Understanding causal relationships and violations of those relationships is fundamental to learning about the world around us. Over time some of these relationships become so firmly established that they form part of an implicit belief system about what is possible and impossible in the world. Previous studies investigating the neural correlates of violations of learned relationships have focused on relationships that were task-specific and probabilistic. In contrast, the present study uses magic-trick perception as a means of investigating violations of relationships that are long-established, deterministic, and that form part of the aforementioned belief system. Compared to situations in which expected causal relationships are observed, magic trick perception recruited dorso-lateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) and anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), brain regions associated with the detection of conflict and the implementation of cognitive control. These activations were greater in the left hemisphere, supporting a role for this hemisphere in the interpretation of complex events. DLPFC is more greatly activated by magic tricks than by surprising events, but not more greatly activated by surprising than non surprising events, suggesting that this region plays a special role in causality processing. The results suggest a role for cognitive control regions in the left hemisphere in a neurobiology of disbelief.

We used a novel automatic camera, SenseCam, to investigate recognition memory for real-life events at a 5-month retention interval. Using fMRI we assessed recollection and familiarity memory using the remember/know procedure. Recollection evoked no medial temporal lobe (MTL) activation compared to familiarity and new responses. Instead, recollection activated diverse regions in neocortex including medial prefrontal cortex. We observed decreased activation in anterior hippocampus/ anterior parahippocampal gyrus (aPHG) at 5 months compared to a 36-hour retention interval. Familiarity was associated with greater activation in aPHG and posterior parahippocampal gyrus (pPHG) than recollection and new responses. Familiarity activation decreased over time in anterior hippocampus/aPHG and posterior hippocampus/pPHG. The engagement of neocortical regions such as medial prefrontal cortex at a 5-month delay, together with the reduced MTL activation at 5 months relative to at 36 hours is in line with the assumptions of Consolidation theory. SenseCam provides a valuable technique for assessing the processes that underlie remote everyday recognition memory.

A predominant expectation that social relationships with others are safe (a secure attachment style), has been linked with reduced threat-related amygdala activation. Experimental priming of mental representations of attachment security can modulate neural responding, but the effects of attachment-security priming on threat-related amygdala activation remains untested. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, the present study examined the effects of trait and primed attachment security on amygdala reactivity to threatening stimuli in an emotional faces and a linguistic dot-probe task in 42 healthy participants. Trait attachment anxiety and attachment avoidance were positively correlated with amygdala activation to threatening faces in the control group, but not in the attachment primed group. Furthermore, participants who received attachment-security priming showed attenuated amygdala activation in both the emotional faces and dot-probe tasks. The current findings demonstrate that variation in state and trait attachment security modulates amygdala reactivity to threat. These findings support the potential use of attachment security-boosting methods as interventions and suggest a neural mechanism for the protective effect of social bonds in anxiety disorders.