ArticleFrontiers in neuroscience2025
Neural mechanisms of cognitive conflict: processing COVID-19 vaccine misinformation.
Article in Frontiers in neuroscience, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 1 paper.
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
1 citing paper in PubMed.
- Authority reliance vs. deliberative assessment in processing online rumors: evidence from fNIRS.Frontiers in human neuroscience · 2026Article
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Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Introduction: The rapid spread of misinformation during the COVID-19 pandemic has raised important questions about how individuals evaluate false information, particularly when it conflicts with strongly held prior attitudes. Understanding the neural mechanisms underlying the processing of vaccine-related misinformation may clarify why such beliefs persist despite corrective information. Methods: Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we examined neural responses to COVID-19 vaccine misinformation and factual information in vaccine-receptive participants ( Results: Contrary to our hypotheses, exposure to attitude-incongruent misinformation did not elicit significant activation in emotional processing regions such as the amygdala or precuneus. However, when participants made attitude-incongruent responses-endorsing misinformation or rejecting accurate information-we observed increased activation in the left dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC), dorsomedial prefrontal cortex (DMPFC), intraparietal sulcus (IPS), and middle frontal gyrus (MFG), regions associated with decision-making, moral reasoning, memory integration, and cognitive control. Discussion: These findings suggest that conflicts between incoming information and prior attitudes engage effortful, higher-order cognitive systems rather than affective processing. Resolving such conflicts appears to rely on decision-making and control mechanisms that manage uncertainty and cognitive dissonance. Due to recruitment limitations, the present study focused exclusively on vaccine-receptive individuals. Future research should investigate whether vaccine-resistant individuals exhibit similar or distinct neural patterns, which may provide further insight into the persistence of misinformation in the context of negative prior attitudes.
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