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Does a religion shape belief-related decisions and influence neural processing? We investigated an eminent bishop of the Catholic Church in Germany by using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to assess neural processing while he was responding to short sentences of the Christian Bible, the Islamic Quran, and the Daodejing ascribed to Laozi in Experiment 1. In Experiment 2, continuous praying was further compared to the resting state activity. In contrast to explicit statements of agreeing or not agreeing to different statements from the Bible and the Quran, we found in Experiment 1 no difference in neural activation when the bishop was reading these statements from the two religions. However, compared to reading statements from the Bible, reading statements from the Daodejing resulted in significantly higher activation in the left inferior and middle frontal cortices and the left middle temporal gyrus, although he equally agreed to both statements explicitly. In Experiment 2, no difference during continuous praying and the resting state activity was observed. Our results confirm the difference between explicit and implicit processing, and they suggest that a highly religious person may pray always-or never. On a more general level this observation suggests that ritualized activities might be subliminally represented in resting state activities., (© 2015 The Institute of Psychology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and Wiley Publishing Asia Pty Ltd.)

Background: Little research exists on the influence of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) head coil's channel count on measured resting-state functional connectivity., Purpose: To compare a 32-element (32ch) and an 8-element (8ch) phased array head coil with respect to their potential to detect functional connectivity within resting-state networks., Material and Methods: Twenty-six healthy adults (mean age, 21.7 years; SD, 2.1 years) underwent resting-state functional MRI at 3.0 Tesla with both coils using equal standard imaging parameters and a counterbalanced design. Independent component analysis (ICA) at different model orders and a dual regression approach were performed. Voxel-wise non-parametric statistical between-group contrasts were determined using permutation-based non-parametric inference., Results: Phantom measurements demonstrated a generally higher image signal-to-noise ratio using the 32ch head coil. However, the results showed no significant differences between corresponding resting-state networks derived from both coils (p < 0.05, FWE-corrected)., Conclusion: Using the identical standard acquisition parameters, the 32ch head coil does not offer any significant advantages in detecting ICA-based functional connectivity within RSNs., (© The Foundation Acta Radiologica 2015 Reprints and permissions: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav.)

Background: There appears to be an inconsistency in experimental paradigms used in fMRI research on moral judgments. As stimuli, moral dilemmas or moral statements/ pictures that induce emotional reactions are usually employed; a main difference between these stimuli is the perspective of the participants reflecting first-person (moral dilemmas) or third-person perspective (moral reactions). The present study employed functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in order to investigate the neural correlates of moral judgments in either first- or third-person perspective., Results: Our results indicate that different neural mechanisms appear to be involved in these perspectives. Although conjunction analysis revealed common activation in the anterior medial prefrontal cortex, third person-perspective elicited unique activations in hippocampus and visual cortex. The common activation can be explained by the role the anterior medial prefrontal cortex may play in integrating different information types and also by its involvement in theory of mind. Our results also indicate that the so-called "actor-observer bias" affects moral evaluation in the third-person perspective, possibly due to the involvement of the hippocampus. We suggest two possible ways in which the hippocampus may support the process of moral judgment: by the engagement of episodic memory and its role in understanding the behaviors and emotions of others., Conclusion: We posit that these findings demonstrate that first or third person perspectives in moral cognition involve distinct neural processes, that are important to different aspects of moral judgments. These results are important to a deepened understanding of neural correlates of moral cognition-the so-called "first tradition" of neuroethics, with the caveat that any results must be interpreted and employed with prudence, so as to heed neuroethics "second tradition" that sustains the pragmatic evaluation of outcomes, capabilities and limitations of neuroscientific techniques and technologies.

The vast majority of biological functions express rhythmic fluctuations across the 24-hour day. We investigated the degree of daily modulation across fMRI (functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging) derived resting-state data in 15 subjects by evaluating the time courses of 20 connectivity patterns over 8h (4 sessions). For each subject, we determined the chronotype, which describes the relationship between the individual circadian rhythm and the local time. We could therefore analyze the daily time course of the connectivity patterns controlling for internal time. Furthermore, as the participants' scan times were staggered as a function of their chronotype, we prevented sleep deprivation and kept time awake constant across subjects. Individual functional connectivity within each connectivity pattern was defined at each session as connectivity strength measured by a mean z-value and, in addition, as the spatial extent expressed by the number of activated voxels. Highly rhythmic connectivity patterns included two sub-systems of the Default-Mode Network (DMN) and a network extending over sensori-motor regions. The network characterized as the most stable across the day is mainly associated with processing of executive control. We conclude that the degree of daily modulation largely varies across fMRI derived resting-state connectivity patterns, ranging from highly rhythmic to stable. This finding should be considered when interpreting results from fMRI studies., (Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.)