Scientists identify brain’s centre of wisdom

Chicago, April 6: Scientists at the University of California in San Diego claim to have found a source of wisdom in the human brain.

In a report, to be published in the American Medical Association's journal Archives of General Psychiatry, experts noted that they have identified the part of the brain that guides humans when they face difficult moral dilemmas.

Using sophisticated brain scanning techniques, lead researcher Dilip Jeste, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of California in San Diego, and his colleague, Thomas Meeks, found that humans respond to moral quandaries by activating areas of the brain associated with both rational thought and such primitive emotions as sex, fear and anger.

“Our research suggests there may be a basis in neurobiology for wisdom's most universal traits,” said Dr Jeste.

He and Meeks discovered that when a person is faced with a simple situation that just called for an altruistic response, the individual used the medial prefrontal cortext, an area of the brain that is linked to intelligence and learning.

However, when someone faced with a difficult moral judgment, the other areas of the brains were activated, including those parts connected with both rational thought and primitive emotions.

“Several brain regions appear to be involved in different components of wisdom. It seems to involve a balance between more primitive brain regions, like the limbic system, and the newest ones, such as the prefrontal cortex,” Dr Meeks said.

Advances in medical technology have made it possible for researchers to carry out this type of study. Such research can be attributed to the technological advances in brain scanning, including functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), which allows researchers to see how a person uses separate parts of the brain for different mental tasks.

Although Dr Jeste admitted the possibility that wisdom and free will are reflections of how someone’s brain has been wired rather than metaphysics is unsettling, but, he says, “Knowledge of the underlying mechanisms in the brain could potentially lead to developing interventions for enhancing wisdom.”

In previous studies, researchers have focused on parts of the brain involved in several aspects of the human condition such as empathy, compassion and emotional stability, which are widely regarded as components of wisdom.

In a recent research, published in Nature, Professor Patrick Haggard of the Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, University College London, addressed the neurological basis of free will. He said: “Modern neuroscience is shifting towards a view of voluntary action being based on specific brain processes, rather than being a transcendental feature of human nature.”

Another research has been conducted to study disorders such as obesity and gambling, revealing the brains of people suffering from such afflictions are wired in a way that it is much harder to exercise wisdom or self-control.

“Brain scans of some people suffering from morbid obesity show they have an abnormal response to food. Their brains respond so powerfully that they are driven to eat too much,” said Dr James Rowe, a consultant neurologist and researcher at Cambridge University.