In this chapter, we have attempted to provide an account of how people process threats to meaning. The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), serving to detect violations of consonance, is one brain region involved in signaling a lack or loss of meaning. Its activity is experienced as a feeling of anxiety—an uncomfortable uncertainty about what to do next—that motivates us to restore coherence. The subsequent threat-reduction process is characterized by approach-motivated processes and corresponds to left-frontal cortical asymmetry as our attention narrows and we prepare to act. More broadly, meaning frameworks—concrete systems of explanation that reduce the ambient uncertainty in the world around us—can help to buffer against the anxiety produced by meaning threats. These systems have been shown to be associated both with approach motivated processes and with the reduction of ACC activity and anxiety in the face of threat. We explored evidence that religion serves an anxiolytic function as a calming beacon of consonance.(PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)