Scientists Narrow Optimism Area in Brain

October 28, 2007

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/21458204/

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By SETH BORENSTEIN

Updated: 11:02 p.m. ET Oct. 24, 2007

WASHINGTON - A person's optimism in the future seems to be controlled by a small front part of the mid-brain, according to a study that used brain imaging.

That area deep behind the eyes activates when people think good thoughts about what might happen in the future. The more optimistic a person is, the brighter the area showed up in brain scans, the scientists reported in a small study published online Thursday in the journal Nature.

That same part of the brain, called the rostral anterior cingulate cortex (rACC), seems to malfunction in people suffering depression, said the study co-authors, Elizabeth Phelps of New York University and Tali Sharot of University College London.

Researchers gave 15 people functional magnetic resonance imaging scans while they thought about future possibilities. When the participants thought about good events both the rACC and amygdala, which is involved in emotional responses including fear, were activated. But the correlation with optimism was biggest with the cingulate cortex.

The same study also found that people tended to think that happier events were closer in time and more vivid than the bad ones, even if they had no reason to believe it, Phelps said.

Psychologists have long known people have an "optimism bias," but the new study offers new details.

When researchers asked the subjects to think about 80 different future events that could be good, bad or neutral, they had a hard time getting people to think negatively, or even neutrally, about the future. For example, when people were asked to ponder a future haircut, they imagined getting the best haircut of their lives, instead of just an ordinary trim, Phelps said.

The study makes sense and pulls together new and different parts of research on optimism and the brain, said Dan Schacter, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who wasn't part of the research.

Having our brains wired to optimism is generally a good thing because "if you were pessimistic about the future you would not be motivated to take a lot of action," Phelps said.

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Brain regions responsible for optimism located

WASHINGTON - Imagine receiving a big chunk of cash in the future. Or winning a prize.

Chances are, such optimistic thoughts are coming from two places in the brain that play an important role in enabling people to, as the old song says, accentuate the positive, New York University scientists said on Wednesday.

Pinpointing the brain regions involved in optimism and positive thinking about the future, the researchers said, may also have shed light on what might be going wrong in people with depression.

The researchers used sophisticated brain imaging to track brain activity in 15 young adults -- seven men and eight women -- while they asked them imagine future scenarios. They included getting a lot of money, winning an award, going to a birthday party or ball game or the zoo, being lied to, the end of a romantic relationship, going to a funeral and others.

When scenarios filled with optimism were imagined, two brain regions -- the rostral anterior cingulate and amygdala -- lit up with activity in the brain scans, the researchers said.

"What's interesting is these two regions that we saw that were involved in projecting optimistic futures are also the same two regions that we see affected in depression," Elizabeth Phelps, an NYU professor of psychology and neural science involved in the research, said in a telephone interview.

It had been unclear what was going wrong in these two regions that might contribute to depression. "But our data would suggest that one of the things they're doing is making it hard to think about things optimistically. Of course, one of the primary symptoms of depression is pessimism," Phelps said.

Phelps said the findings had the potential in the future to help guide new treatments for depression.

The research was published in the journal Nature.

OPTIMISM BIAS

The rostral anterior cingulate is part of the brain's frontal cortex that may be involved in regulating emotional responses. The amygdala is an almond-shaped brain structure in the medial temporal lobe involved in emotion.

"Understanding healthy optimism is important because optimism is related to mental and physical health and to success. We can have people who are not necessarily depressed but have different levels of optimism," said another of the researchers, Tali Sharot of University College London who was at NYU when the study was conducted.

Phelps said the research team is not saying these are necessarily the only brain regions involved in optimism.

The researchers said they examined how the brain generates what some scientists call the human "optimism bias."

"Humans expect positive events in the future even when there is no evidence to support such expectations," the researchers wrote in the journal Nature.

"For example, people expect to live longer and be healthier than average, they underestimate their likelihood of getting a divorce, and overestimate their prospects for success on the job market," they wrote.

Phelps said the researchers had a hard time getting the volunteers to think of purely neutral events in the future.

"They tended to make them positive," she said. "We sort of stumbled upon this optimism bias that psychologists have talked about before."