Archive for March 2009
Expert advice makes brains “shut down,” study suggests
A brain-scanning study of people making financial choices suggests that when given expert advice, the decision-making parts of our brains often shut down.
The problem with this, of course, is that the advice may not be good.
“When the expert’s advice made the least sense, that’s where we could see the behavioral effect,” said study co-author Greg Berns, an Emory University neuroscientist. “It’s as if people weren’t using their own internal value mechanisms.”
Scientists identify brain’s ‘God spot’
Scientists searching for a ‘God spot’ in the brain have found three areas that control religious belief.
A study of 40 participants, including Christians, Muslims, Jews and Buddhists, showed the same areas lit up when they were asked to ponder religious and moral problems.
MRI scans revealed the regions that were activated are those used every day to interpret the feelings and intentions of other people.
‘That suggests that religion is not a special case of a belief system, but evolved along with other belief and social cognitive abilities,’ said Jordan Grafman, a cognitive neuroscientist at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke in Bethesda, Maryland.
