This is the second in a series of three posts looking at how the brain processes complex beliefs in the domains of morality, religion and politics. Jordan Grafman, Ph.D. presented at the May 3, 2011 Warren Frontiers of Neuroscience lecture series in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Grafman summarized research he had conducted in these three domains.
An fMRI study published in PNAS in 2009 outlined some of Grafman’s research team efforts related to brain processes and religion. In the introduction of this study manuscript, they cite work from the Baylor Institute of Religion survey on religious beliefs in the United States. This survey data appears to support three distinct elements of religious belief:
- God’s perceived level of involvement: a dimension ranging from a strong feeling of God’s (or a supernatural force) being involved in life to feeling that there is no purpose in life or God is far removed from the world
- God’s perceived emotion: whether one perceives a God or supernatural force as positive (forgiving, protecting) or negative emotionally (angry, punishing).
- Religious knowledge-a factor that can be sub-divided into doctrinal religious knowledge and experiential knowledge (i.e. personal experience with prayer or attending church)
Participants in the fMRI study were recruited for having a wide range in the ratings on the three distinct elements of religious belief. They were then scanned while being asked whether they agreed or disagreed with a variety of statements related to the three elements. Statistical analysis examined brain region activation for each of the elements and these regions (and circuits) were then compared to already known cognitive and social networks in the brain.
God’s perceived involvement appeared to activate brain circuits very similar to those activated in Theory of Mind tasks. Theory of Mind is the cognitive ability to comprehend others may have beliefs, desires, emotions and intentions that differ from one’s own. Theory of mind tasks (and in this experiment judging God’s perceived involvement) activated complex frontal, temporal and occipital cortex regions.
In contrast God’s perceived emotion tasks activated fewer regions. Those with a perception that God was a loving being, activated a region in the right middle frontal gyrus while those with a perception of God as angry activated a region in the left middle temporal gyrus. These regions are known to be activated when processing emotional Theory of Mind information. The right middle frontal gyrus area is an area known to be linked to “positive emotional states and suppression of sadness”.
Regions activated with religious knowledge statements differed between experiential versus doctrinal domains. The figure above shows regions activated by experiential religious knowledge in the top series of scans and that activated with doctrinal religious knowledge in the bottom two scans. Experiential religious knowledge statemenst activated a wide range of regions including the occipital cortex known to be key in high-imagery content. Doctrinal knowledge statements activated temporal lobe regions known involved in interpreting metaphorical meaning, abstractness and abstract linguistic content.
These studies support religious beliefs being processed in regions already known to be important in the social cognition evolution of man’s brain. There is no specific “God Spot” in the brain. The authors note in the discussion “This study defines a psychological and neuroanatomical framework for the (predominately explicit) processing of religious belief.
Within this framework, religious belief engages well-known brain networks performing abstract semantic processing, imagery, and intent-related and emotional ToM (Theory of Mind), processes known to occur at both implicit and explicit levels……The findings support the view that religiosity is integrated in cognitive processes and brain networks used in social cognition, rather than being sui generis.
In the final post in this three part series, the focus will be on the brain processes involved in political beliefs.
Kapogiannis, D., Barbey, A., Su, M., Zamboni, G., Krueger, F., & Grafman, J. (2009). Cognitive and neural foundations of religious belief Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 106 (12), 4876-4881 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0811717106
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