Posterior medial frontal cortex and threat-enhanced religious belief: a replication and extension. Issue 12 (12th November 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Holbrook, Colin; Iacoboni, Marco; Gordon, Chelsea; Proksch, Shannon; Balasubramaniam, Ramesh
• Is Part Of: Social cognitive and affective neuroscience. Volume 15:Issue 12(2020)
• Page Start: 1350
• Page End: 1356
• Publication Date: 2020-11-12
• Subjects: posterior medial frontal cortex -- religiosity -- group bias -- transcranial magnetic stimulation; Neurosciences -- Periodicals; Cognitive neuroscience -- Periodicals; Neuropsychology -- Periodicals; 612.8205
• DOI: 10.1093/scan/nsaa153
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1749-5016

Abstract

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 investigated whether pMFC similarly mediates ideological threat responses, finding that downregulating 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 downregulated pMFC or a control region (MT/V5) and then primed participants with either a reminder of death or a threat-neutral topic. As mentioned previously, participants reminded of death reported less religious belief when pMFC was downregulated. No such effect of pMFC downregulation 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 downregulating pMFC on group bias was observed, possibly due to reliance on a collegiate in-group framing rather than a national framing as in the prior study.