Neuroscience and the soul: competing explanations for the human experience.
Cognition April 1, 2013 Jesse Lee Preston, Ryan S Ritter, Justin Hepler
Belief in the soul decreases when neuroscience offers strong mechanistic explanations for the mind, but increases when gaps in neuroscience research are emphasized. Two experiments showed that physical and metaphysical explanations may serve as alternative theories for the mind, with people shifting between them depending on the perceived completeness of neuroscience. This suggests that belief in the soul is not fixed but can be influenced by how neuroscientific explanations are presented.