• This is a political forum that is non-biased/non-partisan and treats every person's position on topics equally. This debate forum is not aligned to any political party. In today's politics, many ideas are split between and even within all the political parties. Often we find ourselves agreeing on one platform but some topics break our mold. We are here to discuss them in a civil political debate. If this is your first visit to our political forums, be sure to check out the RULES. Registering for debate politics is necessary before posting. Register today to participate - it's free!

Possible link between brain damage and fundamentalism

Somerville

Somerville

DP Veteran
Joined
Apr 29, 2012
Messages
17,867
Reaction score
8,344
Location
On an island. Not that one!
Gender
Undisclosed
Political Leaning
Socialist
A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.

Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism.

Abstract
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. (. . .) 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.
Click to expand...
 
From the Christian Post:

The study, entitled “Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism,” was published in the journal Neuropsychologia. In it, researchers went over the data from 119 Vietnam War veterans who were “specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism.”

Is your Spidey-sense going off here? It should be… The researchers weren’t studying the brains of 119 random people looking to see what, if anything, they might find. No, they assumed that a particular kind of brain damage played a role in whether someone became a religious fundamentalist, and then went looking for evidence that confirmed those suspicions.

Can you spell “confirmation bias,” boys and girls? Are religious fundamentalists brain-damaged? - The Christian Post
 
nota bene said:
From the Christian Post:

The study, entitled “Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism,” was published in the journal Neuropsychologia. In it, researchers went over the data from 119 Vietnam War veterans who were “specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism.”

Is your Spidey-sense going off here? It should be… The researchers weren’t studying the brains of 119 random people looking to see what, if anything, they might find. No, they assumed that a particular kind of brain damage played a role in whether someone became a religious fundamentalist, and then went looking for evidence that confirmed those suspicions.

Can you spell “confirmation bias,” boys and girls? Are religious fundamentalists brain-damaged? - The Christian Post
Click to expand...

Yep, I certainly can see “confirmation bias,” in the opinion piece from Christian Post, written by a person who either failed to read the entire paper or chose to ignore the conclusions of the researchers in order to promote the idea of "Christian persecution".

from the study
We do not propose that religious people are generally cognitively inflexible. Religious belief is the product of multiple and coordinated functional activities across the brain. Our study indicates that one of the functions that support the maintenance of religious conviction is the suppression of belief revision. A key scientific question ahead is how social and ecological responses interact and remain flexible in religious people, and may in some cases become augmented, while religious belief revision is selectively suppressed. Additionally, the specific links between religious doctrine and social prediction and adaptiveness remain unclear, and merit future study.

The present findings contribute a piece to what is becoming an increasingly complex depiction of religious beliefs that will occupy investigators for many decades because of its historically key contribution to human social behavior. In summary, we found that adherence to fundamentalist religious doctrine is partly mediated by diminished flexible conceptual thinking and reduced openness and that the key cortical region supporting the representation of diverse religious belief as well as flexible conceptual thinking is the dlPFC.
Click to expand...
 
Somerville said:
A study published in the journal Neuropsychologia has shown that religious fundamentalism is, in part, the result of a functional impairment in a brain region known as the prefrontal cortex. The findings suggest that damage to particular areas of the prefrontal cortex indirectly promotes religious fundamentalism by diminishing cognitive flexibility and openness—a psychology term that describes a personality trait which involves dimensions like curiosity, creativity, and open-mindedness.
Click to expand...

Very interesting indeed! :peace
 
Problem with research studies is you can get them to say whatever you want really, that is at least what I learned in graduate school. I had my professors throw out a lot of research articles I tried to put in papers because they said the research journals I was using as my source had no credibility. They taught me to be skeptical of research studies, some are credible and some have the same credibility as Charles Manson. You would have to show me many research studies from many different sources to believe this. I would like to see a research study that says this from a world ranked medical research journal such as the New England Journal of Medicine.
 
nota bene said:
From the Christian Post:

The study, entitled “Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism,” was published in the journal Neuropsychologia. In it, researchers went over the data from 119 Vietnam War veterans who were “specifically chosen because a large number of them had damage to brain areas suspected of playing a critical role in functions related to religious fundamentalism.”

Is your Spidey-sense going off here? It should be… The researchers weren’t studying the brains of 119 random people looking to see what, if anything, they might find. No, they assumed that a particular kind of brain damage played a role in whether someone became a religious fundamentalist, and then went looking for evidence that confirmed those suspicions.

Can you spell “confirmation bias,” boys and girls? Are religious fundamentalists brain-damaged? - The Christian Post
Click to expand...

I agree. Scientists should be trying to 'prove whether...', not 'prove that...'.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom