity of agreement/disagreement to sociopolitical belief statements paired with neural face pictures. Following the rating phase, participants performed an associative recognition test in which they distinguished identical versus recombined face-statement pairs. The study yielded three main findings: behaviorally, the intensity of agreement ratings was linked to greater subjective emotional arousal as well as enhanced high-confidence subsequent memory. Neurally, statements that elicited strong (vs. weak) agreement or disagreement were associated with greater activation of the amygdala. Finally, a subsequent memory analysis showed that the behavioral memory advantage for statements generating stronger ratings was dependent on the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). Together, these results both underscore consistencies in neural systems supporting emotional arousal and suggest a modulation of arousal-related encoding mechanisms when emotion is contingent on referencing personal beliefs.

A diffusion tensor imaging study of brain microstructural changes related to religion and spirituality in families at high risk for depression

INTRODUCTION

Previously in a three-generation study of families at high risk for depression, we found that belief in the importance of religion/spirituality (R/S) was associated with thicker cortex in bilateral parietal and occipital regions. In the same sample using functional magnetic resonance imaging and electroencephalograph (EEG), we found that offspring at high familial risk had thinner cortices, increased default mode network connectivity, and reduced EEG power. These group differences were significantly diminished in offspring at high risk who reported high importance of R/S beliefs, suggesting a protective effect.

METHODS

This study extends previous work examining brain microstructural differences associated with risk for major depressive disorder (MDD) and tests whether these are normalized in at-risk offspring who report high importance of R/S beliefs. Diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) data were selected from 99 2nd and 3rd generation offspring of 1st generation depressed (high-risk, HR) or nondepressed (low-risk, LR) parents. Whole-brain and region-of-interest analyses were performed, using ellipsoidal area ratio (EAR, an alternative diffusion anisotropy index comparable to fractional anisotropy). We examined microstructural differences associated with familial risk for depression within the groups of high and low importance of R/S beliefs (HI, LI).

RESULTS

In the LI group, HR individuals showed significantly decreased EAR in white matter regions neighboring the precuneus, superior parietal lobe, superior and middle frontal gyrus, and bilateral insula, supplementary motor area, and postcentral gyrus. In the HI group, HR individuals showed reduced EAR in white matter surrounding the left superior, and middle frontal gyrus, left superior parietal lobule, and right supplementary motor area. Microstructural differences associated with familial risk for depression in precuneus, frontal lobe, and temporal lobe were nonsignificant or less significant in the HI group.

CONCLUSION

R/S beliefs may affect microstructure in brain regions associated with R/S, potentially conferring resilience to depression among HR individuals.

Current Understanding of Religion, Spirituality, and Their Neurobiological Correlates

Religion and spirituality (R/S) have been prominent aspects of most human cultures through the ages; however, scientific inquiry into this phenomenon has been limited. We conducted a systematic literature review of research on the neurobiological correlates of R/S, which resulted in 25 reports studying primarily R/S with electroencephalography, structural neuroimaging (MRI), and functional neuroimaging (fMRI, PET). These studies investigated a wide range of religions (e.g., Christianity, Buddhism, Islam) and R/S states and behaviors (e.g., resting state, prayer, judgments) and employed a wide range of methodologies, some of which (e.g., no control group, varying measures of religiosity, small sample sizes) raise concerns about the validity of the results. Despite these limitations, the findings of these studies collectively suggest that the experience of R/S has specific neurobiological correlates and that these correlates are distinct from non-R/S counterparts. The findings implicate several brain regions potentially associated with R/S development and behavior, including the medial frontal cortex, orbitofrontal cortex, precuneus, posterior cingulate cortex, default mode network, and caudate. This research may suggest future clinical applications and interventions related to R/S and various disorders, including mood, anxiety, psychotic, pain, and vertiginous disorders. Further studies with more rigorous study designs are warranted to elucidate the neurobiological mechanisms of R/S and their potential clinical applications.

