Brain Region for Changing Behaviour Identified

Quick Hits
Brief research updates from the cognitive sciences

The saying goes “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.” This obviously refers to doing the same thing over and over and continually getting a bad result.

Well, the good news is we now know what part of the brain seems to be instrumental in controlling this and when faced with changed outcomes helps you to adapt your behaviour in place of doing the insane thing in the above quote.

Research by Duan et al. from Cambridge University just published shows that an area of the brain called the Anterior Cingulate Cortex (ACC) is heavily involved in this. Or rather, if you shut this area down, you stop changing behaviours.

Ok, this is in marmosets, ethics committees don’t allow this sort of study human beings — regulations, regulations. But there are strong similarities to human brains and the study is insightful to behaviours in human beings.

The marmosets would receive a reward (tasty juice for these critters) if they tapped on a cross appearing on a screen. So far so good, now the researchers changed the rewarding protocol and gave the marmosets rewards at every attempt irrespective of whether they tapped or not. These smart marmosets stop tapping and just grab the juice — who wouldn’t.

But when they shut down the ACC (with drugs in this experiment) the marmosets kept tapping the cross, sticking to habitual behaviours rather than adapting to the best behaviours. Indeed, I wrote about the ACC in leading brains Review and noted that the ACC is at the crossroads of prediction and effort.

This has many implications in human beings, particularly in obsessive compulsive behaviours — but could also easily be applied to the business world and how quickly and effectively individuals and organisations adapt to changing circumstances.

The ACC is part of the awareness and introspection network which is why engaging in mindfulness may help this, but also certain cognitive games that require responding effectively to input may help to train this brain region.

“We think this is the first study to have established the specific brain circuitry that controls goal-directed behaviour in primates, whose brains are very similar to human brains” Angela Roberts

So, there you have it. Now we can accurately say “Insanity is not activating your ACC to adapt to optimal behaviours”.

© leading brains 2022

Reference

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