Researchers analyzed brain lesions in two groups of patients: Vietnam War veterans and people from rural Iowa with brain injuries that affect areas involved in reasoning, belief formation, and moral decision-making.
There's an overlap between brain areas associated with religious fundamentalism, confabulation (creating false beliefs), and criminal behavior.
"It's sobering, but one of the takeaway findings is the shared neuroanatomy between religious fundamentalism, confabulations, and criminal behavior," said corresponding author Michael Ferguson, an instructor in neurology at Harvard Medical School and director of Neurospirituality Research at the Center for Brain Circuit Therapeutics. "It refocuses important questions about how and why these aspects of human behavior may be observed to relate to each other."
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