Systems Neuroscience of Psychosis: Mapping Schizophrenia Symptoms onto Brain Systems

Schizophrenia research has been in a deadlock for many decades. Despite important advances in clinical treatment, there are still major concerns regarding long-term psychosocial reintegration and disease management, biological heterogeneity, unsatisfactory predictors of individual course and treatment strategies, and a confusing variety of controversial theories about its etiology and pathophysiological mechanisms. In the present perspective on schizophrenia research, we first discuss a methodological pitfall in contemporary schizophrenia research inherent in the attempt to link mental phenomena with the brain: we claim that the time-honored phenomenological method of defining mental symptoms should not be contaminated with the naturalistic approach of modern neuroscience. We then describe our Systems Neuroscience of Psychosis (SyNoPsis) project, which aims to overcome this intrinsic problem of psychiatric research. Considering schizophrenia primarily as a disorder of interindividual communication, we developed a neurobiologically informed semiotics of psychotic disorders, as well as an operational clinical rating scale. The novel psychopathology allows disentangling the clinical manifestations of schizophrenia into behavioral domains matching the functions of three well-described higher-order corticobasal brain systems involved in interindividual human communication, namely, the limbic, associative, and motor loops, including their corticocortical sensorimotor connections. The results of several empirical studies support the hypothesis that the proposed three-dimensional symptom structure, segregated into the affective, the language, and the motor domain, can be specifically mapped onto structural and functional abnormalities of the respective brain systems. New pathophysiological hypotheses derived from this brain system-oriented approach have helped to develop and improve novel treatment strategies with noninvasive brain stimulation and practicable clinical parameters. In clinical practice, the novel psychopathology allows confining the communication deficits of the individual patient, shifting attention from the symptoms to the intact resources. We have studied this approach and observed important advantages for therapeutic alliances, personalized treatment, and de-escalation strategies. Future studies will further conjoin clinical definitions of psychotic symptoms with brain structures and functions, and disentangle structural and functional deficit patterns within these systems to identify neurobiologically distinct subsyndromes. Neurobiologically homogeneous patient groups may provide new momentum for treatment research. Finally, lessons learned from schizophrenia research may contribute to developing a comprehensive perspective on human experience and behavior that integrates methodologically distinct, but internally consistent, insights from humanities and neuroscience.

What Makes You So Sure? Dogmatism, Fundamentalism, Analytic Thinking, Perspective Taking and Moral Concern in the Religious and Nonreligious

Better understanding the psychological factors related to certainty in one's beliefs (i.e., dogmatism) has important consequences for both individuals and social groups. Generally, beliefs can find support from at least two different routes of information processing: social/moral considerations or analytic/empirical reasoning. Here, we investigate how these two psychological constructs relate to dogmatism in two groups of individuals who preferentially draw on the former or latter sort of information when forming beliefs about the world-religious and nonreligious individuals. Across two studies and their pooled analysis, we provide evidence that although dogmatism is negatively related to analytic reasoning in both groups of individuals, it shares a divergent relationship with measures of moral concern depending on whether one identifies as religious or not. Study 1 showed that increasing levels of dogmatism were positively related to prosocial intentions among the religious and negatively related to empathic concern among the nonreligious. Study 2 replicated and extended these results by showing that perspective taking is negatively related to dogmatism in both groups, an effect which is particularly robust among the nonreligious. Study 2 also showed that religious fundamentalism was positively related to measures of moral concern among the religious. Because the current studies used a content-neutral measure to assess dogmatic certainty in one's beliefs, they have the potential to inform practices for most effectively communicating with and persuading religious and nonreligious individuals to change maladaptive behavior, even when the mode of discourse is unrelated to religious belief.

