Brain Regions Responsible for Optimism Located

TaeKwonDood writes "The brain region responsible for believing you can seduce Giselle Bundchen or make a YouTube clone for bobble-head doll movies successful has been located. Surprisingly, it is not in a bottle of Jager, it's in the rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala."

so...

[andreyvul]

pessimists are brain damaged?

Re:That's nice.

[MillionthMonkey]

Too bad we'll never be able to do anything with this discovery.

What are you talking about? Now we know exactly where to gamma-knife the terrorists!

A book about pessimism

[RobinH]

I was accused of being too pessimistic, so I went and read a little about the subject. The most interesting thing I found was a book by Julie Norem called "The Positive Power of Negative Thinking" [defensivepessimism.com].

She puts forward a case that optimism/pessimism is a result of how your personality reacts to stress. Optimists tend to ignore the things that could go wrong, so they don't get stressed in the first place, and are therefore happier people. When bad things do go wrong, optimists tend to relate it to external causes. On the other hand, pessimists are pessimists because they have a tendency to be anxious. They immediately foresee the risks of each situation (due to their personality, not a conscious decision) and therefore they map out alternatives to each bad outcome until they've relieved their stress by feeling confident that, no matter what happens, they have a plan for every eventuality. When things still go wrong, pessimists tend to ask themselves what they could have done differently to avoid the bad outcome (internalizing it).

When an optimist and a pessimist face a situation together, the pessimist causes stress in the optimist by pointing out what could go wrong. The optimist causes stress in the pessimist by refusing to make contingency plans.

Once I realized all this, I was able to continue making contingency plans to keep my own stress under control, but I am now more careful about voicing my internal thought process around people who I know are optimists.

Artificial optimism?

[Camael]

Perhaps the day is coming close when we will be able to artifically induce optimism in ourselves by tickling the right brain cells.

Feeling nervous before an interview? *zap*
Footballer lacks confidence before a game? *zap*
Going out for your first date? *zap*
Meeting her parents? *zap*

This is a guaranteed major money spinner, and I won't be surprised if it becomes addictive as well.

Mods clicking at random

[Harmonious Botch]

Optimism is about lowering your expectations enough that they are often exceeded.

WTF is wrong with you mods today?? P spouts bullshit like the above quote and gets modded insightful, but 1st post doesn't get modded funny.

Depression?

[Siridar]

This is just a pure stab in the dark here, but could a drug stimulating this region be used to help depression? One of the symptoms seems to be a feeling of despair and inability - turning this feeling around by (chemically) convincing folks that they /can/ pull themselves out of the hole they're in might work.

Re:Optimism != delusion

[blahplusplus]

"Optimistic people may try things because they think there will be a good outcome."

I think we need both, I think they are survival tools that seperate good opportunities from bad ones, and being open since the opportunities and risks we can't know for sure, so we have a mechanism that tries its best to sort the two.

Interesting question raised by the summary

[Weaselmancer]

Surprisingly, it is not in a bottle of Jager, it's in the rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala.

So, what exactly is it in the bottle of Jager that makes your rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala think you can get a date with Gisele?

Put another way, getting drunk can make you optimistic - it would be interesting to study the effects of alcohol on that region of the brain. If that portion of the brain could be stimulated in some other way it could lead to a powerful new series of drugs to battle depression. Or improve combat effectiveness. Or maybe even get you that date with Gisele.

Re:A book about pessimism

[aethera]

Strange, I must be one of those exceptions that prove the rule. I am a definitely a contingency planner, in things as small as what route I take to work each morning to having a packed a ready Go bag that has everything myself and my family would need to survive in case of, well just about anything survivable; food, maps, hand tools, cash, etc. But I'm not a pessimist. When I analyze a situation I also think about probabilities, and lets face it, the really bad stuff that can happen is pretty uncommon. My reputation at work is always staying cool *and cheerful* under crisis. I often joke with some of my junior coworkers that when they've been around as long as I have, they'll have seen enough really really bad shit happen that the bar will be set to high to get worked up about your more garden variety chaos.

Re:A book about pessimism

[not-quite-rite]

It doesn't sound like you are an exception at all.

Just because you are cheerful to people doesn't make you an optimist!

I would say that you are comfortable in your pessimism, and are just getting better at contingency planning(well except for the denial of being a pessimist :P )

That's not to say that complex human behaviours can be broken cleanly into a binary state of pessimism/optimism - it's maybe more of a sliding scale. It's just a pity we don't have more words to describe where people sit on that scale....

Signing off as a cheerful pessimist myself(who finds it offensive when people have dumb ideas that will fail, and I am called "negative" for pointing it out, and then being right!)

Re:Artificial optimism?

[SeaFox]

Felix Felicis [wikipedia.org]

Region of the brain that does X

[noidentity]

I'm usually cranky about claims to have found the part of the brain that does X, since this pre-supposes that X is done in a particular part. In a computer, some things like long-term data storage are localizable. Other things like getting the size of a file aren't performed in any particular part. If you believed that getting the size of a file was done in some particular part, you might find out where activity occurs (changes of states) when you ask for the size of a file, and then erroneously conclude that the hard disk is what gets the size of a file, when the real behavior is a combination of the hard disk, CPU, RAM, bus, and operating system. Again, it's the assumption that every behavior or ability you can label is the result of some area of the brain whose only function is that behavior or ability.</rant>

Re:so...

[h2_plus_O]

No, they're just resolving two conflicting urges in a predictable, normal way.
Pessimism is the way we attempt to protect ourselves from disappointment. ...tho if you think about it, the only context in which you'd need to protect yourself from disappointment is if there were some underlying hope in the first place.

There's no such thing as dark, just absence of light. Perhaps pessimism is just what we call suppressed hope.

Re:That's nice.

[CrazedWalrus]

Have you ever met anyone with clinical depression? They have a hard time getting motivated, they always feel down, and can't focus -- among a ton of other issues. This sounds like it might be a big help.

I wouldn't go so far as to call it a cure, but look: 1) Optimism can be a great motivator and 2) It might get people with depression to look at the world in a better light 3) it's easier to focus on something you care about or think will improve your lot in life.

So yes, I'd say there's a good chance that it would do all three, if not by curing the disease, then by helping to cover the symptoms.

I'm not qualified in any way to say this stuff, but it is what it is, for what it's worth, from an armchair psychologist.

Re:That's nice.

[badarabdad]

if transcranial magnetic stimulation improves in accuracy and resolution, as it likely will over the next decade, we may be looking at a drug-free (read:side-effect free) way to treat depression by targeting these areas. hell, even implanted stimulating electrodes may help.

I'm not sure how well this method is examining "optimism" as much as it is expected rewards or punishments. optimism is someone's ability to look on the bright side of life and who can view the bad things more positively. that is not what they are doing here.