Link to original study for curious folks with access to it: https://www.pnas.org/doi/abs/10.1073/pnas.2322399121
I think it’s brain structure in general, not necessarily damage. I once contacted one of the people at the Minnesota Center for Twin and Family Research at the University of Minnesota (the largest academic group to study twins) and asked them if identical twins separated at birth had the same level of religiosity.
They replied in general, yes.
knowing that this leads to areas fraught with serious, serious issues… one could say the twins have similar levels/types of “brain damage”. careful treading required.
Hence my saying it’s structural. I mean I suppose the brain damage could have happened in the womb because the mother was a substance abuser or something, but I think it’s more likely that certain structures in parts of the brain, which can either be natural or caused by brain damage, increase religious fundamentalism.
The researchers emphasize that damage to this brain network does not guarantee that a person will develop fundamentalist beliefs, nor does it imply that individuals with strong religious convictions have brain damage. Instead, the findings point to the possibility that certain brain networks influence how people process beliefs and how flexible or rigid their thinking becomes, especially in the context of religion.
The nature vs nurture debate is on a scale. While twins might share the same predilection for religiosity due to their genetics, upbringing plays a huge part as well, which is why Squid’s researcher is careful to qualify the answer with ‘in general’. There’s also the concept of neuroplasticity which means damage to the relevant networks does not necessarily doom one to permanent deficits in the associated neural functions. The brain can often recover or adapt post injury.
Considering this, the research is useful in that it allows professionals to predict areas in a patient’s behaviour that might need therapies to return to normal, guidance to set expectations, or as an indicator of damage should sudden related and unexplained behaviour changes occur. It ofc also adds to the body of evidence that associates these parts of the brains with various functions.
More to your comment: You’re right. This needs to be considered carefully because there is a long troubled history with labels in neuropsychology becoming misnomers and insults. For example the terms ‘moron’ and ‘idiot’ used to be an official diagnosis once up on a time.
I like the overall lack of bullshit psypost articles on Lemmy and would like to keep it that way.
If you see a psypost article you should be suspicious.
If you see a psypost article about a paper with a conclusion that you agree with you should be extra suspicious.
EDIT: And now I’ve bothered to read the abstract of the paper and the first bit of the psypost article and they don’t say the same fucking thing.
The journal article is saying they identified brain regions associated with fundamentalism by looking at brain lesions. There may be a seemingly obvious connection to say that the brain lesions caused the fundamentalism, but I don’t see them actually say that after skimming the full text. They focus on what regions are associated with fundamentalism using lesions as a tool to find them.
The psypost article says in the first sentence the damage changes the likelihood of fundamentalism.
Fundamentalism is, at it’s core, about having a simple formula for dealing with a complex and scary world.
That sounds harmless, until my desire for simple answers rolls right over my neighbor’s human rights (and it frequently does).
I don’t mean to excuse anyone, but I honestly think we will see less fundamentalism as we reduce our overall exposure to sources of subtle brain damage (lead paint. Etc).