Exploring the neural substrates of misinformation processing

It is well known that information that is initially thought to be correct but then revealed to be false, often continues to influence human judgement and decision making despite people being aware of the retraction. Yet little research has examined the underlying neural substrates of this phenomenon, which is known as the 'continued influence effect of misinformation' (CIEM). It remains unclear how the human brain processes critical information that retracts prior claims. To address this question in further detail, 26 healthy adults underwent functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) while listening to brief narratives which either involved a retraction of prior information or not. Following each narrative, subjects' comprehension of the narrative, including their inclination to rely on retracted information, was probed. As expected, it was found that retracted information continued to affect participants' narrative-related reasoning. In addition, the fMRI data indicated that the continued influence of retracted information may be due to a breakdown of narrative-level integration and coherence-building mechanisms implemented by the precuneus and posterior cingulate gyrus.

Toward a neurobiologically informed psychiatry

Schizophrenia is a severe and, at the same time fascinating disorder. It is traditionally defined as a «dissociation» of higher brain functions, which implies a modular organization of the brain up to its highest levels of organization. This short review shows how the study of the disorder is still flawed by fundamentally different definitions of the disorder, and that a consistent naturalistic approach may help to revise the vocabulary of psychiatric disorders, opening the way towards a neurobiologically informed psychiatry. Empirical studies and clinical importance supporting this novel approach are summarized.

Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism

Beliefs profoundly affect people's lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality.

The Place of Identity Dissonance and Emotional Motivations in Bio-Cultural Models of Religious Experience: A Report from the 19th Century

Durham University's 'Hearing the Voice' project involves a multi-disciplinary exploration of hallucinatory-type phenomena in an attempt to revaluate and reframe discussions of these experiences. As part of this project, contemporaneous religious experiences (supernatural voices and visions) in the United States from the first half of the nineteenth century have been analysed, shedding light on the value and applicability of contemporary bio-cultural models of religious experience for such historical cases. In particular, this essay outlines four historical cases, seeking to utilise and to refine four theoretical models, including anthropologist Tanya Luhrmann's 'absorption hypothesis', by returning to something like William James' concern with 'discordant personalities'. Ultimately, the paper argues that emphasis on the role of identity dissonance must not be omitted from the analytical tools applied to these nineteenth-century examples, and perhaps should be retained for any study of religious experience generally.

Neural correlates of maintaining one's political beliefs in the face of counterevidence

People often discount evidence that contradicts their firmly held beliefs. However, little is known about the neural mechanisms that govern this behavior. We used neuroimaging to investigate the neural systems involved in maintaining belief in the face of counterevidence, presenting 40 liberals with arguments that contradicted their strongly held political and non-political views. Challenges to political beliefs produced increased activity in the default mode network-a set of interconnected structures associated with self-representation and disengagement from the external world. Trials with greater belief resistance showed increased response in the dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and decreased activity in the orbitofrontal cortex. We also found that participants who changed their minds more showed less BOLD signal in the insula and the amygdala when evaluating counterevidence. These results highlight the role of emotion in belief-change resistance and offer insight into the neural systems involved in belief maintenance, motivated reasoning, and related phenomena.

Reward, salience, and attentional networks are activated by religious experience in devout Mormons

High-level cognitive and emotional experience arises from brain activity, but the specific brain substrates for religious and spiritual euphoria remain unclear. We demonstrate using functional magnetic resonance imaging scans in 19 devout Mormons that a recognizable feeling central to their devotional practice was reproducibly associated with activation in nucleus accumbens, ventromedial prefrontal cortex, and frontal attentional regions. Nucleus accumbens activation preceded peak spiritual feelings by 1–3 s and was replicated in four separate tasks. Attentional activation in the anterior cingulate and frontal eye fields was greater in the right hemisphere. The association of abstract ideas and brain reward circuitry may interact with frontal attentional and emotive salience processing, suggesting a mechanism whereby doctrinal concepts may come to be intrinsically rewarding and motivate behavior in religious individuals.

Processes of believing: Where do they come from? What are they good for?

Despite the long scholarly discourse in Western theology and philosophy on religion, spirituality, and faith, explanations of what a belief and what believing is are still lacking. Recently, cognitive neuroscience research addressed the human capacity of believing. We present evidence suggesting that believing is a human brain function which results in probabilistic representations with attributes of personal meaning and value and thereby guides individuals’ behavior. We propose that the same mental processes operating on narratives and rituals constitute belief systems in individuals and social groups. Our theoretical model of believing is suited to account for secular and non-secular belief formation.

