Saturday, January 21, 2012

Neuroscience of Obliviousness

Interesting neuroscience article at io9.com, filed under the heading “No Future,” but tagged with the more inticing words Your brain won’t allow you to believe the apocalypse could actually happen.

io9.com’s article impetus is a Nature Neroscience article titled How unrealistic optimism is maintained in the face of reality, which, in large part, is hidden behind a paywall, but we can glean this bit of information from the io9.com piece, which is quoted from the Nature Neuroscience article.

We found that optimism was related to diminished coding of undesirable information about the future in a region of the frontal cortex (right IFG) that has been identified as being sensitive to negative estimation errors . . . this human propensity toward optimism is facilitated by the brain’s failure to code errors in estimation when those call for pessimistic updates. This failure results in selective updating, which supports unrealistic optimism that is resistant to change.

Interestingly enough, the overly optimistic do have a counter balance, the depressed.

There is one fascinating exception to this rule, though. As the researchers note, the only people who consistently offer accurate estimates of bad things happening to them are clinically depressed. So — perfect depression is perfect awareness?

Linked via Fred Lapides.

Posted by John Venlet on 01/21 at 09:05 AM
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