Neural mechanisms of cognitive conflict: processing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation

The rapid spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic has raised important questions about how individuals evaluate false information, particularly when it conflicts with strongly held prior attitudes. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of vaccine-related misinformation may clarify why such beliefs persist despite corrective information.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined neural responses to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and factual information in vaccine-receptive participants (N = 29). During scanning, participants were presented with a series of vaccine-related statements-both accurate and false-and indicated their level of agreement. Analyses focused on the influence of prior beliefs and attitude congruence on neural activation.

Contrary to our hypotheses, exposure to attitude-incongruent misinformation did not elicit significant activation in emotional processing regions such as the amygdala or precuneus. However, when participants made attitude-incongruent responses-endorsing misinformation or rejecting accurate information-we observed increased activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and middle frontal gyrus (MFG), regions associated with decision-making, moral reasoning, memory integration, and cognitive control.

These findings suggest that conflicts between incoming information and prior attitudes engage effortful, higher-order cognitive systems rather than affective processing. Resolving such conflicts appears to rely on decision-making and control mechanisms that manage uncertainty and cognitive dissonance. Due to recruitment limitations, the present study focused exclusively on vaccine-receptive individuals. Future research should investigate whether vaccine-resistant individuals exhibit similar or distinct neural patterns, which may provide further insight into the persistence of misinformation in the context of negative prior attitudes.