Processes of believing: Where do they come from? What are they good for?

Despite the long scholarly discourse in Western theology and philosophy on religion, spirituality, and faith, explanations of what a belief and what believing is are still lacking. Recently, cognitive neuroscience research addressed the human capacity of believing. We present evidence suggesting that believing is a human brain function which results in probabilistic representations with attributes of personal meaning and value and thereby guides individuals' behavior. We propose that the same mental processes operating on narratives and rituals constitute belief systems in individuals and social groups. Our theoretical model of believing is suited to account for secular and non-secular belief formation.

Neurology of ecstatic religious and similar experiences: Ecstatic, orgasmic, and musicogenic seizures. Stendhal syndrome and autoscopic phenomena

All human experiences, including mystical and religious ones, are the result of brain functional activity. Thanks to the study of cases of ecstatic epilepsy with structural (MRI) and functional neuroimaging (fMRI, PET, SPECT) and neurophysiological technologies (recording and stimulation with intracranial electrodes), we now have a better knowledge of certain mental states which involve pleasant and affective symptoms and clarity of mind. These ecstatic experiences are thought to be caused by the activation of the anterior insular cortex and some neuronal networks (basically related to mirror neurons and salience) participating in introspection, social cognition, memory, and emotional processes. Thus, neuroscience could explain in a retrospective way some facts surrounding the situations of such relevant figures as Paul the Apostle, Teresa de Cepeda y Ahumada, and Dostoevsky, whose origin was previously considered paranormal or supernatural. Ecstatic epilepsy shares symptoms and mechanisms with orgasmic epilepsy (spontaneous orgasms in the course of epileptic seizures), musicogenic epilepsy (epileptic seizures triggered by listening to a certain musical piece), and also with Stendhal syndrome (neuropsychiatric disturbances caused when an individual is exposed to large amounts of art) and some autoscopic phenomena (out-of-body experiences that occasionally take place in imminent death situations). In all these events, there are pleasant and affective symptoms which have a great impact on patients.

Why Do You Believe in God? Relationships between Religious Belief, Analytic Thinking, Mentalizing and Moral Concern

Prior work has established that analytic thinking is associated with disbelief in God, whereas religious and spiritual beliefs have been positively linked to social and emotional cognition. However, social and emotional cognition can be subdivided into a number of distinct dimensions, and some work suggests that analytic thinking is in tension with some aspects of social-emotional cognition. This leaves open two questions. First, is belief linked to social and emotional cognition in general, or a specific dimension in particular? Second, does the negative relationship between belief and analytic thinking still hold after relationships with social and emotional cognition are taken into account? We report eight hypothesis-driven studies which examine these questions. These studies are guided by a theoretical model which focuses on the distinct social and emotional processing deficits associated with autism spectrum disorders (mentalizing) and psychopathy (moral concern). To our knowledge no other study has investigated both of these dimensions of social and emotion cognition alongside analytic thinking. We find that religious belief is robustly positively associated with moral concern (4 measures), and that at least part of the negative association between belief and analytic thinking (2 measures) can be explained by a negative correlation between moral concern and analytic thinking. Using nine different measures of mentalizing, we found no evidence of a relationship between mentalizing and religious or spiritual belief. These findings challenge the theoretical view that religious and spiritual beliefs are linked to the perception of agency, and suggest that gender differences in religious belief can be explained by differences in moral concern. These findings are consistent with the opposing domains hypothesis, according to which brain areas associated with moral concern and analytic thinking are in tension.

