Do you like extreme sports? Have you kayak down the Colorado River or performed an African Safari? Will often to restaurants that serve exotic food? When going to the supermarket and see a new product, did you check to cart? Maybe now read these lines from the jungle of Borneo satellite. If the answer is yes probably likes adventure, novelty.

Now a group of scientists from the Wellcome Trust has successfully identified a key region of the brain that encourages us to be adventurous. The region, located in a primitive area of ​​the brain are activated when we choose unfamiliar option, suggesting that there is an evolutionary advantage if you tend to explore the unknown. This finding may also explain why the changed the appearance of a product family are encouraged to choose it from the shelves of the supermarket.

In the experiment conducted at the Wellcome Trust Centre for Neuroimaging at University College London. In it a few volunteers were shown a selection of cards with images that became familiar. Each card was also associated with a unique reward probability and during the experiment the volunteers were able to optimize their choices for maximum reward. However, when introduced unfamiliar picture cards researchers found that volunteers were more likely to risk a new decision to continue with the familiar and safe options.

With an apparatus of functional magnetic resonance imaging could also see the brain activity of volunteers. Bianca Wittmann and his colleagues realized that when subjects chose an unfamiliar card had increased activity in the ventral striatum. This brain region is one of the most primitive from the evolutionary point of view, suggesting that this phenomenon must be evolutionarily advantageous and likely have many other animals.

When we make a decision or carry out an action that turns out to be beneficial then you get a reward by releasing dopamine. This reward helps us learn which behaviors are preferable and advantageous or worth being repeated. The ventral striatum is one of the key regions related to reward processing in the brain. Although these scientists can not say with confidence from magnetic resonance images how the search for novelty is rewarded, Wittmann believes it must be through a process of dopamine release.

However, although the exploration of novelty can give advantages to encourage us to find most beneficial decisions than usual, you can also make us susceptible to exploitation.
According to Wittmann we have a preference for a particular brand of chocolates, but if you use another package put in the “new taste” or something similar we can see tempted to discard the usual choice and choose the new one. This would introduce a dangerous system of selling “the same wine in different bottle,” something that marketing departments could be used (if not done already).

There is an even more dangerous. The novelty seeking may also play an important role in addiction to gambling and drugs, which are mediated by malfunctions malfunctioning circuit dopamine release.

Are we born with moral judgment or pre-installed in our brains make it through education? ¿Children distinguish between good and evil? We know that the human brain matures slowly and only reaches its full maturity when adolescence ends, Does this affect moral judgment? These questions are certainly very interesting to try to answer. Now we begin to see some of your answers.

According to researchers at the University of Chicago children between seven and twelve years of age seem naturally inclined to feel empathy for the pain of others. This result is based on functional magnetic resonance imaging and is similar to that obtainable in adults. Then, and according to these data, children, like adults, show a response to pain in the same brain regions.

The researchers also discovered additional aspects of brain activity, manifested when subjects see another person being hurt by a third party intentionally and that would be related to moral judgment.
According to Jean Decety this study examines both the neural response to pain of others as the impact to see someone causing pain to another.

An article entitled “Who Caused the Pain? An fMRI Investigation of Empathy and Intentionality in Children “published in Neuropsychologia describing these results and the experimental method used.
According to these researchers empathy would be preprogrammed in the brain of normal children and would not be entirely a product of parental education or social environment. According to Decety understanding the role of the brain in response to pain can help researchers understand how certain brain impairments influence anti-social behavior, as in the case of bullying.
The researchers showed 17 children (in the group were eight boys and nine girls) between 7 and 12 years old pictures and animations of people suffering pain. Receiving pain was inflicted accidentally or on purpose. The brain activity of subjects was studied as both a functional magnetic resonance system.
The images from this system showed that parts of the brain that were activated in these subjects were the same as those activated in adults under the same conditions.

