Harvard neurology expert reveals study on how religious fundamentalism impacts the brain

People with brain lesions are more susceptible to religious fundamentalism, according to a study authored by a Harvard University neurology instructor.

Michael Ferguson, an instructor at Harvard Medical School, published a paper along with several other academic experts on brain research about the impact of religious fundamentalism on those with brain lesions.

Brain lesions aren't isolated to brain tumors. Those with congenital disorders, degenerative brain diseases like Alzheimer's, Lewy body dementia, and Parkinson's can add to brain cell death or malfunction, The Cleveland Clinic explains. There are also immune and inflammatory conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or lupus, that can lead to lesions in the brain. Problems like epilepsy, a stroke, traumatic brain injury or brain aneurysms can all cause brain lesions.

Read Also: A neuroscientist explains how religious fundamentalism hijacks the brain

"The whole brain functional connectivity pattern was then correlated with religious fundamentalism scores on a voxelwise basis," wrote Ferguson in a thread on X using a number of illustrations.

"Even when applying a conservative family-wise error multiple comparison correction, we found robust neuroanatomical clusters that were statistically significant in their associations with religious fundamentalism scores," he said.

The survey looked at two data sets, one with lesions and one without. They could reproduce the same patterns in both sets, making them believe the results were "real."

He went on to say that the researchers had "cross-validation" in that they could see one dataset predicted fundamentalism scores for another.

"Lastly, we explored whether our religious fundamentalism brain network resembled the neuroanatomy associated with various neurobehavioral conditions," he continued.

"The strongest similarities to the neuroanatomy linked with confabulation and criminal behavior," he said.

Confabulations are fake or distorted memories that aren't made with any deception. The individual believes they're real, however.

As for crimes, the comparisons for behavior came from violent crimes like assault, rape, and murder.

"Although highly sensitive, these results may shed light on pathways through which religious fundamentalism can, in some cases, convert to outgroup hostility," Ferguson explained.

These researchers didn't only look at one particular religion but across all religions.

Read the full study here.