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The human brain responds to the animals most primitive way
Despite all our otehnologichennost and urbanization, the human brain is still largely primitive creature. In particular, it is still programmed to react to animals in a certain way.
When people see images of animals, almost always activated by the same region of the amygdala (which is responsible for pleasure and pain, fear and reward). In other words, in the form of a bird on a wire, or a shark on the cinema screen, or a kitten under their feet in you waking up processes inherited from ancestors roamed on four legs in shallow water.
The effect is bright and steady, says Florian Mormant from the California Institute of Technology (USA). It reflects the important role played by animals in the life of our ancestors.
The experiment was conducted on people who were to surgery due to epilepsy of drug. Before these patients still should go encephalography. Mr. Mormant and his colleagues showed participants not only animals, but also people, landscapes, objects. Since virtually all activated right side of the amygdala, the scientists say the discovery of universal human traits.
Curiously, the image of primates and humans (also because animals) did not cause such a reaction.
It should also be noted that in vertebrates - from fish to mammals - there is one interesting feature: they prefer to "scan" the environment for food and predators with one eye. Accordingly, work with only one hemisphere - as in the described experiment.
I would like to know now, wrote the researchers, what happens to the information on the animal before it enters the amygdala.