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Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex to Experimentally Reduce Ideological Threat Responses
Published on: September 28, 2018
Conspiracy beliefs are associated with a reduction in frontal beta power and biases in categorizing ambiguous stimuli
Abdolvahed Narmashiri1,2,3, Fatemeh Akbari4, Ahmad Sohrabi5
1School of Cognitive Sciences, Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (IPM), Tehran, Iran.
Abstract:
Prior beliefs, such as conspiracy beliefs, significantly influence our perception of the natural world. However, the brain activity associated with perceptual decision-making in conspiracy beliefs is not well understood. To shed light on this topic, we conducted a study examining the EEG activity of believers, and skeptics during resting state with perceptual decision-making task. Our study shows that conspiracy beliefs are related to the reduced power of beta frequency band. Furthermore, skeptics tended to misclassify ambiguous face stimuli as houses more frequently than believers. These results help to explain the differences in brain activity between believers and skeptics, especially in how conspiracy beliefs impact the categorization of ambiguous stimuli.
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