The neural basis of testable and non-testable beliefs

Beliefs about the state of the world are an important influence on both normal behavior and psychopathology. However, understanding of the neural basis of belief processing remains incomplete, and several aspects of belief processing have only recently been explored. Specifically, different types of beliefs may involve fundamentally different inferential processes and thus recruit distinct brain regions. Additionally, neural processing of truth and falsity may differ from processing of certainty and uncertainty. The purpose of this study was to investigate the neural underpinnings of assessment of testable and non-testable propositions in terms of truth or falsity and the level of certainty in a belief. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to study 14 adults while they rated propositions as true or false and also rated the level of certainty in their judgments. Each proposition was classified as testable or non-testable. Testable propositions activated the DLPFC and posterior cingulate cortex, while non-testable statements activated areas including inferior frontal gyrus, superior temporal gyrus, and an anterior region of the superior frontal gyrus. No areas were more active when a proposition was accepted, while the dorsal anterior cingulate was activated when a proposition was rejected. Regardless of whether a proposition was testable or not, certainty that the proposition was true or false activated a common network of regions including the medial prefrontal cortex, caudate, posterior cingulate, and a region of middle temporal gyrus near the temporo-parietal junction. Certainty in the truth or falsity of a non-testable proposition (a strong belief without empirical evidence) activated the insula. The results suggest that different brain regions contribute to the assessment of propositions based on the type of content, while a common network may mediate the influence of beliefs on motivation and behavior based on the level of certainty in the belief.

Epistemological implications of near-death experiences and other non-ordinary mental expressions: Moving beyond the concept of altered state of consciousness

During the last decades an increasing interest has developed in the so-called altered state of consciousness (ASCs); among these, near-death experiences (NDEs) are one of the most intriguing and debated examples. NDEs are deep and universal experiences with a clear phenomenology and incidence, while some of their features challenge the current views of human consciousness (focused on neural circuits and based on the concept of mind as a byproduct of brain circuitry) with relevant epistemological and historical implications. The origin of the ruling mechanist-reductionist paradigm can be traced back to Descartes' radical separation of res cogitans and res extensa and the conflict between the nascent science and the Inquisition; this led to removing the subjective properties of mind from the field of scientific interest, relegating them to philosophy and theology in order to enable the development of modern science. However, the physics of the 20th century has eventually moved beyond the classical paradigm, permitting a profound renewal of scientific interest in the mind. Modern research on NDEs has contributed to reopening the debate surrounding the Cartesian separation, the mind-brain relationship and the nature of consciousness. It is now time to reappraise the relevance, strengths, and weaknesses of the available scientific interpretations of NDEs, their relationship with other ASCs, as well as the very concept of ASC; the latter looks to be ill-founded, suggesting the need for: (a) a revision of the conventional approach to subjective phenomena, including both the third- and first-person perspective; and (b) a deep reflection on the possible links between different non-ordinary mental expression, as regards both their phenomenology and mechanisms from a non-pathological perspective.

Communicating results in post-Belmont era biomonitoring studies: lessons from genetics and neuroimaging research

BACKGROUND

Biomonitoring is a critical tool to assess the effects of chemicals on health, as scientists seek to better characterize life-course exposures from diverse environments. This trend, coupled with increased institutional support for community-engaged environmental health research, challenge established ethical norms related to biomonitoring results communication and data sharing between scientists, study participants, and their wider communities.

METHODS

Through a literature review, participant observation at workshops, and interviews, we examine ethical tensions related to reporting individual data from chemical biomonitoring studies by drawing relevant lessons from the genetics and neuroimaging fields.

RESULTS

In all three fields ethical debates about whether/how to report-back results to study participants are precipitated by two trends. First, changes in analytical methods have made more data accessible to stakeholders. For biomonitoring, improved techniques enable detection of more chemicals at lower levels, and diverse groups of scientists and health advocates now conduct exposure studies. Similarly, innovations in genetics have catalyzed large-scale projects and broadened the scope of who has access to genetic information. Second, increasing public interest in personal medical information has compelled imaging researchers to address demands by participants to know their personal data, despite uncertainties about their clinical significance. Four ethical arenas relevant to biomonitoring results communication emerged from our review: tensions between participants' right-to-know their personal results versus their ability or right-to-act to protect their health; whether and how to report incidental findings; informed consent in biobanking; and open-access data sharing.

