Areas of the brain choose to find information about bad potential: research

Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine have identified areas of the brain that determine if something bad is about to happen.

According to a study published in Neuron, the term “Doomscrolling” describes the act of scrolling endlessly through bad news on social media and reading all the information that pops up. Pandemic.

The biology of our brain may play that role. Researchers at the University of Washington School of Medicine in St. Louis have identified specific areas in the brain that activate when faced with the choice of learning or hiding information about unwanted and aversive events that individuals are likely to be unable to prevent. The cells have been identified. ..

This study may shed light on the underlying processes of psychiatric disorders such as obsessive-compulsive disorder and anxiety. Of course, it goes without saying how we deal with the vast amount of information that is characteristic of modern life.

“People’s brains aren’t well prepared to cope with the information age,” said Dr. Ilya Monosov, an associate professor of neuroscience, neurosurgery, and biomedical engineering. “People constantly check, check, and check the news, but some of those checks don’t help at all. Our modern lifestyle is to survive in uncertain and ever-changing. It may be rebuilding circuits in the brain that have evolved over millions of years. The world. “

In 2019, J. Kael White (a graduate student at the time) and senior scientist Ethan S. Bromberg-Martin (PhD), who are members of the Monosov Institute studying monkeys, will have positively expected events such as rewards. We identified two brain regions involved in tracking uncertainty about. Activities in these areas have motivated monkeys to find information about possible good things.

However, it was not clear whether the same circuit was involved when seeking information about negatively anticipated events such as punishment. After all, most people want to know if, for example, a bet on horse racing will pay off. Not so for bad news.

“In the clinic, if you give some patients the opportunity to have a genetic test, such as Huntington’s disease, some will be tested as soon as possible, while others will refuse. You need to be tested until symptoms appear.” “Clinicians have behaviors that ask for information in some people and fear in others,” said Monosov.

Lead authors Dr. Ahmad Jetzini and Monosov said that something unpleasant could be approaching the two monkeys to find the neural circuits involved in deciding whether to seek information about the unwelcome potential. Taught to recognize that there is. They trained monkeys to recognize symbols that could be likely to blow stimulating air into their faces. For example, monkeys were initially shown a single symbol to indicate that a puff might come, but the certainty varies. A few seconds after the first symbol was displayed, a second symbol was displayed to resolve the animal’s uncertainty. It told the monkeys whether the puff would definitely come or not.

Researchers either look at the second signal, look away, or let the monkey choose from different symbols and results in another experiment, whether the animal wants to know what happens. Measured by

Like humans, the two monkeys behaved differently towards bad news. I didn’t like the other. The difference in their attitude towards bad news was noticeable. Because they had the same idea about the good news. When they were given the option to find out what they liked, that is, whether they would receive a drop of juice, the two chose to do it consistently.

Neuroscience instructor Jezini found that the attitude of seeking information about negative events works bidirectionally, even among animals that have the same attitude toward positively rewarding events. “For us, this was a sign that the two attitudes could be guided by different neural processes.”

Researchers call the anterior cingulate cortex, which separately encodes information about attitudes towards good and bad possibilities by accurately measuring neural activity in the brain while monkeys face these choices. One brain region was identified. They found a second brain region, the ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, containing individual cells with activity that reflected the monkey’s overall posture.

Understanding the neural circuits that underlie uncertainty is the first step towards better treatment for people with uncertainties such as anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

“We started this research because we wanted to know how the brain encodes the desire to know what our future will bring to us,” Monosov said. .. “We live in a world where our brains are not evolving. The constant availability of information is a new challenge we must address. Understanding the mechanisms of information exploration. Is very important to society. Population level. “

Co-author Bronberg Martin, senior scientist at Monosov Lab, and Dr. Lucas Tranbioli of Harvard Medical School participated in the analysis of neurological and anatomical data to enable this study. ..