Faith can also be destructive to cognition and conducive to dementia. If faith is experienced as unquestioned or unexamined certainty, the way that fundamentalist religions are experienced, it can lock the brain into neural ruts that deepen over time and preclude the refreshing and rebuilding of complex neural networks. Better for the brain, I suspect, to have ongoing skepticism, curiosity and intellectual exploration than uncritical acceptance of a set world view...certainly more fun. Faith as optimism and hope, a positive world view seems to be a great brain protector;)