CONCLUSION

Ethically engaging participants in biomonitoring studies requires consideration of several issues, including scientific uncertainty about health implications and exposure sources, the ability of participants to follow up on potentially problematic results, tensions between individual and community research protections, governance and consent regarding secondary use of tissue samples, and privacy challenges in open access data sharing.

Spirituality of chronic orofacial pain patients: case-control study

The objective of this study was to investigate spirituality and blood parameters associated with stress in patients with facial musculoskeletal pain. Twenty-four women with chronic facial musculoskeletal pain (CFMP) and 24 healthy women were evaluated with a protocol for orofacial characteristics, research diagnostic criteria for temporomandibular disorders and the Spiritual Perspective Scale. Blood samples were collected to analyze blood count, cortisol, ACTH, C3, C4, thyroid hormones, total immunoglobulin, C-reactive protein and rheumatoid factor. The study group was more spiritualized than control group. Individuals with a high score of spirituality had less myofascial pain, less bruxism and fewer complaints. They also had lower levels of ACTH and IgE. Spirituality was higher in the study group and can be considered an important tool for coping with CFMP.

Orbitofrontal cortex volume and intrinsic religiosity in non-clinical psychosis

Research indicates that religiosity plays a complex role in mental illness. Despite this link, little work has been done to clarify the role of religiosity in persons exhibiting non-clinical psychosis (NCP, individuals experiencing fleeting psychotic-like symptoms in the absence of a formal psychotic disorder). Further, there are no NCP investigations into whether abnormalities exist in brain structures that are associated with religiosity. Understanding these relationships in NCP is important to clarify the role of religiosity and brain structural anomalies in psychosis. Twenty individuals experiencing NCP and twenty controls were assessed for intrinsic religiosity (IR; motivation/commitment to religious beliefs and/or practices) using a well-validated self-report scale. Structural magnetic resonance imaging was used to determine volumes of the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a critical region that has been associated with increased religiosity. Results indicate that IR is elevated in the NCP group, and that these individuals exhibit bilateral volume reduction in both the lateral and medial OFC. Sample-wide correlations are non-significant, but show notable relationships between smaller OFC regions and increased IR. Significant negative relationships were found between OFC volume and depressive and negative symptoms. Overall, results suggest that brain abnormalities associated with NCP may also confer a heightened susceptibility for religiosity.

Disturbed mental imagery of affected body-parts in patients with hysterical conversion paraplegia correlates with pathological limbic activity

Patients with conversion disorder generally suffer from a severe neurological deficit which cannot be attributed to a structural neurological damage. In two patients with acute conversion paraplegia, investigation with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) showed that the insular cortex, a limbic-related cortex involved in body-representation and subjective emotional experience, was activated not only during attempt to move the paralytic body-parts, but also during mental imagery of their movements. In addition, mental rotation of affected body-parts was found to be disturbed, as compared to unaffected body parts or external objects. fMRI during mental rotation of the paralytic body-part showed an activation of another limbic related region, the anterior cingulate cortex. These data suggest that conversion paraplegia is associated with pathological activity in limbic structures involved in body representation and a deficit in mental processing of the affected body-parts.

The lateral prefrontal cortex and complex value-based learning and decision making

Tremendous progress has been made in discerning the neurocognitive basis of value-based decision making and learning. Although the majority of studies to date have employed simple task paradigms, recent work has started to examine more complex aspects of value processing including: the value of engaging rule-based cognitive control; the integration of multiple pieces of information (e.g., reward magnitude and delay) to discern the best course of action; pursuing future rewards; valuation of abstract concepts (e.g., fairness); and comparing the value of executed versus imagined alternative actions. We provide a comprehensive review of functional neuroimaging, electrophysiological, and lesion evidence suggesting that the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) plays a critical role in these complex aspects of value processing. In particular, we focus on the specific information that the LPFC represents, and argue that it includes both cognitive and value-based information. We also discuss how the role of the LPFC is distinct from other value-related regions. Finally, we articulate a framework for understanding the contribution of subregions along the rostro-caudal axis of the LPFC, and thereby bridge the cognitive control and decision making literatures.

