The neuropsychology of religious activity in normal and selected clinical populations is reviewed. Religious activity includes beliefs, experiences, and practice. Neuropsychological and functional imaging findings, many of which have derived from studies of experienced meditators, point to a ventral cortical axis for religious behavior, involving primarily the ventromedial temporal and frontal ...

The United States is on the verge of a public health crisis. For decades, all 50 states have required that parents vaccinate their children against various diseases, including polio and measles, as a prerequisite to enrolling them in public schools [1]. While virtually all states have tailored their immunization statutes to exempt those with religious (and sometimes philosophical) objections to...

The papers in this issue arose from a conference on the Psychological and Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity that took place at Emory University (Atlanta, Georgia) in August, 2003. 1 This conference brought together scholars from ten nations and six disciplines (psychology, anthropology, religious studies, biology, philosophy, and cognitive science) to explore new developments at the interfac...

Schoejdt, Sørensen, Nielbo, Xygalatas, Mitkidis and Bulbulia put forward a new cognitive model of religious interactions, which we depict in Figure one. The model stresses three common features of such interactions: the requirement to suppress emotion expression, the exposure to ritualized behavior and the presence of a charismatic authority (1). These features have different cognitive effects ...

This article attempts to address the lack of terminology concerning the long-standing but often overlooked relationship between religion and entertainment in Japan, arguing that these two seemingly discrete and opposing fields are often conflated. Examining the underlying thought behind the animation films of director Miyazaki Hayao, and investigating audience responses to those works, the arti...

For about 100 years the amplitude of the 4 d pulsation in Polaris has decreased. We present new results showing a significant increase in the amplitude based on 4.5 years of continuous monitoring from the ground and with two satellite missions.

Historically, religion and religious belief have often been credited as the source of human morality. But what have been the real effects of religion on prosocial behavior? A review of the psychological literature reveals a complex relation between religious belief and moral action: leading to greater prosocial behavior in some contexts but not in others, and in some cases actually increasing a...