Posterior medial frontal cortex and threat-enhanced religious belief: a replication and extension

Abstract

Research indicates that the posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) functions as a ‘neural alarm’ complex broadly involved in registering threats and helping to muster relevant responses. Holbrook and colleagues (2016) investigated whether pMFC similarly mediates ideological threat-responses, finding that down-regulating pMFC via transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) caused i) less avowed religious belief despite being reminded of death, and ii) less group bias despite encountering a sharp critique of the national in-group. While suggestive, these findings were limited by the absence of a non-threat comparison condition and reliance on sham rather than control TMS. Here, in a pre-registered replication and extension, we down-regulated pMFC or a control region (MT/V5), then primed participants with either a reminder of death or a threat-neutral topic. As previously, participants reminded of death reported less religious belief when pMFC was down-regulated. No such effect of pMFC down-regulation was observed in the neutral condition, consistent with construing pMFC as monitoring for salient threats (e.g., death) and helping to recruit ideological responses (e.g., enhanced religious belief). However, no effect of down-regulating pMFC on group bias was observed, possibly due to reliance here on a collegiate in-group framing rather than a national framing as in the prior study.

Religiosity, Financial Risk Taking, and Reward Processing: An Experimental Study

“…Additionally, the study reported that these beliefs are vulnerable to targeted neuromodulation through transcranial magnetic stimulation. Holbrook et al (2020) further reported reduced religious belief among participants with a downregulated pMFC when reminded of a relevant threat (such as death), but not under threat-neutral conditions. Therefore, the pMFC may mediate a threat-response to conflict stimuli, and empirical research examining the issue may be supported by evolutionary perspectives (such as reciprocal altruism and group cooperation).…”