The perception of others’ pain was associated with increased hemodynamic activity (blood flow) in the neural circuitry involved in processing pain first-hand. However, when the children saw images of someone intentionally causing pain, the brain region that were activated were related to social interaction and moral reasoning.

The study provides clues about the perception that children have about what they are good and what is wrong, and brain processing. According to Decety, although the study draws no explicit moral judgment, perception of an intention to harm another individual makes the conscious observer of moral evil.

Subsequent interviews that were made to show children that they were aware of moral misconduct when someone was hurt intentionally visionadas animations. Thirteen of them said that such situations were unfair and asked for the reasons that could explain the observed behavior.

Humans learn from our mistakes. As adults we know that if we perform our tasks bad we impose a corrective. Even if we behave really bad punishment can be raised and give our bones in jail. We also want to think that if we perform well we will be rewarded in some way. Perhaps this is the meritocratic system that has allowed the advance or dehumanize the capitalist system, do not know. But how does this type of positive or negative feedback in the brain? Does it work well in children?
A recent study of children 8 years learning a completely different way to adults. A child of this age learn from the positive retrolimentation. Thus, if we reinforce good behavior of a child of that age with a “well done” the child will learn from experience. However, not learn from negative feedback. Scolding thus be less effective than in the first case of positive reinforcement.

Children under 12 years operate best in contrast and negative reinforcement does work best for you. For adults is equal to the latter, but a more efficient manner.
Eveline Crone and colleagues from Leiden University have shown that this transition of learning from the successes to learn from mistakes seen in brain activity, especially in cognitive control regions of the cerebral cortex.
This system used a functional magnetic resonance imaging and three volunteer groups composed of children aged 8 and 9, children 11 and 12 and adults 18 to 25 years.

For the experiments the scientists involved were assigned to all the volunteers a series of tasks to be performed with a computer as they watched their brain activity. The tasks required to find out about the rules of a game. If they did properly appear in the display a signal informing, otherwise a cross appeared.

They found that in children aged 8 or 9 years of cognitive control certain regions of the cortex react strongly to positive reinforcement, but did not respond at all to negative feedback. In children of 12 or 13 years and in adults was the reverse: their cognitive control centers are more strongly activated by negative reinforcement, and much less positive.
Crone was surprised at the results. He hoped that brain activity was the same for all ages, although the answers may have different intensity. Children are learning all the time, therefore, this new information might be interesting for those who educate children to adapt their teaching methods according to age.

According Cron children 8 years learn efficiently, but do so differently than they do the older ones.
According to the literature on pedagogy seems that children respond better to reward than punishment, and this new result would be consistent with it. According Cron reason would be that the information on what went wrong would be more complicated to process than the opposite. Learning from mistakes is more complex than follow the same path.
Perhaps the difference in learning among children 8 years and the 12 is due to experience or a combination of experience and brain maturation, although not yet know the answer.

There is a brain region that responds strongly to positive reinforcement: the basal ganglia, just outside the cerebral cortex. The activity of this brain area does not change, remaining at the same level of activity for the three groups.

Decision making is a complex process that engages both intuition and rational analysis. Rational thinking is slow, while intuition is much faster. However, the latter is less reliable, based on heuristics and on instinct.
Previous studies found that the answer to a problem depended on the “framing effect”. Thus if a patient is that you had a 80% chance of succeeding an operation would tend to give their consent more easily than if he said he had a 20% chance of not going out, although statistically is exactly the same thing.

Ray Dolan and his group at University College London have used this effect to study people with various autism spectrum disorders (ASD). According to the National Autistic Society these disorders affect one in every hundred people in the UK. These diseases range from mild conditions such as Asperger syndrome, a highly disabling conditions such as Rett syndrome. Symptoms vary widely in severity and include language problems, poor social interaction and behavioral patterns and rigid thinking.
The study participants had to perform various tasks that had to decide whether or not to bet a certain sum of money. Thus for example, were given 50 pounds and two options. Option A could be left with 20 pounds of those 50 and lose the rest. In option B could bet that money with a 40% chance of getting those same 50 pounds and 60% of losing everything. This version was called “gain frame”. Note that playing repeatedly with option B gain long-term average is also 20 pounds.
Other times they were presented with a “frame loss” under exactly the same conditions but in which for option A were told to lose 30 pounds 50.

