A recent scientific study found that damage to a certain part of the brain can lead people to become religious fundamentalists. The researchers reached their conclusion by analyzing patients with focal brain lesions. To date, most studies have focused on social and environmental factors such as family upbringing and cultural influence on the development of an individual’s religious beliefs.
The study, published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, looks at how genetic factors or brain function can influence religiosity. Study author Michael Ferguson, who is an instructor of neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of Neurospirituality Research at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapy, was quoted by PsyPost as saying that he actually found a connection between a certain brain network and religious fundamentalism.
“My primary interest is and has been mystical experience. But in the process of researching the cognitive neuroscience of mystical experience, I came across associations of brain networks with religious fundamentalism,” he said. For research purposes, the researchers relied on a method called lesion network mapping.
This technology helps identify how different areas of the brain are connected and how damage to one area can disrupt related brain functions. Two large groups of individuals with focal brain damage were then selected to analyze how brain lesions might be associated with religious belief. The first group consisted mainly of war veterans who suffered traumatic brain injuries.
The second group had on board patients who had damaged their brains from various causes, such as strokes, surgical resections or traumatic head injuries. Afterwards, both groups completed a scale designed to measure religious fundamentalism.
Later, the exact locations of their brain lesions were measured using advanced technology such as computed tomography (CT) and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Damage to the right hemisphere was found to be associated with higher scores on a scale of religious fundamentalism.
“I was surprised by the strength and reproducibility of the signal between psychological self-report measures of religious fundamentalism and the functional networks we identified in the brain,” Ferguson told PsyPost. “It increases confidence in the results.”
