A neuroanatomical investigation of belief and doubt

Philosophical and scientific investigations into the nature of belief and knowledge are ancient, extending back to the beginnings of rational thought. It is not until the last few decades that we have been able to peer into and examine the organ of belief, the brain. Neuroanatomical perspectives have begun to address the long-standing questions of epistemology by identifying specific neural regions that are critical for the formation and evaluations of beliefs. Here, a novel neuroanatomical model of belief and doubt is presented, where post-rolandic association cortices are critical for the formation of beliefs and the prefrontal cortex is necessary for the doubt and evaluation process. It is proposed that the singular function of the prefrontal cortex is ―false tagging‖ (the neuroanatomical essence of doubt) to mental representations in post-rolandic cortices. Persons with dysfunction in the prefrontal cortex, such as patients with structural damage to this region (e.g., from tumor resections or stroke), should show a ―doubt deficit,‖ accompanied by a general increased tendency to believe information. Evidence is presented indicating that deficiencies in the ―false tagging‖ function may explain a wide assortment of abnormalities in neurological and psychiatric patients. Several experiments in various populations (neurological, developmental, and psychiatric) were conducted to examine the role of specific brain regions in the believing and doubting process. First, two studies gave participants explicitly-labeled false beliefs and measured the ability of the participants to falsify these beliefs. It was predicted that participants with dysfunction to the prefrontal cortex would be poor at falsifying novel beliefs. Results confirmed the predictions. Second, participants were given pairs of statements that represented opposite opinions on some issue and responded by agreeing