BackgroundWhile religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief at the level of the brain. Nor is it known whether religious believers and nonbelievers differ in how they evaluate statements of fact. Our lab previously has used functional neuroimaging to study belief as a general mode of cognition [1], and others have looked specifically at religious belief [2]. However, no research has compared these two states of mind directly.Methodology/Principal FindingsWe used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure signal changes in the brains of thirty subjects—fifteen committed Christians and fifteen nonbelievers—as they evaluated the truth and falsity of religious and nonreligious propositions. For both groups, and in both categories of stimuli, belief (judgments of “true” vs judgments of “false”) was associated with greater signal in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex, an area important for self-representation [3], [4], [5], [6], emotional associations [7], reward [8], [9], [10], and goal-driven behavior [11]. This region showed greater signal whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc. or statements about ordinary facts. A comparison of both stimulus categories suggests that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation, and cognitive conflict, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks.Conclusions/SignificanceWhile religious and nonreligious thinking differentially engage broad regions of the frontal, parietal, and medial temporal lobes, the difference between belief and disbelief appears to be content-independent. Our study compares religious thinking with ordinary cognition and, as such, constitutes a step toward developing a neuropsychology of religion. However, these findings may also further our understanding of how the brain accepts statements of all kinds to be valid descriptions of the world.

The Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory-2 (MMPI-2) Fake Bad Scale (FBS; Butcher, Dahlstrom, Graham, Tellegen, & Kaemmer, 1989) has been shown to be sensitive to somatic over-endorsement. However, the impact of ethnicity has not been examined on the FBS, which is of concern given some studies that show increased rates of somatic endorsement in particular ethnic groups. We evaluated the FBS performance of 190 Caucasian American, Hispanic, and African American outpatients who were obtained from two different clinical settings, excluding those who were applying for disability or in litigation. We failed to find significant ethnic differences in mean FBS performance or in cut-off specificity rates. We did find evidence of a gender effect, supporting continued use of gender-specific FBS cutoffs.

Aims The current study sought to explore the relationship between state and trait anxiety and delayed verbal memory performance in APOE-4 carriers and noncarriers who were aged 50 years and above. Materials & methods The study was a retrospective analysis of 267 participants aged 50 years and above who had completed genetic testing for APOE status, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and a comprehensive neuropsychological battery that included three delayed verbal memory measures (Wechsler Memory Scale – 3rd Edition, Logical Memory and Verbal Pairs subtests and the Buschke Selective Reminding Test). Results An inverse relationship was found between state anxiety and delayed verbal memory performance. No difference in level of anxiety was found between APOE-4 carriers versus noncarriers. Conclusion State anxiety, but not trait anxiety, was found to have an inverse relationship with delayed verbal memory performance. For example, as self-reported state anxiety increased, delayed verbal memory scores decreased. This relationship did not appear to be influenced by the presence or absence of the APOE-4 allele.

Background: While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief at the level of the brain. Nor is it known whether religious believers and nonbelievers differ in how they evaluate statements of fact. Our lab previously has used functional neuroimaging to study belief as a general mode of cognition [1], and others have looked specifically at religious belief [2]. However, no research has compared these two states of mind directly.