Self- confidence is essential to be successful in any aspect of life and plays a decisive role in the evolution of certain mental illnesses, such as depression or Alzheimer’s disease. In fact, neurologists and psychologists have long known that these are complicated when those affected do not believe in their own abilities and develop negative thoughts.
Now, an international team of researchers has devised a new system that allows detecting the patterns of brain activity that occur when an individual experiences great self-confidence , even when performing a simple task, from a brain scan . The volunteers who participated in the first tests received a small amount of money each time they reached that state, which allowed those responsible for the experiment to increase the self -confidence of the subjects without them being aware of it. Of course, the effect could be reversed and cause it to decrease.
According to Mitsuo Kawato, director of the Computational Neuroscience Laboratories at the International Institute for Research in Advanced Telecommunications, in Kyoto, who has participated in this initiative, “we have used an approach based on artificial intelligence to find the specific patterns that correspond to with high and low confidence states. “
The neuropsychologist Aurelio Cortese, from the aforementioned international institution, who has directed the trial, points out that by relating the appearance of a state of self-confidence with an economic reward, his team succeeded in making individuals more self-confident at the end of the process . Now these experts are studying how to apply their findings to treating various psychiatric conditions.
Image: Chris & Karen Highland via Flickr / CC
