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SpockLogic writes:

It would seem from the research Biological and cognitive underpinnings of religious fundamentalism that traumatic brain injury to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and/or dorsolateral prefrontal cortex would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs.

Religious beliefs are socially transmitted mental representations that may include supernatural or supernormal episodes that are assumed to be real. Religious beliefs, like other beliefs, are embedded in different ways in different people and societies (Cristofori & Grafman, in press).

One form of religious belief, religious fundamentalism, embodies adherence to a set of firm religious beliefs advocating unassailable truths about human existence (Altemeyer & Hunsberger, 1992). According to the Baylor Religion Survey, a national survey study conducted with a nationally representative sample of 1721 respondents from the United States, 7.7% of all respondents reported being “Fundamentalist” as a part of their religious identity; 1.0% agreed that “Fundamentalist” was the one term that best described their religious identity (Bader, et al., 2006).

[...] Our study explores whether fundamentalism is modulated by the prefrontal cortex (PFC), an important brain area involved in social event knowledge, abstractions and higher order social belief systems. Substantial evidence indicates that damage to the PFC can modify individuals’ belief systems (Forbes & Grafman, 2010; Krueger & Grafman, 2012). For instance, patients with ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) lesions rated radical political statements as more moderate than matched controls (Cristofori, Viola, et al., 2015) and focal damage to the vmPFC resulted in greater religious fundamentalism, compared to healthy controls (Asp, Ramchandran, & Tranel, 2012). Thus, although a collection of cortical sectors function together to help shape and formulate beliefs, the PFC may be a critical hub for the representation of the diverse and abstract social beliefs that lie at the core of many religions.

Original Submission