title: Impacts of religious semantic priming on an intertemporal discounting task: Response time effects and neural correlates.
abstract: The purpose of this study is to test the hypothesis that religious primes would influence intertemporal discounting behaviors in neurotypical older adults, but not in participants with Parkinson's disease (PD). Furthermore, we predicted that this priming effect would be related to functional connectivity within neural networks mediating religious cognition, decision-making, reward valuing, and prospection processes. Contrary to past research with young adults, we found a significant positive relationship between religiosity and discounting rates. Religious semantic primes did not reliably shift individual discounting rates. But religious controls did respond more quickly to intertemporal decisions under the religious priming condition than the neutral condition, compared to response time differences among the participants with PD. Differences in response time were significantly associated with functional connectivity between the nucleus accumbens and various regions, including the left anterior cingulate cortex and Brodmann areas 10 and 46 in the right dorsolateral prefrontal cortex. These results suggest that religious primes influence discounting behavior via dopaminergic meso-limbic and right dorsolateral prefrontal supporting cognitive valuation and prospection processes.
authors.affiliation: Graduate Division of Religious Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States; Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion, Needham, MA, United States. Electronic address: jrmorgan@bu.edu.
authors.forename: Jonathan
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Morgan
authors.affiliation: Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Dustin
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Clark
authors.affiliation: School of Public Health, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Yorghos
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Tripodis
authors.affiliation: Graduate Division of Religious Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States; Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion, Needham, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Christopher S
authors.initials: CS
authors.lastname: Halloran
authors.affiliation: Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: April
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Minsky
authors.affiliation: Graduate Division of Religious Studies, Boston University, Boston, MA, United States; Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion, Needham, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Wesley J
authors.initials: WJ
authors.lastname: Wildman
authors.affiliation: Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States.
authors.forename: Raymon
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Durso
authors.affiliation: Veterans Affairs Boston Healthcare System, Boston, MA, United States; Department of Neurology, Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, MA, United States; Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion, Needham, MA, United States; Graduate School, Northcentral University, United States.
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: McNamara
mesh_terms: D001931:Brain Mapping; D003657:Decision Making; D065786:Delay Discounting / Q000502:physiology; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008609:Mental Status Schedule; D010300:Parkinson Disease / Q000473:pathology / Q000503:physiopathology / Q000523:psychology; D017397:Prefrontal Cortex / Q000503:physiopathology*; D011582:Psychological Theory; D011930:Reaction Time / Q000502:physiology*; D012067:Religion; D012660:Semantics; D013223:Statistics as Topic
keywords: ACC; DLPFC; Impulsivity; Intertemporal discounting; NAcc; Religious cognition; Religious priming