Scientists have known for years that when in doubt, the human brain tends to be optimistic. We ignore warnings about the danger of texting while driving, we drive without a seatbelt without assessing the danger in case of accidents, we close our eyes to statistics that suggest that our eating habits kill us, and we tend to believe that everything will have a happy ending for us even if circumstances seem to indicate otherwise, and that misfortunes only happen to others. A group of British neuroscientists has shown for the first time thatdeactivating certain areas of the brain using magnetic pulses can make these optimistic tendencies disappear. The results of his work are published in the magazinePNAS.
Specifically, there are two areas of the brain, known as clower right and left frontal ircunvolution, which control, at least partially, feelings of optimism and pessimism. The front left turn processes information with a positive bias, while the right side looks at what is happening and what may happen in the future “with a bad eye.” However, the left side acts much more effectively, which explains why we turn a deaf ear to bad news.
Tali Sharot and her colleagues at the Institute of Neurology at University College London decided to find out what would happen if the? Optimistic neurons? of the human brain. After using magnetic stimulation to numb the left inferior frontal gyrus of a series of volunteers, they were shown a list of negative events to assess how likely they were to occur, with and without actual incidence data for an average individual. Thus, it was verified that subjects had been subjected to the experiment and had deactivated optimism tThey tended to be more logical when the data was shown to them and to perceive their own “rosy” world less.than people with an active brain.
But what is the reason for this trend? According to the researchers, it is likely thatthe predisposition to optimism is an evolutionary strategyto ignore the dangers we face and become more willing to explore new environments, increasing the chances that our species will survive.
