Suffering a brain injury can make people more religious, scientists have found.

Researchers from Northwestern University in Illinois, USA, found patients who had a brain trauma were less willing to accept new ideas and became more extreme in their religious beliefs.

The study, published in the journal Neuropsychologia, found that lesions in a part of the brain called the ventromedial prefrontal cortex were linked to higher levels of religious fundamentalism.

Previous research has suggested the ventromedial prefrontal cortex is important to enabling people to critically assess beliefs and ideas.

If it is damaged, the new study found, people have reduced “cognitive flexibility” - the ability to change their views in response to new evidence or ideas – and were therefore more likely to show signs of religious fundamentalism.

Jordan Grafman, one of the researchers involved in the study, said the findings revealed that a person’s religious beliefs were closely linked to their physical brain structure.

“The variation in the nature of religious beliefs are governed by specific brain areas in the anterior parts of the human brain and those brain areas are among the most recently evolved areas of the human brain”, he told PsyPost.

Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Show all 20 1 /20 Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Harvard University Flickr/Michael Hicks Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Cambridge University Flickr/John Menard Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Oxford University, All Souls College Tejvan Pettinger/CC BY 2.0 Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Massachusetts Institute of Technology Flickr/Justin Jensen Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Stanford University Flickr/Franco Folini Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine John Hopkins University Flickr/David Wilson Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Karolinska Institutet, Main entrance from Solnavägen with the 'Aula Medica' in the background Creative Commons Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine University of California, Los Angeles campus Flickr/Tzuhsun Hsu Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine University of California, Hastings College of Law Flickr/Ken Lund Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Yale University's Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library Flickr/Lauren Manning Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine UCL University, London Flickr/Neil Turner Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Imperial College, London Flickr/Andrew Crump Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine University of Melbourne Flickr/Geoff Penaluna Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Berkeley University Flickr/Charlie Nguyen Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine University of Toronto Flickr/Umair Khan Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine The Geisel Library on the San Diego campus of the University of California Flickr/O Palsson Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine University of Sydney Flickr/Jason Tong Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Kings College London iStock Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine Duke University Flickr/Carine06 Best Universities for Life Sciences and Medicine University of Singapore Flickr/smuconlaw

The researchers examined 119 US army veterans with brain injuries and another 30 veterans without any brain injury. All of the participants had served in the Vietnam War.

The team used brain scans to assess the extent of the damage to the participants’ ventromedial prefrontal cortex and then measured the strength of their religious beliefs using a commonly-used survey.