Scientists Find First Physiological Evidence of Brain's Response to Inequality

[undeterred]

ScienceDaily (Feb. 24, 2010) — The human brain is a big believer in equality -- and a team of scientists from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, has become the first to gather the images to prove it.

Specifically, the team found that the reward centers in the human brain respond more strongly when a poor person receives a financial reward than when a rich person does. The surprising thing? This activity pattern holds true even if the brain being looked at is in the rich person's head, rather than the poor person's. These conclusions, and the functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies that led to them, are described in the February 25 issue of the journal Nature.

"This is the latest picture in our gallery of human nature," says Colin Camerer, the Robert Kirby Professor of Behavioral Economics at Caltech and one of the paper's coauthors. "It's an exciting area of research; we now have so many tools with which to study how the brain is reacting." It's long been known that we humans don't like inequality, especially when it comes to money. Tell two people working the same job that their salaries are different, and there's going to be trouble, notes John O'Doherty, professor of psychology at Caltech, Thomas N. Mitchell Professor of Cognitive Neuroscience at the Trinity College Institute of Neuroscience, and the principal investigator on the Nature paper.

But what was unknown was just how hardwired that dislike really is. "In this study, we're starting to get an idea of where this inequality aversion comes from," he says. "It's not just the application of a social rule or convention; there's really something about the basic processing of rewards in the brain that reflects these considerations."

This saggital view of the brain shows activity in both the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and the ventral striatum.


http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100224132453.htm

I knew that. :smoke:

[usregimechange]

1. Neat

[BrklynLiberal]

2. Thank you for this.

[anonymous171]

3. So why are things the way they are? nt

[HeresyLives]

4. Culture.

The single most important determining factor in human existence.

[loudsue]

5. The powerful people who actually run the world aren't wired this way.

The forces of darkness know no compassion....they are sociopaths.

[Stargleamer]

6. Then what happens to Republican brains?

How do conservatives become so anti-equality?