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Hey guys Julia here for DNews
The study of Phrenology once dominated the scientific mind.
Literally, this philosophy or theory suggested that shape of the head defined a person’s
intelligence or personality.
A person’s whole story could be read on their head like an open book.
While that so called “science” has been totally debunked, turns out the shape of your
brain could say something about who you are.
While personality always brings up the debate of nature vs nurture, whether it’s genes
or environment, the shape of your brain matters.
In recent years researchers are finding that certain personality traits were linked to
the size of various areas of the brain.
The size of an area of the brain is often correlated with strength in that area.
So someone with a large prefrontal cortex, an area associated with emotion, might be
better at regulating their feelings.
Before we get to us, let’s take a look at one of our closest cousins, the chimp.
And they do have similar personality traits as we do.
In this study published in the journal NeuroImage, researchers used MRI techniques to scan the
brains of over 100 different chimps.
They also used a list of 40 questions to judge the chimp’s personality, which rated things
like extraversion, openness, agreeableness, dominance.
Most of these kinds of tests use neuroticism in humans rather than dominance, but it’s
kind of hard to tell if a chimp is neurotic, it’s not like he’ll still talk about the
one time he thought one chimp waved at him but he was really waving at the chimp behind
him.
They found that the chimps with more positive traits likes extraversion had more gray matter
in the anterior cingulate cortex in both sides of the brain.
But chimps with negative traits like dominance had more gray-matter in the left anterior
cingulate cortex and the right prefrontal cortex.
But what about in human brains?
Recent research suggest that certain connections in the brain can spell happiness for some
people.
Published in the journal Nature Neuroscience, the study examined “connectomes” of 461
people.
Connectomes being the map of the various connections in the brain.
The researchers found “a strong correlation” of positive traits and specific types of connectivity.
But it’s not just connection, it’s the size of certain regions too.
In another study published in the journal Psychological Research, scientists scanned
the brains of over 100 different people.
They too found links between region size and personality.
In this case the medial orbitofrontal cortex was larger for those with some positive traits
like extraversion.
And those with more negative emotions had a larger mid-cingulate cortex.
So it’s not an exact match to chimps, I mean chimp brains are pretty different from
ours.
But it’s clear that if a scientists could scan your brain right now, they could tell
a whole lot about you.
And don’t be worried if you don’t measure up.
DNA isn’t destiny and neither is brain structure.
The brain is surprisingly fluid.
You can grow certain areas of the brain with practice, just like working out makes a muscle
bigger, habitual practice can change the brain.
Several studies, like one study published in the journal NeuroReport show that meditation
causes thickening in the prefrontal cortex, a part of the brain that deals with emotional
processing and well-being.
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But brain structure isn’t the whole story.
Size matters too, to learn more about that, check out this video, right here
So got any other questions about the brain?
Let us know down below…..