Experiential and Doctrinal Religious Knowledge Categorization in Parkinson's Disease: Behavioral and Brain Correlates

Area of Science:

• Neuroscience
• Cognitive Psychology
• Religious Studies

Background:

• Parkinson's disease (PD) is increasingly linked to alterations in religious cognition.
• Previous research differentiated experiential and doctrinal religious knowledge networks using fMRI.
• The impact of PD on these distinct religious cognition categories, considering medication status and disease onset, remains unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

• To examine the dissociation of experiential and doctrinal religious cognition in Parkinson's disease (PD).
• To assess how medication status (On/Off) and side of PD onset (left/right) influence religious cognition.
• To investigate the neural underpinnings of religious cognition in PD using functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI).

Main Methods:

• A statement classification task assessed experiential and doctrinal religious knowledge categorization.
• Neuropsychological measures and scholar-derived test sets were employed for behavioral analysis.
• Resting-state functional connectivity MRI (fcMRI) examined neural networks associated with religious cognition in PD patients.

Main Results:

• PD groups exhibited altered comprehension of experiential and doctrinal religious phrases compared to scholars.
• Off-medication PD patients showed greater difficulty with experiential phrases, while On-medication patients correlated cognitive state with doctrinal classification.
• fcMRI revealed reward network connectivity associated with statement classification in PD, with distinct patterns for experiential and doctrinal processing in specific brain regions.

Conclusions:

• Parkinson's disease significantly impacts both experiential and doctrinal religious cognition, with variations based on medication and disease lateralization.
• Medication status and cognitive function play crucial roles in how PD patients process different forms of religious cognition.
• Functional connectivity in reward networks is associated with religious cognition processing in PD, highlighting the neural basis of these cognitive changes.