Where can you find love and laughter?
Last week, we looked at some new discoveries about what happens where in your head (in particular, the locations of reading, writing, arithmetic, empathy, forgiveness, guilt, embarrassment and racism). Now let’s look at a few more.
Brain scientists use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and other technologies to measure the flow of blood and electricity in people’s brains. They scan the brains of volunteers while those volunteers are thinking particular kinds of thoughts. This produces beautiful, detailed images of the brain. New studies explain what those images might mean.
Moral judgment? It occurs notably in “several regions of frontal and parietal cortex”, say Joshua D Greene and his team at Princeton University.
Lying? That occurs primarily in the superior medial and inferolateral prefrontal cortices, report Daniel D Langleben and his team at the University of Pennsylvania….
So begins this week’s Improbable Research column in The Guardian.