[Non-medical applications for brain MRI: Ethical considerations]

INTRODUCTION

The recent neuroimaging techniques offer the possibility to better understand complex cognitive processes that are involved in mental disorders and thus have become cornerstone tools for research in psychiatry. The performances of functional magnetic resonance imaging are not limited to medical research and are used in non-medical fields. These recent applications represent new challenges for bioethics.

OBJECTIVE

In this article we aim at discussing the new ethical issues raised by the applications of the latest neuroimaging technologies to non-medical fields.

METHODS

We included a selection of peer-reviewed English medical articles after a search on NCBI Pubmed database and Google scholar from 2000 to 2013. We screened bibliographical tables for supplementary references. Websites of governmental French institutions implicated in ethical questions were also screened for governmental reports.

RESULTS

Findings of brain areas supporting emotional responses and regulation have been used for marketing research, also called neuromarketing. The discovery of different brain activation patterns in antisocial disorder has led to changes in forensic psychiatry with the use of imaging techniques with unproven validity. Automated classification algorithms and multivariate statistical analyses of brain images have been applied to brain-reading techniques, aiming at predicting unconscious neural processes in humans. We finally report the current position of the French legislation recently revised and discuss the technical limits of such techniques.

DISCUSSION

In the near future, brain imaging could find clinical applications in psychiatry as diagnostic or predictive tools. However, the latest advances in brain imaging are also used in non-scientific fields raising key ethical questions. Involvement of neuroscientists, psychiatrists, physicians but also of citizens in neuroethics discussions is crucial to challenge the risk of unregulated uses of brain imaging.

Toward a unifying taxonomy and definition for meditation

One of the well-documented concerns confronting scholarly discourse about meditation is the plethora of semantic constructs and the lack of a unified definition and taxonomy. In recent years there have been several notable attempts to formulate new lexicons in order to define and categorize meditation methods. While these constructs have been useful and have encountered varying degrees of acceptance, they have also been subject to misinterpretation and debate, leaving the field devoid of a consensual paradigm. This paper attempts to influence this ongoing discussion by proposing two new models which hold the potential for enhanced scientific reliability and acceptance. Regarding the quest for a universally acceptable taxonomy, we suggest a paradigm shift away from the norm of fabricatIng new terminology from a first-person perspective. As an alternative, we propose a new taxonomic system based on the historically well-established and commonly accepted third-person paradigm of Affect and Cognition, borrowed, in part, from the psychological and cognitive sciences. With regard to the elusive definitional problem, we propose a model of meditation which clearly distinguishes "method" from "state" and is conceptualized as a dynamic process which is inclusive of six related but distinct stages. The overall goal is to provide researchers with a reliable nomenclature with which to categorize and classify diverse meditation methods, and a conceptual framework which can provide direction for their research and a theoretical basis for their findings.

Cooccurrence des croyances religieuses, superstitieuses et de type délirant

Il existe peu de données expérimentales faisant le lien entre les croyances religieuses, superstitieuses et de type délirant, malgré que ces croyances aient un point commun : le fait qu’elles reposent sur peu ou pas de preuves. Ceci suggère qu’elles pourraient partager un mécanisme cognitif commun et donc être observées chez les mêmes individus. Pour tester cette dernière hypothèse, nous avons fait remplir des questionnaires d’idées de type délirant, de religiosité, et de superstition à 95 participants sans antécédents psychiatriques. Globalement, les croyances superstitieuses corrèlent positivement avec les croyances religieuses et les idées de type délirant et tendent donc à apparaître chez les mêmes individus. Cependant, les idées de type délirant ne sont que partiellement liées aux croyances religieuses. La relation entre les idées de type délirant et la religiosité demeure ambiguë.