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Damaging the hippocampus in lab rats lowers the threshold for superstitious conditioning, making it easier to condition false causality beliefs—suggesting a neural substrate for susceptibility to magical thinking and religion.

normativepending

Speaker

Robert Sapolsky

Evidence Quote

“if you damage the hippocampus, you lower the threshold for superstitious conditioning. It's easier to condition them that way.”

Source

31. Religious Belief by Robert Sapolsky— Stanford School of Humanities and Sciences
Created: 8/12/2026, 5:59:56 PM

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