Although option A is essentially the same in both frames of play, the researchers found that control subjects who had no kind of autistic disorder were more likely to gamble in the context of loss than of gain. In individuals with ASD, the difference was much smaller. This suggests that individuals of the latter group are less susceptible to the framing effect, ie, they are guided less by irrational emotions in elections.

According to Neil Harrison people with autism tend to be more consistent in their patterns of choice and perhaps his greatest attention to detail will help you avoid being dominated by emotions. According to Benedetto De Martino, but this attention to detail and this reduction is beneficial emotional influence on decision making, sometimes a burden in everyday life.
During social interactions a lot of information must be processed simultaneously, with a complicated task to compute by the brain. To solve this complex problem simplifications use heuristics (intuition) rather than a deep logical reasoning. However, the price to pay for this ability is that sometimes irrelevant contextual information leads to inconsistent or illogical decisions.

Perhaps the less reliance on intuition of autism is below their difficulties in social situations, but also allows them to avoid potentially irrelevant emotional information and produce more consistent with elections.
The study supports previous research suggesting that the key difference in people with some form of ASD when decisions may lie in the amygdala, a brain region critical processing related to emotion. In 2006 a study published in Science by De Martino and colleagues showed that decision making was associated with activity in the amygdala. It has been shown that the amygdala of people with ASD differ with respect to the rest of the people in neuronal density, although not in size.

Harrison believes their research may play an important role when it comes to highlight the strength of people with ASD. He says his study shows a positive strength in people with autism, and a concentration on skills and disability in people with autism will give us a better understanding of such conditions as they are provided with assistance that allowed to have lives richer and fuller.

We commented last year on this site that those affected by results of “blindness to the faces” congenital represented a much higher percentage than what was estimated previously, namely 2% of the population. Prosopagnosia or “face blindness to” is a neurological condition that prevents sufferers recognize people by their face. We all know how uncomfortable it is when we fail to recognize someone who greets us. Imagine then what it’s like the social life of those who never fail to recognize a face.
Now, for the first time, scientists have been able to map the disruption of neural circuitry of people suffering from congenital prosopagnosia. They have also been able to offer a biological explanation for this intriguing disorder.
Affecting 2% of the population congenital prosopagnosia manifests as an inability to recognize faces in the absence of obvious neurological damage in individuals with intact vision and intelligence.

A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University, Kings College (London) and Ben-Gurion University (Israel) used functional diffusion tensor tactografía and to analyze the brains of a group of subjects aged 33 to 72 years and study this disorder. They found that, unlike normal brains, the brains of people suffering from congenital prosopagnosia showed a reduction in white matter integrity in the region of visual cortex. Furthermore, the extent of this reduction in white matter was related to the severity of the condition.

White matter is one of the three main components of the nervous system. It is a tissue through which messages pass between different areas of gray matter of the nervous system. People with congenital prosopagnosia can not recognize faces, while their ability to recognize objects intact.

This discovery could lead to a better understanding of other neurological disorders such as dyslexia, in which a neurological disorder similar could be present.

In many cases, congenital prosopagnosia is genetically inherited and this result may help in attempts to find relationships between genetics and cortical development.

This disorder is also interesting because it helps to understand how and under what conditions the brain is or is not “plastic”, as these individuals seem unable to compensate for their inability to recognize faces even when they had more than enough opportunity to do so throughout his life. In cases other than the brain injury that incapacitates something is ultimately compensated when other parts of the brain learn to assume the functions previously performed by the affected party.

Very few therapies have been developed to help people with prosopagnosia, although individuals often learn to use strategies of recognition “feature by feature” or secondary indicators such as hair color, voice or body shape. Because the face seems to function as a typical feature identification in memory, it may be difficult for people with this condition keep information about people or lead a social life and that of others.

