You say magnets stick to vaxxed arms?

Magnets to the brain can change people’s views on immigrants and God

By quelling activity in a part of the brain that evaluates threats and plans responses, researchers can alter peoples’ views on immigrants and religion, The Daily Beast reports. The researchers shut down activity in peoples’ posterior medial frontal cortex using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)—a noninvasive technique that sends magnetic energy through the scalp. Then, they asked religious people who had undergone TMS and a control group to think about death and read a letter supposedly written by an immigrant critical of their country—a setup meant to present them with an immediate threat. (Past research has shown that people challenged in this way tend to double down on their beliefs.) Participants who received the real brain treatment expressed less bias against immigrants and also less belief in God, according to a study published in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/10/magnets-brain-can-change-people-s-views-immigrants-and-god

https://archive.is/mQOOm

Journal original data

PDF of original Oxford Academic:

Neuromodulation of group prejudice and religious belief'

Abstract

People cleave to ideological convictions with greater intensity in the aftermath of threat. The posterior medial frontal cortex (pMFC) plays a key role in both detecting discrepancies between desired and current conditions and adjusting subsequent behavior to resolve such conflicts. Building on prior literature examining the role of the pMFC in shifts in relatively low-level decision processes, we demonstrate that the pMFC mediates adjustments in adherence to political and religious ideologies. We presented participants with a reminder of death and a critique of their in-group ostensibly written by a member of an out-group, then experimentally decreased both avowed belief in God and out-group derogation by downregulating pMFC activity via transcranial magnetic stimulation. The results provide the first evidence that group prejudice and religious belief are susceptible to targeted neuromodulation, and point to a shared cognitive mechanism underlying concrete and abstract decision processes. We discuss the implications of these findings for further research characterizing the cognitive and affective mechanisms at play.

Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, Volume 11, Issue 3, March 2016, Pages 387–394,

https://academic.oup.com/scan/article/11/3/387/2375059

https://archive.is/XXOQt