#ventrolateral prefrontal cortex

[neurosciencenews]

Two Distinct Brain Regions Have Independent Influence on Decision-Making

Often when we make a decision, we calculate its "expected value," by multiplying the value of something (how much we want or need it) with the probability that we might be able to obtain it, a concept first introduced by 17th-century mathematician Blaise Pascal.

The research is in Neuron. (full open access)

[agapi-kalyptei]

The Last Best Cure - Naming your demons, or why talking about problems makes you feel better

So, reading The Last Best Cure gives me all kinds of important information I can act on. It would be a shame not to share them, so here goes.

When we see an angry face, our amygdala lights up. Amygdala is responsible for our flight-or-fight response, and triggers our sympathetic nervous system (SNS) response. Very simply put, our SNS response is what makes us react faster when we're stressed, and it's also what makes us age older if it's active for too long. (And yes, if you keep overthinking, that's exactly what happens.)

But, back to the amygdala. PhD. Matthew Lieberman decided to figure out how naming what you feel changes how you feel. In his study, he showed angry and fearful faces to people. They were supposed to label the faces they saw either by feelings - like, angry or fearful - or, they were supposed to label them with names, like Harry or Sally.

Brain activity of participants was scanned with MRI, and here's the thing - people who named the emotions had an increased activity in right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, and lower activity in their amygdala. If amygdala is responsible for feeling the emotions, the right ventrolateral prefrontal cortex was responsible for naming the emotions, and calming amygdala down - thus lowering the stress response.

Lieberman took the study one step further - they studied brains of people doing mindfulness meditation. The more people were naming their feelings, the less active their amygdala was. The more we name our feelings, the less stressed we are. "By putting your feelings into words, it's as if you're hitting the brakes on your emotional responses," says Lieberman.

He believes that this part of the brain may be especially by what's happening in childhood and teenage years. If our environment is less stable as we grow up, this area of the brain may be less capable of ameliorating the amygdala response.