In NeoFronteras we reported in the past about the ability to read minds using nuclear magnetic resonance technique. Now it has gone a step further in this field. The first row of figures you are seeing above can be recreated now with software that only use the signals from his brain and he will get the second row. You see you can read the word “neuron” without too much trouble. This achievement is the first technology of “mind reading” capable of recreating images from scratch rather than being chosen from a limited set of them.

Earlier this year Jack Gallant, University of Berkeley showed that it was possible to know in a limited set of preselected images which one was seeing someone from the signals obtained by magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) of his brain. To do this spatial software compared the brain activity of the individual with that obtained in previous tests and were used to train or calibrate the system. The image was chosen from a limited set of new photos not used in the training phase. The software was right to say what he was seeing a significant number of times.

But now Yukiyasu Kamitani of Computational Neuroscience Laboratories in Kyoto Japan has taken a step further. His team has managed to use the brain activity data taken by NMR in recreating a black and white image from scratch is not chosen from a set of several. By analyzing the signal obtained with MRI can reconstruct the image of what the person sees. Thus the “mind reading” would not be limited to a previous set and in theory could be used in the future to know what someone is thinking without having much previous data.

A woman of 22 who responded to initial-touch synesthesia AW emotional experience. When you touch the denim feel depression, disgust, helplessness. Touching it causes confusion corduroy and silk complete satisfaction. It is one of two acquaintances who “suffers” or “enjoy” a new form of synaesthesia, one for which the textured feel of the objects causes strong emotions. HS is another young woman who experiences synesthesia tactile-emotional, wool and dry leaves will produce disgust, while the tennis balls, sand and fresh leaves make you feel in heaven.

There are several forms of synesthesia. Some people may associate colors with musical excerpts, fragrances or flavors or colors. People with synesthesia have some of your senses crossed and have strange perceptions. Images can hear, taste literally see the words or numbers in color. Do not imagine, really evoke a sense to see another. It is believed that in these cases the brain region responsible for some sense is “nervous shorts” to a different nearby.

According to VS Ramachandran, University of California at San Diego, feelings of AW and HS are an extreme form of positive feelings that many people associated with a soft blanket, or negative to possess knives or sharp rocks.
We have an affinity for the skin because it evolved during the ice ages and warmer clothes needed. This would be the basis on which the touch synesthesia is built, according to Ramachandran.

This jumble of mind between touch and emotions could be under metaphors as “sharp criticism” (literally “sharp criticism”) or “rough night” (literally “rough night”). Synesthesia is an example quirky mechanism that we all have to generate metaphors.
Ramachandran and David Brang tested objective to AW and HS to confirm that good faith had strange experiences recounted. For example, measuring the electrical conductivity of the skin (ie, the presence of sweat) suggested that the feel of the denim or wool evoked an instinctive response of disgust in AW. It was confirmed the same by other means for the other sensations.
Partnerships were also consistent over time yielding the same response to the same stimulus even months apart with the same tests. Thus the sandpaper AW always caused a feeling of telling a white lie or a feeling of guilt. So stop the soft leather that caused feelings of fear and revulsion in HS in different views.

Both women have developed ways to make do with their “dysfunction”. AW sings to distract yourself when you touch something you dislike. Touching something made of silver cancels or compensates unpleasant tactile sensations and the same trick makes you feel good after a bad day.

Now that Ramachandran and Brang have confirmed that tactile-emotional synaesthesia is a genuine experience, hoping to discover what is happening in the brains of these two women.
The most common form of synesthesia that associates numbers to colors, from a “short circuit” between the brain region responsible for the detection of the colors and the processing of numbers. These neurons and connections responsible for this interconnection were not pruned or removed during brain development with a remaining excess.
Ramachandran speculates that the touch-emotional synaesthesia caused by a short circuit would be similar between the insula (instead of the cortex responsible for emotions) and its nearest neighbor: the somatosensory cortex (the region responsible for processing the textures).

