SMH wrote:Scans of 90 students' brains at University College London (UCL) uncovered a "strong correlation" between the thickness of two particular areas of grey matter and an individual's views.
Self-proclaimed right-wingers had a more pronounced amygdala - a primitive part of the brain associated with emotion while their political opponents from the opposite end of the spectrum had thicker anterior cingulates.
(...)
"The anterior cingulate is a part of the brain that is on the middle surface of the brain at the front and we found that the thickness of the grey matter, where the nerve cells of neurons are, was thicker the more people described themselves as liberal or left wing and thinner the more they described themselves as conservative or right wing," he told the program.
"The amygdala is a part of the brain which is very old and very ancient and thought to be very primitive and to do with the detection of emotions. The right amygdala was larger in those people who described themselves as conservative.
"It is very significant because it does suggest there is something about political attitudes that are either encoded in our brain structure through our experience or that our brain structure in some way determines or results in our political attitudes."
Read the rest at: http://www.smh.com.au/technology/sci-te ... 199hk.html
In simple terms, it claims that left leaning voters had a more developed ACC (associated with problem-solving, error detection, anticipation of tasks, motivation, and modulation of emotional responses) and conservative voters had a more developed amygdala (associated with the processing and memory of emotional reactions and fear responses).
I do find it amusing that the man who commissioned of the study, Colin Firth, states "I took this on as a fairly frivolous exercise: I just decided to find out what was biologically wrong with people who don't agree with me and see what scientists had to say about it and they actually came up with something." Best reason for scientific work ever!
I'll just leave you with the following thoughts...
* The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is less developed in conservative voters.
* "A 2008 study of brain MRIs taken on adults that had previously participated in the Cincinnati Lead Study demonstrated that people that had suffered higher levels of lead poisoning as children had decreased brain size as adults. This effect was most pronounced in the ACC and is thought to relate to the cognitive and behavioral deficits of affected individuals."
I'll let you draw your own conclusions.
