Moontanman Posted March 5, 2011 Posted March 5, 2011 Tory voters found to have larger 'primitive' lobe in brain An MRI scan of the brain. The right amygdala - an ancient part of the brain - was larger in those people who described themselves as conservative. It's located where the yellow area meets the red in the centre of the picture Our political allegiances could be hard-wired into our brains, neuroscientists believe. Researchers have found evidence that the brains of conservatives are a different shape to those of Left-wingers. Scans of 90 students’ brains at University College London uncovered a ‘strong correlation’ between the thickness of two particular areas of grey matter and an individual’s political views. Self-proclaimed right-wingers had a more pronounced amygdala - a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion. It is an almond-shape set of neurons located deep in the brain's medial temporal lobe. However, those aligned to the left had thicker anterior cingulates - which is an area associated with anticipation and decision-making. Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1342239/Brain-study-reveals-right-wing-conservatives-larger-primitive-amygdala.html#ixzz1FghXi9wS
PhDwannabe Posted March 9, 2011 Posted March 9, 2011 More neuroscientists (and journalists) wetting themselves about small-effect-size neurological differences between groups delineated by a social construct. For god's sake, people are different. Yes. Brain and behavior mirror one another--the brain is the grand mediator of all behavior. Behavior is the final output of the system. Why is it so beverage-spittingly shocking that people who behave differently have different brains? I'll tell you why--implicitly, there's this often-unspoken article of faith here that biology precedes psychology--that our behaviors are shaped by, limited by, or controlled by our brains. Well, of course they are. I could go burn out a little piece of it and you wouldn't be able to say anything but gibberish. Or laterally localize sound. Or make planful decisions. But things also go in the other direction. Neurochemical and neuroanatomical changes follow behavioral/environmental changes as well. If I raise you in a war zone or raise you in the suburbs, guess what? That organ will develop differently. Got OCD? It's somewhat recognizeable on certain forms of neuroimaging. Now, go through successful behavioral treatment for it, and the scans look different. Well, I'll be damned! We done gone change the whole thing! We are living in a biologically determinist age--we have been at least since Watson and Crick, and it's only accelerated with the development of high-quality neuroimaging and other biotechnologies. Somehow, someway, we've forgotten that things were real before we could see them on these scans. So, wait, depression looks to have neural substrates? Looks to be somewhat heritable? Oh blazes, it's real, then! Are you kidding me? It was real beforehand. So people find these cool things (and they are cool things, by the way) they start frothing at the mouth and yell "HARD-WIRED!" As if we're so neatly separable into hardware and software. The next time you hear the phrase "hard-wired" in the popular science media, put your hands over your ears, close your eyes, and scream at the top of your lungs.
thinker_jeff Posted March 9, 2011 Posted March 9, 2011 (edited) PhDwannabe, You have many good points about neuroimaging. For example: We are living in a biologically determinist age--we have been at least since Watson and Crick, and it's only accelerated with the development of high-quality neuroimaging and other biotechnologies. Somehow, someway, we've forgotten that things were real before we could see them on these scans. It seems that you extend your opinion to conclude neuroimaging useless other than just "cool things". I agree with you that a lot of researches have not used such technologies wisely nor interpreted such data rigorously; however, neuroimaging does provide us more empirical data than before. For instance, how can we study "imagery" by behavioral data without help by neuroimaging? Of course, the data extracted from neuroimaging is still coarse and inconsistent. But at least it is some fact to help us to understand the brain better than before. Psychology needs neuroimaging and the improvement of such technologies. So people find these cool things (and they are cool things, by the way) they start frothing at the mouth and yell "HARD-WIRED!" As if we're so neatly separable into hardware and software. The next time you hear the phrase "hard-wired" in the popular science media, put your hands over your ears, close your eyes, and scream at the top of your lungs. The terminology of "hard-wired" is misleading in popular science media. It seems that should be replaced by "plastic-wired". Edited March 12, 2011 by thinker_jeff
CharonY Posted March 16, 2011 Posted March 16, 2011 More neuroscientists (and journalists) wetting themselves I would like to draw a more stronger distinction regarding journalists and neuroscientists.
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