According to Edward Hubbard, Cornell University in New York and not involved in the study, whatever it happens to these two people, seems to be an example of the normal mechanisms that are present in all of us. Considers that the HS and AW associations between texture and emotion are learned behaviors, but are strongly installed, still largely arbitrary (remember that the emotion evoked by the same stimulus is different, in general, for each person). It’s the kind of arbitrariness, he said, would be removed by sweeping or overcome by training and learning and cultural factors in most people, but not synesthetes.

Believing in God can help block anxiety or crying and decrease stress, according to a study by the University of Toronto that shows the differences between the brains of believers and the nonbelievers.
The study, published online in Psychological Science, was led by Michael Inzlicht and done on a volunteer. To these was asked to carry out the Stroop test, a standard cognitive test, while electrodes picked their brain activity.
Compared with non-believers believers brain activity was significantly lower in the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC, its acronym in English), a brain region that helps to change behavior when they need care and control, usually resulting from some anxiety-producing event, such as making a mistake.
Also found that the stronger were their religious beliefs had less response on the part of this brain region to their own mistakes.

According Inzlicht could say that the ACC is like an “alarm sounds” when the individual has just made a mistake or experiences uncertainty. According to their findings or just religious people who believe in God show less brain activity in relation to their own mistakes. They have less anxiety and suffer less stress when they make a mistake.
This correlation remains strong even after controlling for personality and cognitive skills of volunteers.
Besides the believers made fewer errors when performing the Stroop test than their non-believers.
The study supports the idea that religious beliefs would have a calming effect on believers who commit less mistakes and suffer less anxiety when faced with the unknown.

But Inzlicht cautions that anxiety is a double-edged sword that sometimes is necessary and useful. Anxiety can be negative because if there is too paralyzed with fear to the person, but also has a useful function alert when we make mistakes. If one does not experience anxiety when you make a mistake, says Inzlicht, what will change their behavior to avoid making the same mistake again?

Researchers show that to interpret the intentions and feelings of God we use the same recently evolved brain regions that we use to understand the feelings and intentions of others.
Jordan Grafman and his colleagues at the U.S. National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda (Maryland) are interested in finding where in the brain belief systems reside and representation, particularly those that appear to be uniquely human.

These researchers found that brain areas activated beliefs that evolved more recently, such as those related to the imagination, memory and theory of mind (the recognition that other beings have their own thoughts and intentions).
Grafman says this does not speak of the existence of a higher power like God, only tells us how the mind and brain work together to allow us to have a belief system that guides our actions.
In the study, researchers examined with functional magnetic resonance imaging the brain of 40 volunteers responded believers as certain statements reflecting three core elements of their belief system. They had to score on a scale whether they agreed or disagreed with each statement.

The volunteers were believers of monotheistic religions such as Christianity, Islam or Judaism.
First they must respond to the claim that if God intervened in the world or not hearing a phrase like “God is removed from this world.” In this case, brain activity was focused mainly in the lateral frontal lobe, where the theory of mind normally resides and allows us to interpret the intentions of others. This region binds neurons that allow us to empathize with others.

Secondly they must react to a statement about the emotional state of God as “God is angry.” Again, as the researchers had predicted, activated areas related to theory of mind and allow us to judge the intentions of others as the frontal and temporal gyri average.
Finally, the volunteers had to hear statements reflecting the abstract language and imagery of religion with phrases like “Jesus is the Son of God,” “God demands the observance of the Sabbath” or “will be given the resurrection of the dead.” In this case the brain activity occurred in the temporal gyrus, which decodes metaphorical and abstract meanings.

