Agatha Christieshe had a permanent fear of being interviewed and appearing in public. And the great Argentine writerJorge Luis BorgesHe was a consummate shy person who, until he was 42 years old, would send his friend Oliverio Girondo to read his speeches.Shythey were also Albert Einstein, Abraham Lincoln, the inventor Orville Wright or the writer Raymond Carver.
Now a team of scientists has shown thatshy people perceive the world in a different way and show more intense brain activity when faced with certain stimuli. Researchers from Stony Brook University in New York, Southeastern University and the Chinese Academy of Sciences selected 16 people and asked them to confront two similar portraits to observe the details. Meanwhile, they examined their brains using Functional MRI.The shy ones spent more time looking at the imagesand “showed aelevated activity in the brain areas concerned with associating visual and sensory perceptions“Ultimately,” his brain was not only concerned with visual perception, but was activated for adeeper processing of information“, explained the researchers, who have released their results in the journalSocial Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience.
As they conclude, the brain of shy people perceives the outside world differently thanks to the“Sensitivity for Sensory Perception” (SPS). This trait is characterized by sensitivity to internal and external stimuli, including social and emotional ones, and implies a predisposition to shyness that could affect the6% of the world population. These types of subjects, the study authors add, need more time to observe and reflect before acting. And they are usually bothered by noise and crowds more than average, are more sensitive to caffeine and startle very easily, all of them side effects of theirinnate tendency to pay more attention to detail.