Usually the parts of the brain activated by religious claims were those that are used in more mundane interpretations of the everyday world and to interpret the intentions of others. However, they are significantly more recently evolved and apparently humans are the insights that no other animals.
According to researchers the results are unique, and demonstrate that specific components of religious belief are mediated by well-known neural networks, building and contemporary psychological theories that claim that the foundations of religious beliefs are based on adaptive cognitive functions appeared by evolution .
Thus, the same features as evolutionarily appeared to give us a competitive advantage over other species would be used later to install culturally religious systems. According to this religion would thus be an evolutionary byproduct.

According to other researchers in the field this result is not surprising and in the background are the same mechanisms that allow us to interpret, for example, the characters in a novel. Would also strengthen the theory that it is crucial a high level of intentionality in the development of a complete religious system as we know it.

Imagine that your doctor has told you have to lose weight, so you put on a diet. He knows exactly which foods contain more calories or less what, what to take and which not.
You know it’s your health, you should take care and sacrifice eating less or eating food with less calories, because these greens that only a dark god would have endeavored to create for use in human food. But there comes a time when the chocolate is in the kitchen cupboard or refrigerator ice cream, called, say that of “eat, just a little, will not hurt you.”

You may or may resist the temptation to succumb to it. If the latter is perhaps one of those people with little willpower. The same could apply to quit smoking, exercise more, or study every day instead of getting the stuffing the day before the exam and stopping.

It seems that for some people it is easier to have willpower than others. Now scientists at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) have found brain differences between the two types of people.
The key seems to be that while everyone uses the same brain region to assess these types of decisions a second region modulates the activity of the first in people with self-control, allowing them to weigh more abstract factors such as health against basic desires .

This finding not only provides insights into the interaction between self-control and decision making people put on a diet, but explain how we make decisions that require some degree of willpower.
Antonio Rangel, the Caltech, says a basic question in economics, psychology or religion is why some people can have self control and some not. From the perspective of neuroscience, he said, need to ask what is special about the brain circuitry of self-control. In the article written by his colleagues addressed this issue in the context of decision making by people making diet.

The results were the product of an innovative experiment. A group of volunteers who were dieting were shown 50 pictures of food of all kinds. Participants were asked to rate each food according to how well they know it. After they showed the same sequence of photos and asked that the score each based on alleged health benefits. From these scores are assigned to each volunteer an “index food”.
Then they showed again the 50 foods and asked to choose between one or the index corresponding to its food. Choice that should be eaten later.
All the while their brain activity was monitored using functional magnetic resonance so you know which brain areas were more active.

After all decisions had been taken, the researchers identified 19 volunteers as they showed higher levels of self-control, individuals who chose the best interest of their health regardless of flavor or appeal. In addition, they identified 18 as the least self-control had therefore chose the tastier foods for them, regardless of its nutritional value.

When they compared this with the data of brain activity could see that there would be differences between the groups.
Previous studies found that ventromedial prefrontal cortex him (vmPFC its acronym in English) took part in decision-making. If their activity was low the person would refuse the food and if you choose high.
In individuals with weak-willed this brain region seems to take into account only the taste of food involved in making decisions. However, in individuals with self the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC or) is activated and modulates the basic signal from the other region, incorporating health considerations in the decision. That is, this region allows simultaneously the first weigh both taste and health benefits.
The region vmPFC is active during every decision, but DLPFC is more active when using the self-control. This would be the ultimate reason why people with strong will make better decisions.
DLPFC can not override the negative reaction to food (no one likes the greens), but can make us choose a healthy food in front of a candy
According to Colin Camerer, another participant in the project, after centuries of debate in the social sciences we can finally begin to understand the self to see resistance to temptation directly in the brain. This study and others lead to better theories about how self-control develops and how it works for different kinds of temptations.
The next step will be figuring these researchers the ways in which the DLPFC is connected to the decision-making in people with poor self-control and how to change it, maybe we could do highlighting the insanity of certain foods.
Such issues may also form part of addictions such as smoking or risky financial decisions.
Camerer fantasizes about the possibility of exercising our willpower and strengthen in a way similar to exercising the muscles of the body give us more physical strength.